Domineering Arrogant Little Fire Dragon!

November 26^th I always used to say that cheese snacks at night time had no effect on me. I wonder if I was wrong. My partner in crime was up long before me this morning, I was finding it very difficult to open my eyes and keep them that way. Any of her plans for long walkies were swiftly forgotten. What do you know about Shangri-La? Well, this is the road to there!

We did think about going up to see how they were doing up there but neither of us fancied hills today. Instead we went squirrel hunting, and failed miserable. Still, the scenery was fine.

I lost Huan for a while, she had found somebody else to ‘direct’! These two were bouncing a ball on a rope, just for Huan to take photos of them. She took far too many from too far away. All I could manage to rescue was this one. PS I should have stayed with her.

I have previously showed you ‘Saxophonist’s Row’ but I felt I owed it to Huan to share her photo of it too. She did very well with this one, distance not bad, framing very good too. Just in case you are wondering, there were seven saxophonists this morning.

Our sluice gate progress report shows that the hydraulic lifters are almost done, for this side anyway. Remember, when this side is done they will have to dam the other side of the river so that they can repeat the process there.

Finally, two bugs for you. Actually, I lie; it is only one bug from two different angles. I could not get to the front of it without standing in mid air above the river. It was on the bridge wall. Its eyes are down on its body but I could have sworn it kept rotating its antennae to ‘look’ at me. Is it radar, sonar or lidar I wonder?

My afternoon was spent with my eyes tight shut! I did do my bit in the kitchen though; baked potato filled with minced beef (with the obligatory garlic and onion) and baked beans. Simple but effective, bellies full, happy teddies.

November 27^th Today the weather was ‘crisp and clear’, well not so much crisp but certainly a little cooler and just right for walking. We didn’t fancy hills yesterday so we opted for them today instead. Can you imagine this being said in the UK, “OK darling, fancy a walk to the landfill?” I guess there may be some people who are like us! Just down the road, even before we reached the fuel station, Huan found a bird. Why does the plant not bend?

And then it was my turn, a very small butterfly, so small it was impossible to see any of these features that you see here. For more info, you can Google this - Zemeros flegyas, the Punchinello, is a small butterfly found in South Asia and Southeast Asia that belongs to the family Riodinidae.

It was Huan’s turn again then, here I am explaining to her how she can cross this little stream if she wants to. It would not have been easy and she would have gotten her boots wet.

I was only there to take upstream and downstream photographs.

Of course Huan had to take too many photos of me returning to where she was. Only four could be joined together to make a gif.

She found me a lizard, again, but I have to say, I liked this ‘find’.

On our way today I thought I would show you where the next two ‘no through road’ videos will be filmed. They both start from a little village on the road to the landfill. Most of that village has now been demolished; let’s hope we will still be able to get to the tops!

It was then my turn to get Huan. She decided that she would try carrying the old lady’s yoke and baskets. It was not easy! PS, there’s a video here - https://youtu.be/EQvKAp4UXzg

This is a handsome duck. I tried my best to get near enough for a good head and shoulders shot but he kept turning away. This is not a bad one though.

“I can see you!”

From a vociferous dog we go to a quiet cow, with his attendant chicken.

How about a snap to show you how the weather was today. It really was a glorious day for walking. Mind you, it is going to get a little cooler this week before it warms up again. Tomorrow night we will have a low of 10⁰C, or maybe even less.

Huan was doing exceptionally well with her lizard spotting today, look at this one. I think it was just after this one that we were chatting about the time I exchanged a high five with one. Well he gave me a foot and I gave him a finger. I wish that would happen again!

Before she was able to find another one I grabbed a bit of flora.

My rest was to be very short!

And I think we will leave it there for today, not a bad haul eh?

November 28^th Why can’t we be more like machines, get serviced regularly and keep going for what seems like forever? We’re not over the hill yet but we do sometimes find it difficult to stir our weary bodies in the mornings. Both of us felt the same today but we decided to take a countryside walk, along the squirrel lane behind the school.

Someone was busy painting walls outside the school, and a jolly good job they were doing too. I suggested to Huan that she ask them to paint our dining room wall, a suggestion that didn’t go down too well at all!

The buildings in front of the school have now been demolished but the goats haven’t moved yet. The Granddad was out of the cage and keeping an eye on me. Baby wanted feeding but Mum was having none of it, thank you!

Meanwhile, in the cage, the rest of the family was resting.

Here’s another weaver for you, courtesy of photographer Huan.

After passing the house of the one-legged man we decided to go the wrong way round on Huan’s ‘find a turkey road. It looks different this way.

Let’s see what is down this little path, we haven’t looked before.

Wow, we found another place with turkeys, much easier to photograph here too!

We also found a farmer and his wife. They were preparing food for their piggies. One sty had a pair of skittish piglets, wouldn’t even stay still enough for a photo. The second sty was also not easy for me to photo but they did come to me and then Huan could take a snap instead. We did ask the farmer’s wife if they needed feeding but she said they had just eaten. I still kept a wary eye on those strong jaws mind you!

I wasn’t able to give Huan away to help on the farm so we continued up the hill. Yet again we marvelled at how the two routes looked so different.

All we could see at our usual turkey spot was a few chickens.

We had good weather for it today; even the flowers around the village sign were enjoying it.

Here I was asking the little lad if this was his puppy. Neither Huan nor I understood his reply and Huan couldn’t get him to repeat it. If he hasn’t started in kindergarten yet he may well have been speaking one of the local languages.

Soon we were heading over the bridge to somewhere towards home.

Yesterday we had seen a baby in a pushchair come alive when he saw the big truck spraying the roadside. Huan mentioned how her son, Sheng Sheng, had been as a child. He wanted to drive trains and fire engines. I seem to remember I was much the same. Shame I’m too old now.

A postscript to that last photo, babies being born these days may never have the chance to drive any cars at all, never mind trains or fire engines. It will all be done by technology and AI.

Huan had almost given up hope but she found one just outside our house again. He seems to be wearing out the knees of his trousers!

Despite our bad sleeps last night we skipped our naps today. Maybe that is the problem but somehow I doubt it. It was Chef Bob’s turn again today but I have no recipe for you. This is the list of ingredients though, along with two eggs added towards the end of cooking.

Feel free to ask questions if you so wish. Only one of the eggs survived the gentle stirring of the noodles so I made sure that went into Huan’s bowl which you can see below.

November 29^th Who’s a sneaky boy then? I suggested to Huan that I go alone this morning so that she could have a restful day. She agreed, so off I went. The first subject I found was an unusual car for these parts, a Subaru BRZ I think. Someone has too much money.

Of course Huan not being with me in person didn’t mean that I could just relax and not look for things. I heard this bird and then was lucky that it stayed in one place long enough.

All the way up this road I was looking for lizards, without any success whatsoever.

I had company all along this road, an old man from up north somewhere. Well, I say old but I have no idea who was older, him or me. He was asking me all sorts of questions, some easy to answer, some beyond my Chinese level. Mind you, that doesn’t take much.

We parted ways at the Fodelai pedestrian bridge where I took yet another three river photos.

Then I came to the ulterior motive of the sneaky suggestion this morning, the coffee and fag break. I can just hear my sisters giving me earache “Robert!” My brothers probably won’t care one way or the other, as long as I am happy. And SWMBO would not be pleased at all. It is only the second one this month!

In front of the hotel, I thought this fish looked nice, with his shadow below as well.

And then as luck would have it, on the final stretch, I found another bird!

Arriving home the Prime Minister was not too displeased, I did manage some good scenery and a couple of birds We skipped naps again today although my eyes are very heavy as I write this so maybe that was a mistake. It could also be the fact that Huan didn’t rest today; she went berserk changing sheets, cleaning the house and washing teddy bears. Added to that we went out after dinner to buy the pork for the weekend salad. Still, tomorrow is a quiet day.

November 30^th Market day again so where did we go? Why, to the market of course. First though, SWMBO, who is still not driving our car, thought she would pose in a new neighbour’s little truck. The collage is to show you some of the workings.

We had a good day for birds on our way out. We could see a lot of them in a tree by the river but I was having difficulty seeing them through the foliage. Suddenly a few of them moved to this tree, some then left leaving just two to pose for us.

The market was so busy this week that we might have to reconsider whether or not we go next week. If we don’t need anything we may just skip it. On the other hand we did see that our Ethiopian friend was back along with her husband who we met for the first time today.

We did manage two photos, one each. Mine was a box of little chicks that I had just made a video of, for Huan to see. Huan’s was a box of fruit for which we can’t seem to find a good English name. 火梅果, Huǒ méi guǒ translates as ‘fire plum fruit’ but no amount of searching on Google helped us find its English, or Latin name.

Our last one of the day came as we were making our way home. If you ever wonder where we get our Blog Post titles from, well sometimes they come from my old decrepit brain and other times from Taobao. Today’s came from the latter and describes the character below!

And that’s it for today. I spent the rest of the day looking at new cell phones and electric bicycles. Huan spent her day asking me if my back was OK after it went out on me yesterday.

December 1st Last night I left the computer on, with the wifi on, so that November’s photos could finish uploading for my kids and for my siblings. I expected all to be done by this morning so that I could quickly share them and then Huan and I could go for a nice long walk. To my surprise the job was not completed. Someone, probably me, because I am the only one who does anything on the computer, did leave the wifi and computer on as planned but then had a senior moment and turned the VPN off! Dummy! Consequently, we stayed in all day while the process continued, I think it finished about three in the afternoon. Huan took advantage of the break to have a break, or should I say to take a nap.

After dinner we decided a walk would be a better idea than just rotting the evening away and so we went to the market to buy three days of fish for Huan and one day for me. Yes, we will be having fish four times this week, aren’t we the healthy ones. The camera stayed at home so missed a low flying egret, around the same time as we took this one.

Here in Wuzhishan there is no Christmas, but we can pretend.

December 2^nd Huan is a very brave wifey, she wakes up next to this every morning. There are two Bobs in the picture, the old and the new, or should that read the old and the young. The front one is 74 and the back one is 58. Which do you prefer? I know which age I would rather be now! A friend recently commented on Facebook that he had celebrated another birthday ending in ‘zero’ meaning he was getting older. I didn’t answer, although perhaps I should have. When you get to our age you hope to see another ‘zero’ birthday in your future!

Today should have been our routine, scheduled shopping day. Unfortunately Donald would not wake up this morning. Tests revealed that his battery was only at 7v so off he went to the garage for charging and follow up tests to see why this should be so.

Because it was our shopping day and because we would have to now go out twice, me being too old to carry all of the shopping bags for one week, we headed off to the bap and sausage market. On the way we passed a small car with a decal that we don’t think we have seen before. It turns out that this character, Pochacco, is a Pisces, just like me, and eternally spry and young, not quite like me! https://www.blippo.com/blogs/characters/pochacco#

Huan decided to buy us one fruit, one of these to be exact. It is a wild cucumber and tastes a little like a honeydew melon. I know that because I had it after dinner with bananas, grapes and ice cream. It’s not bad, certainly doesn’t taste like a cucumber.

Another vehicle was spotted on the way home, it had what I thought was a spelling mistake, one of those transliterations gone wrong. In fact the company name is 法美瑞, fǎ měi ruì which translates as France, America and Switzerland, for some strange reason. If you want one then look here - http://famry.net/product/ but you will need to translate.

After lunch another trip was needed so that we could buy things that are not found in the street markets, milk, sliced cheese, and sweeties for my Christmas sweet tooth. Well, it is only once a year and we have no mince pies or Christmas cake! Another small car was spotted with two decals that we both found rather interesting. The first is “兄弟们，你们玩, 媳妇找我, 有点事, Xiōngdìmen, nǐmen wán xífù zhǎo wǒ yǒudiǎn shì - Brothers, you guys play, my wife is looking for me, something’s going on.” I’m sure many husbands can relate!

The second one is a little different “小伙单身, 追尾必娶, Xiǎohuǒ dānshēn zhuīwěi bì qǔ - Single guy, must marry if you rear-end (me)” Of course there is a proviso attached, “限美女, Xiàn měinǚ - Only for beauties.” He, or she, would probably be arrested in the UK.

And so another week comes to an end. Tune in next week, same Bobtime and same Bobchannel, see how us oldies are coping with winter in Hainan! Bieeeee!