Rabies Done, Lots of Food, No New Windows

I have been booted off Facebook once again, without rhyme or reason. If only they could explain to me how a grandfather in China, with all his family and friends mostly in the UK, can violate their community standards. If they did that then maybe I would be able to correct my actions. Friends and family see no problems in anything I posted or commented on. Anyway, I would like to ask that if you do read this Blog could you please share it far and wide. Read it first of course to make sure it is OK to do so. Thank you!

March 31^st Today we had a relaxation plan, although I am not sure if it worked for me. We knew that no work was being done today and that we also needed to give Donald some exercise. (Yes, I decided not to rename him after all.) Our task was an ostrich hunt. We parked up behind Nongken Middle School and set off passing this lovely avenue on the way.

Huan must have been feeling withdrawal symptoms after days of not being a director. She was very busy today hence my frazzled nerves. Before we even reached what we remembered as the Ostrich village entrance she had already managed to find three lizards.

Soon enough we reached the village entrance, it is just before the Nansheng entrance to the highway. I wandered off to the left to explore and then had to backtrack and catch up with Huan.

When I found Huan she had a dog trying to be friendly with her. The dog’s ninety one year old owner was there and assured as that said pooch was no problem. It wasn’t!

We reached the ostrich’s home and went searching.

Disappointment, there was no ostrich. We found man who knew where it had gone though so headed back towards the car. I spotted a nice shot on the way but Huan found a lizard first.

She found another one immediately after as well.

Despite my brain rapidly becoming scrambled I did feel a little ‘in the pink’.

And then there was another one.

Back to the Sanya-Wuzhishan mountain road we went, the ostrich has moved to just behind the old information centre.

To our surprise we found that ‘he’ is a she and has had babies.

Huan took the opportunity to go berserk with her phone. In total, she took 127 photos today; I only managed 80 with the camera. Here are some of her shots.

Here’s the last one of me feeding the Mum and a baby trying to eat my lens hood.

There were two other ‘snaps’ that Huan missed; a baby and the Mum both bit my finger. Luckily, they have no teeth and nothing was broken. Here Huan is feeding the Mum, very cautiously.

It was then time to move on to the geese and the rabbits.

Huan tried to get me to feed the geese but they appear not to like the menu. The rabbits did so another large pile of photos was taken. Because the rabbits were behind the wire I didn’t have to keep so many of those shots.

As for these gentle creatures, I had no intention whatsoever of trying to feed them!

The last subject for today was peacocks. I failed miserably; I couldn’t focus correctly through the fence. Huan did better because her lens could ‘see through’ the little holes in the fence.

So our excursion came to an end, with me exhausted. Huan seemed OK though. She did ask me after lunch if I wanted a nap. With well over two hundred photos to sort through, bin and edit as necessary, I decided to stay wake. As for lunch, well Huan had baozi again and I had something completely different, coca cola and crisps!

Dinner time came around and once again we stayed very local.

I thought you might appreciate a couple of the signs along with their WeChat translations.

Dinner was fine, no rice for me again and I couldn’t dip my chicken in the sauce they gave me because it was spicy. It’s a good job I like cabbage!

April 1st Happy ‘Fool’s Day’ one and all! Here in China I feel like a right fool, I have been kicked off Facebook again. Once again no reasons have been given. This time I am not even able to appeal. I’m now on Mastodon and maybe Bluesky. Even trying to create a new FB account using my Chinese name and email didn’t work. Unfortunately everything is done with algorithms and AI now which, so far anyway, can not think intelligently. Being able to talk to human beings would be so much more useful.

We had the foreman in again today to remove more tiles as per the boss’s request.

The area is now prepared, all we have to do is decide bath, shower or bath and shower.

And then it was my turn to work to install the new naughty bits washer.

For lunch I fancied what Huan had last week, with boiled eggs to share. Huan had noodle soup.

And the last photo of the day is more food, dumplings on an egg base for me, (ordered in error) and wonton dumplings for Huan.

April 2^nd Today was a lazy day, we needed a break. I spent all morning trying to sort out social media of one sort or another. Before lunch we had a short walk across the island and along the river. Work is still in progress, it is forecast to be completed before SanYueSan festival which this year falls on the 19^th April.

We tried birds but only caught their backsides. Maybe this will please you instead.

This was one that I wasn’t sure I could pull off. It is a stitched panorama. There are a couple of small errors on the railings but the trees worked out quite well.

Some work was being carried out in town too but we couldn’t see what. This is forecast to last until 6^th April, after the tomb sweeping holiday.

Dumplings were on the menu for lunch again today. If you click the second photo to enlarge it the various options are shown in both Chinese and English.

Two free soups were provided; Huan added some chilli pickle to hers.

And then our dumplings arrived, looking exactly the same. They weren’t of course, although they did both come with peanut sauce on the outside. Huan’s had minced pork inside with the Hainan version of sauerkraut while mine had minced pork with carrots and sweet corn.

From there we visited the snack shop so that I could buy more stuff to keep me going whilst I am not allowed to have coffee or tea. Outside we found someone that Huan thought was glued to the ground. It wasn’t but it couldn’t move very fast.

We’ll show you the last one despite it not being a good photograph. Unfortunately the kingfisher did not want to come down to our level.

I spent the afternoon trying to get on to Bluesky, the captcha stage keeps failing. I tried to open a new FB account with my Chinese name and my Chinese email. Of course another video selfie was required and, you’ve guessed it, I failed again. This was their (AI) response, “Your review was unsuccessful. Hi 罗, Your Facebook account has been permanently disabled. You requested a review of this decision, but we still found that your account, or activity on it, didn’t follow our Community Standards. You can’t request another review.” Neither I, nor any of my friends and family have any idea which community standards I have broken!

Evening time had us going out again. As we passed the nurses college we managed to snap this little insect which seems to be incredible difficult to do. Even with the camera I have failed in the past, something to do with the colours and reflective properties of the carapace I think.

And this was our dinner. The fish was for me, the tofu was for Huan and the vegetables were for us to share. Our eyes were bigger than our bellies and we took the egg and tomato dish home to have with some bread for breakfast tomorrow morning.

April 3^rd My final rabies shot was due today so that was where we went. First we saw the downstairs doctor and then we headed upstairs to the vaccination centre. Note how busy it is.

Today I had a different nurse, although the usual one was there too. This new nurse either used a different needle or wasn’t quite as gentle, it hurt! 

All done we walked back along the riverside, Huan found a nice red lizard.

Most of the egrets have flown north by now but we still see the occasional one. Today we saw two and two other birds along the river.

For lunch Huan fancied 清补凉, Qīng bǔ liáng. (Qing bu liang’s name speaks for itself when it comes to merits and popularity – it literally means “refreshing, nourishing, cool.” Typical ingredients include mung beans, pearl barley, red jujube, seasonal fruits, syrup, ice, and sometimes milk.) If you want to try making your own you can fins the recipe here - https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2021/08/keeping-cool-with-hainans-qing-bu-liang/ This was our choice, from the same restaurant we ate at last night.

There wasn’t enough fruit for me so I just had water melon and bean jelly with the milk. I did however bring some ice cream with me to make it more as I like it. Huan had everything although she didn’t want to add ice cream.

On the way home, passing the nurses college, Huan found another lizard.

And then in the trees I spotted a wee birdie that actually stayed in one place for long enough for me to get a photo that I am quite proud of. There aren’t many of them!

We stayed close to home for dinner, first of all taking a photo of the blossoms on our street. We will try again when the sun is higher and maybe from our balcony.

I chose a chain restaurant that I know Huan likes, my choice is obvious. I am trying to avoid rice, potatoes and noodles at dinner time because Huan’s friends are calling me fat!

We crossed the road and strolled home, first past the motorbike and car shop. I spotted an electric moped with a decent sized seat, but the salesman told me that I would not be able to drive it due to my age. He suggested a smaller one so I demonstrated how my abnormal legs would give me problems on such a vehicle.

I always have to talk to dogs of course, as you more than likely know by now. This one was fine and then they told me his name, Zhāo cái, the same as the one that bit me!

We had also been chatting to a bird but we had no idea what he was trying to say. His owner came out and told us that he was speaking a local language and not mandarin. She also brought a lizard for us to see, one that is not native to Hainan.

She was quite knowledgeable about it and then gave it to me to hold.

It seems that every time this young lady passes a test her parents buy her a pet. She now has this lizard, a normal Hainan one that she gave the school, a dog, a cat, (or two), a myna bird, a goose and a frog that she will show us next time. It was time to return this pet.

Although she spoke very little English with me her listening comprehension was not bad at all. She knows quite a lot about her pets and hopes to become a vet when she grows up. I think she would have been happy for us to stay and chat for much longer but unfortunately Huan had a date, she was meeting Yú to play hulusi downstairs.

April 4^th Today was market day and with no need to hang around waiting for non-existent phone calls we headed off to the market. With our kitchen still out of action we didn’t need to buy much. Right outside the door we found a bird.

We had seen friends coming back from the market who told us that there no people and that walking through was easy. They were not 100% correct. As you can see, the market was far from empty but, walking through t was easy enough today. Why? Many people will have gone to the mountains for tomb sweeping day.

Huan found nothing to interest her today, nothing that she wanted to take far too many photos of. After the market she did find a lizard for me though.

Must have a pooch of course, this one came all the way from America when his ‘parents’ came back home. It’s obvious that he is well trained and looked after. He is also enjoying roaming around China with his Mum and Dad in the RV you can see in the picture.

On our way home we met a Canadian guy, Andy, who works in Nongkeng Middle School. We last met him in November 2024 as were getting off a bus. It seems he was actually born in the UK and then moved to Canada with family later on. With the amount of walking around we do you would think that we would bump into many foreigners now and then but we hardly ever do. Anyway, we had a nice chat, hopefully we’ll have lunch when our windows are finally done!

At home I tried again for the street blossoms. Huan thinks we may have missed the best days.

Lunch was different for each of us today. Huan chose a vegetable pattie from the market and I chose a sort of club sandwich from the bakery. I decided we needed extra vitamins!

For dinner, Huan decided that we should go to a steamed food place. Here’s our tray.

Despite what the restaurant told us, all the dishes felt a little spicy to me. Huan couldn’t taste it very much but after three weeks abstinence I certainly could. There was only one thing to do, grab an ice cream on the way home. For UK readers, it’s only 20p a cone!

April 5th Could this be the last day before window work recommences? We hope so. As it is a possibility we decided to do an Atuo Ling walk but take the #1 bus to start with. Here we are hanging around at the bus stop looking at someone hanging around looking at us!

As the photos are mounting up this month we will have to resort to collages at times.

Soon we reached our turn off and headed into the forest.

Someone was a little shy, love the eyebrows though.

And then more pooches were found. We didn’t get too near to this Mama; she wasn’t angry but certainly had her eye on us.

We followed the track down to the river, passing this fish farm on the way.

I rather like this part of the walk, the view upriver and downriver and then the walk through the trees back towards the road going down.

Huan was happy to find something other than dogs.

Of course it didn’t take long for me to find another dog!

But then she went and found another grasshopper.

Her luck was in today, here is her first lizard.

I grabbed a scenery pic; can you spot the ladies working in the fields?

And then I spotted another little fish farm. I reckon I could live there. Huan couldn’t, she needs the benefits of urban life. Mind you, if a snake joined me I’d be very fast on my feet to join Huan!

And then it was me again, with a dragon fly.

Huan’s eyes were up to speed now and she found two more lizards on our way down.

This was our last stretch before we caught the bus, notice how much traffic there is.

Back in town our proposed places for lunch were nearly all closed. Today is still part of the tomb sweeping festival holiday. We found a hole in the wall which was enough. You can’t tell, but Huan has mung bean soup with an egg, I have fried dumplings.

Naps were needed after we got home, very much so. In the evening we went to a place we haven’t visited for some years. You choose your cut of meat, fowl, or fish, or any combination of those items, add some vegetables and ergo, bob’s your uncle. Now we are eating out a lot this month and one of the things that we often notice is that what you receive does not look like the pictures on the wall. This place had no pictures but I thought the presentation was great.

Mine was the one with no rice.

April 6^th Another wasted day today, morning and afternoon. Window Man said that work would start at nine this morning. Nobody came… So out for lunch we went, nearby.

What did we have? Simple fare, fried noodles for me and soup noodles for the C-in-C.

We waited in the afternoon too, for a new foreman to bring his tools. He didn’t turn up either… In the evening I dragged Huan off to the burger joint.

They do a very nice beef burger which is what the Minister of Food and Agriculture ordered. I ordered what I thought was a veggie burger; don’t ask me why, I must have had a brainstorm. It turned out not to be a veggie burger but some kind of processed chicken. It fir the job and filled the gap but it will not be ordered again.

On the way home we bought tomorrow’s lunch, you can see those pictures next time. And with that morsel we will leave you for this week, hoping that you will tune in again next week, when maybe we will have better news for you. Love from darkest China, where the sun shines almost every day and life is good, well, apart from our new windows anyway. Bye for now.