Visitors And Autumn Festival.

September 30^th Well we reached the end of the month and it looks like the weather reached the end of its tether. Today stayed dry. We still had no proper walkies though; Huan had to pay a return visit to the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital. This photo is from last year because I couldn’t get a decent field of view today.

On the way there I thought the university looked rather good.

You have heard of ‘through the looking glass’ I’m sure but have you heard about ‘through the looking trees’? I just wanted to make sure we had some photos for you today.

Despite being on our way to the hospital Huan still found time to find beasties!

And then we were there. I didn’t take photos of Huan having her consultation. When she was done and went to the cashier and the pharmacy to pay for and order her medication I went out for a little walk. How do you fancy living here?

Once Huan came out she said that she had to provide 75g of ginger for her medication. Luckily for us, there was a shop just outside the hospital! We bought ice creams at the same time and for a change, Huan had a western style one. Mine is the dark chocolate one.

More beasties, the first from me and the second found by old eagle eyes herself.

We went back in the evening to fetch the boiled potion, all fourteen sachets of it.

For some reason the traffic was horrendous both on the way there and on the way home. To avoid some of it we went past the sausage shop. He opened today!

October 1st We had different ideas today, Huan wanted to go one way and I wanted to go in another direction. We compromised and took the number 2 bus to start with.

That would take us almost to my preferred destination. It turned out that it pleased Huan as well, lots of lizards were found. Have you ever noticed how they resemble little dinosaurs?

My part done we headed in a diagonal towards Huan’s part. On the way I forced her to sit down and chat with a friend of mine!

What was very nice today was to feel the warmth of the sun on my back. I had missed it!

Huan’s mission had been to see what was going on down by the river, today is National Day. The answer appeared to be ‘not a lot’ but she did find another lizard by the river and a swing near the indoor market in the town.

Nothing was going on in the town square either. However, the holiday is a ten day one so there will be something. After all, the Autumn Festival doesn’t start until the 6^th October. The little old government building was open to visitors and free so we went in and I took far too many photos and not enough information. I’m sure you will enjoy anyway.

Here’s an enlargement of the last one, an old Chinese typewriter.

Once downstairs was done we went on upstairs, the last two pictures in the second collage. The room with the armchairs is a waiting room for those coming to see the boss.

There was a conference room which I had to try and stitch a panorama for you. The irregularities in the middle are in face because the conference table consists of seven desks pushed together.

Finally we have the boss’s office and for those that can read Chinese the plan layout.

As you can see it is quite spartan (marked by simplicity, frugality, or avoidance of luxury and comfort) in its furnishings etc. Back then things were a little different. Mind you, not much money is wasted on government offices these days either.

Back to the modern day and what look like a couple of unruly teenagers!

With some flowers and flags we will say “国庆节快乐! (Guóqìng jié kuàilè) – Happy National Day!” Did you know that modern China is one year older than me, they are 76 today.

Too many photos today but there are still two more. Here are our dinners, Huan’s first and mine second, not that there’s much difference between them. This is a duck leg stew.

October 2^nd This morning I felt as if I had not slept for weeks, and that was after having a great night’s sleep the night before. What is it with getting older and sleep? Anyway, I said to Huan that if she didn’t feel like going anywhere today I would be quite happy to stay in with her! We don’t do nothing often. I decided to prepare and cook dinner this morning. Here is a wonderful photo of my preparation, yes a sort of chilli again, and a photo of dinner, with rice. As always we had enough left over for Huan’s breakfast and she is even going to make herself a 肉夹馍, ròu jiā mó with some of it too.

While we didn’t go out we did have to go to the gate after dinner to collect some express parcels, too many for one to carry. Here I am in utter bliss with my share.

Huan’s order ended up in the fridge; makes it a little tidier.

October 3^rd Let’s not be lazy today, let’s just live and be ourselves! The lady was on the same car.

It was a good day for lizards, with both of us spotting them.

We both thought that you might like some autumnal scenery too. Can you spot the hues?

Is there a season for lizards? We both found very small ones that we assume are hatchlings.

Here’s another car window sticker for you. I can assure you that this sticker in no way describes our sedate, genteel, garden city of Wuzhishan. Well, I couldn’t find any!

On our little walk today we had heard many small birds, even seen some up in the trees. However, they were all just too small and too quick for me. Almost home and we found these two playing, chasing each other from rock to rock. We took a few photos but this one has both birds in it.

Our walk was so relaxing that we had to nap again after lunch. Zzzzzzzzzz…

October 4^th It’s market day darling, come on, get off your fat idle bum and let’s go walkies. “Yes dear” I replied! We went down by the river just in case we could get any closer to those birds that we saw yesterday, they were conspicuous by their absence.

Children were out playing though, and not on their phones. These two were busy damming water to protect whatever it was they were building downstream of their dam.

You know that we live in 五指山;Wǔzhǐshān; but you may not know that it was formerly known as Tongzha or Tongshen. During this holiday they are celebrating the date of 1988 for some reason, the signs do not make it obvious why to us. Back then there were far less buildings, less roads and it would appear only one bridge across the river. I would love to know more.

It would appear that this little street will have food stalls later on, we will go and check.

As expected, the market was getting busier.

Huan still had fun, here she is after buying some sweet corn and then with some Harbin beans.

No cooking for dinner today, we thought that we would go into town and try some street food. This is where we saw the stalls this morning; they’re not there this evening.

We did find the stalls a bit further on but the fare was a little disappointing.

The Li ladies never disappoint though, here they are, busy as always.

A few more stalls.

We did have a couple of baozis each, they were fine albeit a little spicy. Huan suggested that we have some 清补凉, Qīng bǔ liáng. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_bo_leung Our choices did not include any tropical fruit so I stuck with watermelon and some sort of gelatine and provided my own ice cream from up the road. I have tried the local version with all the other ingredients before and it is not to my fancy. Make it more like fruit and cream and I’ll be happy!

We walked home via the town square where the children were well catered for.

From there we took a walk over Xiaodao just in case there was anything happening there. As luck would have it there was a fountain performance and it started just as we were passing by. You can see it here - https://youtu.be/4PuWwqp59tc. Finally we popped over to have a look at the coffee shop, it may be worth a visit another time. The snacks seem to be reasonably cheap and there is beer of course. I’m not sure that I could trust myself not to try and nick the Meerkat though, he is rather cute don’t you think.

October 5th Typhoon Matmo is fast approaching Haikou so we had some of the associated rain today. That meant no play! We did get out in the evening though, for dinner with friends from ooop norf. Patrick, Flora and their son Padraig were visiting. We enjoyed a lovely meal with them in the western style restaurant in the Baijiahui building. Some dummy forgot all about taking photos, except for Huan’s dinner and my dinner. Can you guess whose is whose?

October 6^th For some reason, despite Matmo having moved on, the rain came back today. Mind you, it didn’t worry us too much. First of all we were really late getting up this morning, even Huan slept in until nine. I was ten to fifteen minutes after her. The schedule was only the usual, the weekly shop, and Huan decided that we should have some photos for the day!

Having been so late getting up today we skipped naps! I cooked dinner early. Today it was pork rib stew, very nice. I didn’t think you needed a photo of that so I whizzed up the leftovers, sans bones of course, and took this instead, something we will eat at the weekend. From t’internet – “Velouté soups can be either meat or vegetable based, and when eaten, are a velvety texture, lending to the name velouté which translates from the French to mean 'velvety'. Just before serving a velouté, a cream and egg yolk mixture is added to the soup, which is why you won't ever see a canned velouté.”

And on that little soupcon of information we will sign off for this week. Don’t forget to tune in again next week to see how the weather is, how China is and of course how the palace staff and bosses are doing. Bye for now!