Recipes, Contagious Foreigner, Fire Chickens and a Shy Changeable Lizard

August 25^th Another admin day for me, dashcam overnight work failed so have to do again. Also last week’s Blog needed uploading, getting quite cheesed off with my internet connection these days. I wish one of the big players in the internet world would work out a way for people to be able to connect wherever they may be.

Those of you who know me will probably know my fondness for excel for all sorts of purposes including looking after my finances. Banks don’t give statements any more, one reason why I like to have a passbook, so the way I keep on top of it is to enter my ‘spends’ at the time and then when the passbooks are updated, include my pension and any other incomings such as interest payments. The latter are very small, but I like to be accurate. So, another part of this morning’s admin was bringing those excel files up to date. For BOC, no problem, once the small interest payments and pension incomings were added our figures agreed as did the number of transactions. For ICBC it wasn’t quite the same. The passbook doesn’t show all my transactions, in fact it shows nothing at all for five months and then an ATM withdrawal far higher than I’ve ever made. Even adding up my known transactions leaves me ¥1,000.00 short. I’m sure the mistake is probably mine and that I have lost an ATM receipt somewhere but it doesn’t say much for their IT system either does it? This is not the first time this has happened, on that occasion my ‘transaction numbers’ and the book’s ended up being ten different. Following this latest book blunder they are now nineteen different. Sometimes I despair.

Nothing else to report or to complain about, Huan went singing, we both went ‘Monday shopping’ after lunch.

August 26^th Well, we had a plan, to go anticlockwise up to the scenic park bridge and come back the same way. So soon after the last time? Yes, we were going to take some food with us to feed one of our four legged friends. She usually comes when we call her and last time she looked very skinny. The farmers told us that she was fine, only thin because she had just given birth to another lot of pups but we thought a little extra grub wouldn’t go amiss.

As you probably guessed, our plan didn’t work, rain stopped play again today. It was raining when we woke up and continued until well after dinner. Apart from Huan nipping across the road to buy lottery tickets we never left the house. Still, we both got more music practice in!

I decided to cook dinner early just in case the weather changed and we could get out in the afternoon. Today it was “soup noodles” as Huan likes to call it, something she often has when we eat out. Normally I would add yoghurt and cheese to this but for three months I’m trying to avoid things like that. Here it is bubbling away merrily, doesn’t it look healthy?

It is quite healthy, no oil at all used today. I started by having a little water boiling in the bottom of the wok then added the garlic and onions. Next came the chicken and a dash more water with a little seasoning. Carrots and green bell pepper were next followed by celery, that’s what you can see in the picture above. Once that was cooked enough I added some sweetcorn and of course the noodles I had cooked earlier. (I have to cook in stages sometimes because, as you know, we still have no gas!) The final result was up to the “Executive Chef’s” standards so I guess I can retain my position as “Commis Chef”.

August 27^th The weather caught me on the hop again. Yesterday the forecast was cloudy and it rained all day, today the forecast was rain and it did, around three o’clock in the afternoon. Still, I managed to escape in the morning for a nearly seven kilometre walk. The ladies were happy, I walked them to school. Leaving them I visited the Bapman where my luck was in, I got his last nine, they should last a week or more.

Carrying on I thought I would take some photos to show you our English sky! Unfortunately, due to me thinking I’d get caught in the rain I had left ‘Freddy’ at home, he doesn’t like water. ‘Marvin’ was with me, he can hide from the rain in my pocket, here are his efforts.

Huan liked this one, nearer ground level, showing how close the clouds can get sometimes.

Marvin did get one thing right today; I found a lonely flower, put him in ‘macro’ mode and took a few shots.

Now a few weeks ago, or maybe a month or two, I showed you some of the graffiti under the main bridge in town. Today I found some new stuff, underneath a viewing platform at the side of the river. This is a ‘stitched’ panorama, not as good as I would have liked but you can see all the ‘paintings’. At a rough guess I would say that the one on the left is international and dates from time immemorial. Sensitive souls should keep their eyes to the right. I bet you all took a sneaky look to the left didn’t you?

Nothing else leapt into Marvin’s lens, at least not until after dinner. I was the cook again today, and being home early I did it in the morning again. It was a little unhealthier than yesterday though. I had a little sunflower oil sizzling in the wok before I added garlic, onions and a little salt. Minced pork was next then some paprika and a dollop of tomato sauce. After that had cooked for a while, just like yesterday carrots and green bell pepper followed. Celery and parsley came after them. The final ingredient may surprise you; it was eggplant, one of the smaller and more expensive ones (here) without any seeds inside. Come dinner time I cooked the noodles and reheated what was in the wok. This is what it looked like on Huan’s plate, mine of course was a little unhealthier because I had to have parmesan cheese with it!

Finished the day with more admin, we received the insurance papers from Sanya today, so all had to scanned and filed. That’s a whole month’s worth of my pension gone this year! All of you youngsters take note, think about the future!!

August 28^th Lovely weather today so off we set to feed our four legged friend, as usual taking thousands of photos on the way. Here’s another view of the local bridge.

They have started putting the wooden slats on now, not so easy to see, they’ve also put another aluminium hoarding in the way. I did get a couple of shots but we’ll wait until it’s progressed a little further. Just to show you the difference in the weather, here’s a lovely view across the river.

It was quite a hot day and before long we were both ‘perspiring’, Huan like a lady, glowing, and me like a slob, ‘sweating buckets’! Luckily, the anticlockwise scenic mountain park walk provides a lot of tree cover.

We always pass a small nursery on the way which, for some reason, now has a new sign. The white writing reads - 温馨提示。內有恶犬，禁止入内，未经主人允许擅自进, 入一旦咬伤概不负责。(Wēnxīn tíshì. Nèi yǒu è quǎn, jìnzhǐ rùnèi, wèi jīng zhǔrén yǔnxǔ shànzì jìn, rù yīdàn yǎo shāng gài bù fùzé.) which means – “Tips. There are vicious dogs inside, it is forbidden to enter. Enter without the owner's permission we will not be responsible for the bite.” What caught my attention though was the “No Shooting” order underneath. The graphics make it obvious what it means but why, when it’s only a nursery?

Onwards and upwards, through the forest.

Finally we reached our destination and after a few handclaps and whistles our friend turned up. Huan put the food on the concrete base of the bench and we stood back. She ate the lot, rice, fish aspic I suppose you’d call it, vegetables and even the garlic. What impressed me though was that she didn’t wolf it down. She was obviously hungry enough to eat it but just as obviously she wasn’t starving. Snowbirds often feed her through the winter months so hopefully she’ll start putting some weight on before too long.

Last one for today, Huan found a leaf and had me take her photo with it, I took three or four, and a photo of it leaning on a wall, I took two. I was going to show you the best of Huan’s but she insisted that she preferred me to use this one! You can’t gauge the size here but it was probably the size of a large serving plate.

After lunch we should have started packing for our trip tomorrow. Huan had been out early this morning to pay, ¥96.00 each for two nights, visiting a ‘fragrant flower park’ and some kind of aquarium in Qionghai. Our IDs had been sent yesterday, always needed when going on tourist trips. This one didn’t involve any ‘factory’ visits; they were trying to advertise long term stays in Hainan for older people. There’s a market for that, now that house buying regulations forbid people outside of Hainan buying property here. Anyway, before we started packing we got a phone call, “Sorry, foreigners can’t come.” They said it was due to Covid-19 worries and despite Huan telling them that the last time we had left the country was in 2012, they wouldn’t reverse their decision. I would guess it was not the tour operator’s decision but one made by a hotel. We were refused a stay in a hotel in Haikou earlier this year, because I was a foreigner, and on another occasion, pre-covid, a similar thing happened to us with another trip. One good thing though, Huan received her money back in her WeChat account within minutes.

August 29^th Normal day, school for Huan and walkies for me, first of all escorting the ladies of course. Before we even reached the gate the camera was out, look what they’re doing to our only bit of green land! It’s not for car parking; they’ve made sure of that by moving all the concrete benches and exercise equipment to the kerbside. They say that the old ladies need an area to dance, seems like a feeble excuse for me.

And what about the ladies? Here they are just about to go into school.

My plan today was just to walk down to the river and come back through the market. On the way I passed this little garden, I wish our ‘back yard’ could look the same.

The market was much the same as normal, only one or two wearing masks though.

Just to my left, (your right), in the above photo there was a man roasting a pig or maybe just the outside of one, I’m not sure. I know in the Philippines it was the whole pig, not flattened out like this one, and loads of lovely juicy pork was the result. This looks like there wouldn’t be a great deal of juicy meat at all. Check both sides here.

I was home, as planned, by NAAFI break, so that I could cook our weekend’s dinner before Huan came home from school. No recipe for you today, just a photo of all the ingredients, less some fresh ginger, you can work out the order it went into the pan.

And here’s the resulting healthy bowl of stew.

August 30^th Huan asked if we could go through the country side on the other side of the river, a walk we haven’t done for a while, so that’s where we went. First off, our disappointing back garden is now finished.

Still, we do have our lovely river walk, even on the way to this walk across the other side. Not only that, our river walk has now been named.

This walk takes us over another bridge to nowhere which, because it doesn’t go anywhere yet, provides a perfect place to practice your music without annoying your neighbours. With the right car you can also sit in the shade and easily see your music.

This route will, at some time in the future, be a bypass. Mind you, at this end it meets the main road near the last bridge before going through part of the town and at the other end we have no idea where it will cross the river to achieve its aim. At the moment, it seems to wander towards Nansheng village which is nowhere near the Wuzhishan to Sanya road. Here’s a view from the finished part of the bridge showing the bypass to the right and a track up through the trees to the left. We didn’t fancy the right hand walk, especially in the hot sun, so we took the left.

A little bit further up the hill and you can see why we quite like going this way, at the beginning anyway, the incline is not too steep, there’s shade, the air is fresh and the view is fine.

When we come out from the cover of the trees and back onto the ‘hard stuff’, you can see why only the beginning is pleasing. In this photo we have come down the hill from the left and we are taking the centre road to the villages. We will reach tree cover again but this is the part we like to get through fairly early in the day!

Just before we reached the bridge to cross back over the river and make our way home we spotted something ‘playing’ in the grass. At first we thought they were chickens, we often see those in the forest or in the vegetation. Ducks are more often seen in the fields looking after the crops but there were definitely not ducks. When we got closer we realised they were 火鸡. (Huǒ jī), the literal translation of which is “Fire Chicken”. You and I would call them turkeys.

Back in town we found someone else playing in the undergrowth, well Huan found it first. I couldn’t see it all, blind as a bat, so Huan took the camera and took loads of photos, then I saw it, grabbed the camera and took loads more. In Huan’s photos, I couldn’t see anything alive at all and in nearly all of mine it was way out of focus. However, one photo worked quite well before the subject scooted off and changed his facial colour to something else. Aptly, if my Google search is right, this is an “oriental garden lizard, eastern garden lizard, bloodsucker or changeable lizard (Calotes versicolor)”

Something else has been breeding locally, we spotted the first ones a day or two ago but suddenly they are being seen everywhere. Today we found a whole row near one of the high schools. Yes, rental bikes have arrived in Wuzhishan! As you can see from the photo, they have batteries included, I suppose they thought nobody would rent them otherwise; we even hills in the city. They are very cheap, ¥2.00 an hour, and you rent them by using an app. Who knows, we may give them a try one of these days.

August 31^st Monday, shopping as usual, not much else. I do have a “Passion Fruit Progress Report” for you though, one either didn’t grow at all or took a dive to the bottom of the building, the other, although small, < 2cm, is still there.

And we’re still here of course, and we’ll still be here next week, see you then!

OAP Trip, Shenyu Dao, Rabbits, Duck Eggs, Scary Foreigner

April 14^th Miserable weather today, we even had our socks and slippers on in the house. However, we didn’t mind, yesterday had really taken it out on both of us. I took the time to spend all morning doing Blogger work and finished as far as September 2018. I’ve realised that I can’t do dashcam work and Blogger work at the same time, Lightworks takes up far too much system resources. Keeps me busy doesn’t it?

As we were in Haikou yesterday shopping had to be done today. No worries there. In fact we thought we’d show you our toilet paper section just so that you can compare it to yours!

April 15^th Early birds today, I had to set the alarm to make sure we were up before seven. Huan had asked, and I had agreed, that we would join the OAP singing group for a tourist trip to Shenyu Dao. Huan and I, Yu and her husband, walked up to the OAP school and then waited for everyone else. This was not a ‘tourist company’ organised trip so cars were being used. They had asked if we would care to use ours but as we had had some overheating problems on the way back from Haikou I preferred not to. Five of us squashed into a small VW, the other three in the back and me with my knees against the dashboard next to the driver. All the cars missed the turn off and ended up entering the car park through the exit. This is where were headed.

Details of admission can be found in the album, “Shenyu Dao” by following this link.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/pZEDR5xH3DuZSFBV7

You can also see a brief description, a pictorial map and all the photos we took on the way round. I will put just a few here.

Before long we spotted our first bit of Chinglish.

As always of course, Huan and I, and probably everyone else, had no idea what was really going on and so we just followed our leaders. After a brief stop in front of the (not yet completed) hotel we set off, looking forward to a relaxing day of walking. We had been told there were no hills and no steps, this is a photo of some of those “no” steps we just climbed.

I do have to say, that despite my knees complaining a lot, it was definitely worth it. This was the view from the “Lucky Stairway”.

From there we thought we were going to take the aerial walkway but we were wrong. Instead we hiked off through the undergrowth to start with and then on to a slightly better track.

Our destination was an organic farm where we were to have lunch before heading back to the start point. The weather stayed good for us and soon we were there.

Before lunch though it seems the ladies, and those men who either wanted to join them or were ‘told’ to join them were going off to pick tea. I didn’t need browbeating, fresh country air and walking were good enough for me.

I wanted to take a picture of the two large boulders in the picture above so stood to one side to let the ladies past and promptly fell off the straight and narrow into the irrigation ditch! On we went, for quite some way until we reached the plantation and the ladies got down to picking their tea, which was free by the way. I got some lovely shots of Huan which you can see in the album, here she is right on the edge of the panorama showing the fields.

And here’s a farm worker showing how it should be done!

Eventually they all came home with their baskets full, some of the men also carrying sugar cane, and it was lunch time.

We were fed very well indeed, far more than we really needed. I don’t know about the rest of the gang but Huan and I were bloated. No wonder they had a planned rest time. After a short while some of the group started singing, I thought a little too loudly for where we were, and a handful also danced. A few, myself included, had some archery practice. In my case, as you can probably tell by the photo, a lot more practice is needed!

Before too long we were on our way back to the Lucky Stairway and then down all those stairs again to the resort area. Near the Lucky Stairway I managed to fall off the straight and narrow yet again, not too bad though, the stairway must have saved me. Back at the “Coffee” and “Bar” we found they had not much in the way of cold drinks, in fact they didn’t even have a drinks refrigerator. Maybe that will change in the future. Water was good enough for me though!

“What’s happening now?” I asked Huan. “We’re waiting.” she replied. Perhaps we were waiting for the boatman to finish his lunch or maybe his nap. I suppose it gave us time to take a few more pictures. You can see them in the album, here I’ll put大禹聖像, (Dà yǔ shèng xiàng), Icon of Dayu, usually referred to as Yu the Great. Don’t ask me what he’s holding though, it looks like a huge tuning fork but knowing what he was famous for, it’s probably a ditch digging implement. More information on him can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu_the_Great

Soon we were off on our boat. I think the tourist boats are all electric.

The boat dropped us on the Buddah island with instructions to follow the path and keep turning right. It’s interesting that even though this is a tourist walkway there are still security cameras dotted about here and there.

It didn’t take too long before we were once again approaching the coffee shop, this time from a different direction

Another ‘wait’ was called for here, especially as most of our party had still not returned. Of course when they got back, they blamed their delay on searching for us! I followed Yu’s husband’s example and had a nap on one of the benches.

Once the wanderers had returned it was time for dinner. It seemed like the family from the farm had come down en masse to prepare our dinner for us. It was called芭蕉叶簸萁餐, (Bājiāo yè bǒ qí cān) which according to Google is “Banana Leaf Dust Meal”. Bing translates it with “Bump” instead of “Dust” and Baidu gets it all wrong starting with “Azerbaijan”. Whatever, it is food served on a bed of banana leaves, in a round tray, (made of bamboo I think) and each tray served four people. It was delicious and more than enough.

And so ended our second long day of the week. If you’d like to see more, there’s a nice long video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD_xs15owcc&list=PLrm74YBD3qG5hMSefKtpaGIH2okgNoBLN&index=2&t=0s

April 16^th Neither of us wanted to go out today or to do a TV walk either so we stayed home. I was kept busy all day.

My first job was trying to narrow down yesterday’s photos from 371 to something more manageable. I ended up with 216 on my computer but when we get to upload the album that number will go down again. Blogger was next and is now finished for 2018, we’re getting there slowly. Third was a guitar practice, I’ve been very remiss this week! Last was Chinese, I’m still doing fine and I haven’t broken my ‘streak’ for April yet. There is still more work to be done, all the Keymission videos from yesterday need combining and uploading to YouTube. Combining is an overnight job for Lightworks.

April 17^th Another early morning, an accidental one to be fair, and not an unwelcome one. After our overheating problems with the car last week, we decided that today would be a ‘service’ day. Ledong calls next week, that’s probably about forty or fifty kilometres on the highway, so the car needs to be tip top before then. Mind you, driving about one hundred and twenty kilometres to the service centre, via the twisting mountain roads, while worrying about possible overheating does get your mind working. Mine was working so hard I missed the turn off!

Our little baby was booked in and then we went off to find a bank. The service staff were good enough to provide instructions from their phones. Their instructions worked, and we found the bank with no problems. Unfortunately, being a smaller branch, they didn’t have the capability of changing my pension pounds into Chinese Renminbi. Still, it gave us a walk we wouldn’t have had today, six kilometres worth in fact. No wonder I was nodding off on the drive home. I digress a little, we thought you might like this, not sure how it would go down in the UK though. The sticker is obvious, the Chinese above it asks whether the logo scares you or not!

The bank was not far from a place called Mangrove Tree, which looked very interesting indeed, nice restaurants, cafes, a water park and a jungle playground. We weren’t prepared for swimming but we thought we’d take a look for future reference. First off, just to give you an idea of what’s to come, one very faded sign and one not quite so faded.

You guessed it, it’s all closed down. Initially we thought it was due to the virus scare, most public places were shut down for that, but the more we walked round the more we saw how dilapidated everything was. It looked like another story of the owners going for the cheapest bids. Here’s a view of one of the many pool areas, note the colour of the water.

Back to the garage where everyone had gone on a lunch break so we took one too. I had planned on taking Huan to the Italian Job in Mangrove Tree but like everything else it was locked and bolted. This is what we had instead, not bad for ¥37.00, and very tasty to boot!

Back once more to the garage where we were informed that the computer can find nothing wrong at all but that they had cleaned the radiator fan. With all the usual fluid top ups our grand total service price was ¥1150.00, not too bad, so we paid up and went our merry way.

Driving home was not so easy, I was ready to fall asleep at the wheel more than once. Memo to self, when servicing the car, do not go for a six kilometre walk in the hot sun!

April 18^th Another slowish day, some dashcam work, some Blogger and a short trip around the town, mostly to buy the weekend’s tickets. The owner of the shop with the rabbits waylaid me on our way past and insisted I held one.

I found out afterwards that he actually wanted me to buy one. I never heard that part of the conversation but Huan did and gave him an emphatic NO!

Neither of us fancied doing a TV walk in the afternoon but because we’ve had such a busy few days and not had the exercise we should have, we went for it anyway. Surprisingly, neither of os found it too hard and in fact, we both enjoyed it.

April 19^th An unexpected day in was the order of the day. I woke up to an email from #1 son with some files attached. He had taken my Super8 movie reels back to the UK with him and got them digitised for me so the attachments were actually DVD files. I spent most of the morning converting them into mp4 files. Once I had done that I began to share some of them on Facebook and the very first one garnered me my first FB copyright warning! So the afternoon was spent replacing all the soundtracks. I think I desperately need to grow my copyright free music library, I need more choices to suit the movie content. Anyway, the videos were well received by friends and family so a job well done by me, because of a job well done by #1.

You may remember that last week we took our neighbours to the port in Haikou so that they could return up North. We had refused any payment because we had to go to Haikou anyway. This afternoon, this arrived from them.

I know Easter has just finished but these are not Easter Eggs. These are salted duck eggs and arrived here very well packed in a large polystyrene egg carton, there were twenty of them. Huan is not a big fan but will eat them, I love them!

April 20^th On the road again today, Huan had to go to Ledong and pay the internet bill for our tenants there for the next year. We parked at the shopping centre and decided to do everything on foot. There seem to be less people wearing masks in Ledong but also more people wary of the ‘large white foreigner’. While Huan went into the shop I went and found myself a coffee before going back to join her. The man serving her had no problems but the woman in the shop asked many questions about where we’d come from, had we been out of China and such like. Even though we haven’t been out since 2012 she still disappeared into the back room and came back wearing a mask and keeping her distance.

Once done there we set off to our apartment to let the tenants know their internet would be fine, and to let them take a picture of the receipt should they need to call the company with any problems. This is as far as I got.

Despite the fact that we are the property owners the security guards would not let us in. Huan argued for a while and she got in, but me, as a foreigner, no way! It’s a good job our tenants are not leaving yet. By the sounds of it, some work will be needed when they do eventually leave. The old man fell into the (glass) bathroom door so that needs replacing. He’s fine though. There is black coming through the outside wall of the living room, which it appears, many other apartments also have. The building owner’s office have said the outside walls will be sorted out. When that happens, we’ll still probably have to remove the plaster inside to sort it out.

Thankfully, the supermarket staff were not averse to foreigners entering so we did our weekly shop there for a change. The small walking street was busier than we’ve ever seen it before and luckily for us, there was no aversion to foreigners there either. I had a lovely lunch.

Back to Wuzhishan and our wet market so that Huan could buy fish, duck, chiken and pork. We didn’t fancy the car and cool box smelling of fish so we didn’t buy in Ledong. Home then for another blitz on the PC, bringing the Blog up to date and doing some more Blogger work.

As for Huan, she spent the afternoon in the bathroom dyeing her hair with some French product sent down from Dalian by her niece. In the evening she went through the final part of the process. I promised her we would take a photo tomorrow!