The Student is Still The Boss!

April 4^th I did my duty and walked Huan and Yú to the learner driving office, well to nearby anyway. I thought it better that whoever they would be dealing with did not know a ‘foreigner’ was involved, thus they would be treated just like everybody else. Having left them I set off on my solo walk, up to Tai Ping reservoir. It’s been a long time but I thought I should give it a go again. The hardest part is between the second and third kilometres.

Nearing the end of that part I avoided these steps and headed for the sign.

That sign says that there are four more kilometres to the top. I took this next photo from the sign; you can see why I preferred the road to the steps.

Although the hardest part was over there were still a few more hairpin bends, put there just to slow me down I think.

About an hour into my walk I realised something was different, not very observant am I? Since the last time we walked this route they have installed a new pipeline down from the reservoir to the town, that’s where our fresh water comes from.

After what seemed a long time, and much more difficult than previous visits, I was soon at the reservoir. There is a newly installed gate to stop people going up that way. I wasn’t going to go up that way, but I did often used to come down through there.

One last hairpin bend,

and then I reached my destination, having averaged about fifteen minutes per kilometre. I smiled as I thought back to how proud I had been when I told Huan I had reached the top in less than twelve minutes per kilometre, (a long time ago). Could I do it again? Maybe, but I don’t think I’m going to try, at least not yet.

We had seen these little sensors before, but never the sign that went with them. It says大坝变形检测Dà bà biànxíng jiǎncè, translates as Dam deformation detection.

A visit to the reservoir would not be complete without a shot of the view of our house, and there it is, somewhere in the middle of that haze down there. It’s funny how it is so easy to pick out our house from here but we can’t pick out the reservoir from home.

I had passed a couple on the way up; they were a little older than me. In fact they were 86 and 87, and still walking up to the reservoir. The lady had seen Huan and I on some phone channel so was quite happy to chat. We had big smiles again when I met them on the way down, and told them that going down was a lot easier than going up.

In fact going down was much faster and before long I was at the sluice gate bridge. It won’t be long now; it is supposed to open again next week.

I arrived home after fifteen kilometres, taking me three hours and twenty five minutes. Going down was so much faster that the average pace for all was less than thirteen and half minutes per kilometres. I’m quite pleased with that. Huan had still not reached home, they were being sent from pillar to post, first for their photographs and then for their medicals (for medical, read eye tests). After a lonely lunch I had to have a nice sleep before she came home. Even then, she wasn’t home long; Tuesday is of course OAP hulusi day. That also makes it Bob’s cooking day, and today was very simple and definitely not Chinese.

April 5th Having had a nice long walk yesterday, with hills, I suggested to Huan that we stick to the riverside today. Thankfully she agreed. It didn’t take her long before she was finding lizards everywhere, some of them I could hardly get near.

The reason I couldn’t get very near was the construction on the path. In fact, at one stage during the above four photos, I sunk above my ankle in dry sand and dust. At least it wasn’t wet and I could clean my sandals easily enough. A little further on the going became very soggy and my sandals would not have been suitable at all. As for Huan, she doesn’t like getting her shoes wet!

She still managed to find one more lizard, but this one would not lift its head.

On our way home we were ambushed by a young lady who wanted to know if there was an English Corner anywhere in Wuzhishan, there isn’t, at least to our knowledge. She herself has a Master’s degree in English, teaches in a Middle School here in Wuzhishan and speaks English perfectly. It turns out that she wants her daughter to learn English so is looking for somewhere they can go to practice. You can’t see in the photo because I am blocking the view, but her husband is behind me on a motor scooter holding said ‘child’. She can’t be three months old yet! This photo is me doing my very best to explain about bilingual children and how they don’t have to have formal lessons to pick up whatever languages their parents speak.

A little sleep was needed for both of us before Huan got started on learning her highway code from an app on her phone. Rather her than me, she has to watch ten videos, each one an hour and a half long, and then take the practice test questions. The videos, like nearly all videos these days, have inane background music; they would drive me round the bend!

April 6^th “Can we go up the Rendishan Road today?” was the question I was asked this morning. Of course I took it, not as a question, more as an order, so that’s the way we went. We stopped off to see what these guys are doing; I squeezed through the small crowd to get this shot. They are repairing an electrical supply to the nearby building. Check out the eyes of the guy with the red hat, he is looking at a resident, and Huan, both complaining about frequent power cuts. They were both being unreasonable as far as I was concerned; there are far worse places than this for electrical shortcomings. We have very few power failures here.

Nature rewarded us with a beautiful photograph today, check out this caterpillar.

Rooftops are next with the first shot taken of the ‘residential’ building from a distance, and the second of a workshop type building close up. Huan tells me that the plants at the back are sweet corn and the ones at the front are sweet potatoes. How do they cope with so little soil?

My plan today was to walk us up to the head of the valley and then retrace our steps to return home. In the past we would have been able to show you the smaller valleys and the larger one from the path. That has changed a lot, and there is not much for you to see now.

Huan wasn’t sure we were going the right way, but once we reached the valley head, and even though the view had dramatically changed, she recognised where we were.

In the last picture, you can almost see, in the middle at the bottom of the sandy hill, two guys with motorbikes. They told Huan we could still go over the hill but not to go up the hill. There was a route to the next village. Huan was all for it, I remembered how much we had to fight our way through the trees last time, so I wasn’t for it. She won!

Luckily, at least in my eyes, there had been changes on the other side of the hill too. The going became very easy and no complaints were heard.

Soon, across the valley, we could see the tourist place that we have walked around many times before. Maybe next time, we’ll try the reverse route once again.

At this point we had two ways home, one via the Villas on the Lake, and the other via Camelot. We took the second one. On the way I spotted a ‘black box’ on a tree so, being a curious chap, I had to go and investigate. Here it is for you engineers out there.

Just like last time were able to go through the new unfinished building. There was a security man this time, and he was not keen on letting us through, but the alternative was a very long walk. Huan lied and told him that next time we would go a different way. Once out of the new building I turned around and took a photo towards where the lady in the lake used to stand. These are taken not quite from the same spot but you can get the idea.

Soon we were once again walking down a tree lined avenue.

It was my turn to spot a lizard today, as he ran behind a tree. From the other side I couldn’t see it, but Huan could. Do you think he was trying to look like the twig next to him? Once Huan pointed him out I was able to get the ‘twig’ photo and a nice portrait too.

And there we will leave it for today, no more snaps. In fact, when we got home, it was straight to bed for a nap for me, not even any lunch. I did cook dinner again today, and a nice one it was too. As usual, a couple of modifications were made. For the ingredients, we used fresh mushrooms, not dried and Huan’s Chinese alcoholic vinegar instead of red wine vinegar. For the cooking, we added noodles and put them in the soup between steps 7 and 8. Her ladyship scoffed the lot, none was left for her breakfast, she must have enjoyed it!

April 7^th The amazing power of the subconscious! For some strange reason I always sleep in on a Friday morning, too late to escort my wife to her music classes and also too late to go out walking. Coincidentally, Taskmaster always appears on my You Tube notifications not long after I turn the PC on. Thanks for getting into my brain Taskmaster, I do love my Fridays!

No walking for Huan today, well apart from her walk to class this morning. After lunch it was my turn to go out and buy some stuff for the weekend’s salad. I didn’t take the camera and found nothing at all worth photographing with the phone.

This evening Huan received a photo from her classmates, so at least we have something to show for today. As she is wont to do, she has hidden herself away in the back row.

April 8^th Saturday meant it was another market walk, but as we weren’t planning to buy anything I suggested to Huan that we walk around the wrong way. She agreed. As a result our first two photos come from the sluice gate bridge. All is now done and dusted, the gates are operational again and the road is open. Now all they need is a coat of paint on the bridge.

“Isn’t this the same one that you showed us the day before yesterday?” No, we can categorically say it’s not; there are many kilometres between the two locations. It’s still a beautiful thing to see though, don’t you agree?

Now it is time for your English lesson, can you spot the spelling mistakes on this car? Note that it also has the required ‘go faster stripes’ that were very popular in my youth.

For this next one I had to choose from around 12 to 15 photos taken with Huan’s phone. I narrowed it down to three; this is the only one where I am looking in the right direction.

This next one had to wait until we got home, only then did I see that it was the ‘birds and the bees’ in action. Strange how the song doesn’t mention flies…

Approaching the market from the other end, and with the time nearing eleven o’clock, we could see that it was still quite busy. Spot the pooch in the pushchair.

There’s something about markets, Huan can’t walk through one without buying something. Today she decided that we needed peanuts, Xinjiang bread to go with our fish salad and a couple of small pineapples for dessert. At our normal stall for the bread we missed our usual family. It seems that they have gone home for the summer; instead his younger brother was here with his family. They asked for photos so Huan took a couple too.

With the donkey laden down with goodies, (moi), we headed for home stopping only to see what they were doing between the two road bridges in the river. Down this end it looks a lot different to further up river. There we can fairly accurately know what they are doing. Here, even with the plans that we showed you last week we are struggling. No doubt time will tell.

This last photo of the day was not planned at all. There was no looking at the screen or peering through the viewfinder, it was just a snap to try and make the camera communicate with the phone in order to download the day’s photos. I kept it to show Huan and she liked it. Because she liked it, you can see it too. Of course, you don’t have to like it but be aware, that I will pass on anything you say to the Ministry of Justice and she will hunt you down!

April 9^th You may be familiar with the saying “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus”. Google from 2013 states “John Gray's wildly popular book, “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,” postulates that the reason for relationship conflicts is that each gender is accustomed to its own set of emotional balances, cultures, and values, or, metaphorically speaking, live on different planets. I am here to tell you that he is only partly correct. This week I read an article about how your brain ‘wires’ itself according to your mother tongue, I have to say it made a lot of sense. However, I have now come to the conclusion that while English men may well be from Mars, Chinese ladies are from another galaxy completely!

Why the rant? After waiting all morning for ‘Her Maj’ to put down her phone and go walkies, and again after lunch I eventually gave up and went solo. You know she is trying to learn the Chinese equivalent of the Highway Code and she has to watch videos and answer questions. I gave her what I considered a sensible way to go about it; she listened and then ignored me completely. I have no doubt that she will get there but in the meantime the procedure will take over her whole life and she will worry herself to bits.

So, off I went into the countryside, and here is you first fauna and flora of the day.

Today my route took me to usual places but from a different direction. Here you can see the road to somewhere first and then the places that had changed since foregone years when Huan and I last walked there. It wasn’t so easy today, and I’m almost sure I washed a leech off when I got back home and took a nice hot shower.

Eventually I found my way out, this was the view backwards, and I then crossed the ‘road to somewhere’ and followed the village bypass, that is the view forwards.

Down this road I suddenly realised that there were no electricity cables to blight the view!

Crossing the main road I thought I had found a shortcut through the woods.

I was wrong of course and had to backtrack through the little farms back to the road. Within a few metres though I found another ‘new’ route.

Unfortunately for me, the large stone walls of the irrigation canal disappeared and I had to traverse to a much smaller canal, with much smaller walls.

Luckily, that was the worst of it and I soon found myself on a bridge which headed back into a small village, and had lovely views to boot.

Heading back through the village with the bypass I did take a few more photos of the construction but I won’t share them with you, not until we know more. All you can see now is soil embankments and missing trees. To make up my required distance today I had to pass the big school on the hill where I heard, from across the road, the unhappy bleating of a little goat. This is in the yard of the company that takes care of old excavators. Somehow this little kid has found itself outside of its home with the others. Every now and then it would get up the ramp and then ‘big Daddy’ or someone, would butt him back down again. Poor kid…

And that was the end of my walk; I got another ten in before going home, having a nice hot shower, and making the boss’s dinner.

April 10^th Huan’s studies have really taken her over, this morning she even passed on the Monday shop. I had to go alone! After lunch she continued straining her brain. Outside it looked like rain so I stayed in watching Chevy Chase movies. After dinner, Huan needed her lottery tickets, and I needed to buy bacon for tomorrow’s dinner, so at least I got a walk. This was the student as I left home.

Sometimes on our walks we see things that we wonder how we’ve missed them before. This was one of those things. Obviously this tree must have been here a while, longer than us anyway, but we have never seen it in bloom like this before.

Back down at the riverside market the new tea shop is now open. It was severely lacking in customers though, I suspect it is aimed at a slightly different, perhaps younger, clientele to the existing tea shops nearer the town. I hope they succeed but I have my doubts.

On reaching home Huan was still hard at it!

And there we are, another week over, a hard week of walking for me, a hard week of studying for the Prime Minister. I guess some things the Boss must do for herself. I also think I am going to be doing a lot more solo walks in the near future. Wish me luck! TTFN.