Rain & OAPs With Not A Lot To Do!

October 5th Another idle day was had by the O.C. and the troops, not by choice but because of the weather. Yes, it started raining last night and then persisted all day. I even missed the worldwide Facebook outage, it must have happened when we were all asleep in China.

October 6^th Two people left the house this morning, both nervously keeping a wary eye on the sky. The computer promised rain this afternoon but we’ve learnt not to believe everything it says. While Huan was having a good old gossip at the gate I took a photo of the dam and still can’t make out exactly what they are going to do and when it will be finished.

Because of our worries we kept to the riverside, first going over our little island. When we crossed the irrigation canal to the road we had another game of Poohsticks, I won this time!

Coincidentally the original Poohsticks bridge was up for auction today, offers were to be between forty and sixty thousand pounds. Our house doesn’t have a garden so no good for us and of course our wallets don’t have that much spare change in them either!

Some of you may know that I am an ‘old soldier’, some of you may think I am a ‘very old soldier’, some of you probably remember me as an often very pickled soldier. Whichever one I am, or was, this car was not mine.

Now this next picture is especially for my ex forces buddies and also my friends who worked in telecommunications in civilian life. This goes up on the mast and has changed considerably since I worked in that field. I wonder if these are being removed to be replaced with 5G. That is more than likely; we receive 5G adverts on our phones quite regularly now.

Passing by the outdoor gym I mentioned to Huan that I had seen an old gentleman using the walking machines, once without using his hands to hold on and another time using his hands as though he were marching. I told her that I had tried and failed miserably so, competitive as she can be sometimes, Huan decided to give it a go too. I think she was surprised to find that she failed, not as badly as I did, but failed nonetheless. Maybe we could both succeed with more practice; if we do we’ll let you know.

Making sure we got home before the rain started we popped through the bapman’s market, I’m not sure if we told you, but he and his wife will not be back, his Mum is still ill. The premises have been rented out and the ovens have gone. Fingers crossed we can find another one soon. Anyway, in the market we passed this little puppy and kitten, the pup looked healthy enough but the kitten not so. It even had #2 on its back but that had come from them play fighting. How did I know what it was? I made the mistake of picking the kitten up. Here I am admonishing the pup! PS The owner did try to sell us the puppy.

Down in the riverside market, we came across another little pooch and Huan got busy with her phone yet again, far too many pictures as usual. She suggested that I crop and keep these two, the little boy looking at me in both photos but check the puppy’s eyes in the second one.

Did we beat the rain? Yes, in fact we had finished lunch before it started. It then continued well into the evening. Looking at the weekly forecast we could be well be housebound for a few more days. Hopefully, the PC will be wrong and we will still be able to escape in the mornings.

October 7^th We were confined to barracks again today, rain stopped play. Huan practiced music while I surfed the internet and learnt some history that I wasn’t fully aware of. Somehow I ended up watching a couple of videos by James Bradley and one by Daniel Immerwahr. If you are interested in the China-USA relationship I recommend watching “The China Mirage”.

October 8^th Today was English weather but we thought we would go out anyway, brollies in hand so that we were prepared for the worst. Our first stop was the music lessons shop, not planned, we just happened to pass by their new place. They moved because the rent was too much where they were before, a perennial problem here in Wuzhishan. We did ask the costs, it’s ¥1,700.00 per year for children from the age of 1(?) to 12, unfortunately they have no teachers for adults. That’s probably just as well or Huan may have been signing up for drums!

Our route was planned to go via the bap market because we wanted to check out the new stall. It seems if we want to do that we will have to go before eight in the morning, by then they have sold out and don’t bake any more for the rest of the day. Perhaps we will stick to Taobao and our Russian bread for now. On our way out Huan pointed out an old friend who used to live in our building, poor soul only has three legs. (Can you name the singer(s) of the song 3 Legs?)

The rain was increasing in intensity all the way around our walk so we didn’t have a long one today. On our way back along the riverside I managed to get Huan into the driving seat of a car. Of course it wasn’t moving but at least she had her hands and feet in the right places!

We arrived home just before the rain really started, slightly damp but glad that we had at least got out of the house for a while today. Being a Friday we were due to make another “Eating Out” video, our plan had been a BBQ meal down by the river. Rain stopped that so we just went local again, you can find the video here - https://youtu.be/brpiQtqHK8Q Not only did it rain a lot we also had a power failure while we were in the restaurant.

We had to take the stairs when we got home, the power was still out. The rain was still falling too so once the power did come back I checked our weather sites and found that there is a typhoon in the area again, “Lionrock”. This one is skirting very closely around us, here’s a screen shot of its track with a red dot showing roughly where we are.

October 9^th No trip to the riverside market today, even though we had planned one. The weather was still not so good. If our dam wasn’t under construction we would have had a lot more water in front of our apartment.

We did go out though, in the car. Years ago in Abu Dhabi we used to love spit roasted chicken, so much so that I do believe I could have eaten it every day! Well here in Wuzhishan we found some spit roasted duck, after a fashion.

Of course it doesn’t come with all the extras of pita bread, hommus, mutabal etc. I had decided that our two day weekend meal would be one of those hanging ducks along with some salad. Here is a better view of the duck, out of the oven and ready to go home.

To go with the duck I made a potato salad, with bits of bacon, a little onion, some scallion leaves, some mayonnaise and a dash of mustard. The second dish was a normal salad, with Chinese cabbage, onion, scallions, carrot, cucumber, sweet corn, tomato and a little olive oil and vinegar. Can you guess which plate is Huan’s?

Both of us were quite pleasantly surprised. The duck was not a patch on Abu Dhabi chicken but it was tasty enough and not dry which we thought it might have been. The salads were extremely well received by the Chief Dietician; it was quite a job to make sure she didn’t scoff the lot leaving us none for tomorrow’s dinner!

October 10^th Bah! Another day indoors due to that horrible watery stuff that falls from the sky. I did learn something though. You may, or may not, know that Tik Tok, despite being Chinese is actually not available in China, you have to use the Chinese version ‘Douyin’ instead. I have it on my phone but have absolutely no idea how to use it, mostly because it’s all in Chinese. What I did find though was a ‘feed’ with users from Wuzhishan. From that I found out that we have a bowling alley!

October 11^th Sods law strikes again, the weather was fine this morning, but the fridge was empty. Yes, it was shopping day again. First of all we popped upstairs in Baijiahui, somewhere we haven’t visited before. There is a KTV which we knew about, but that is also where the bowling alley is. It is only six lanes and doesn’t open until six in the evening but now we know it’s there plans are afoot to visit and make a video. The video won’t be of my bowling, that was never very good even when I last bowled, more than forty years ago! Instead we will give you a guided tour of just what is in the Baijiahui building.

If you watched this week’s eating out video you may have heard my comment about Huan’s food, in particular her mushrooms which to me look, and taste, like seaweed. Here are those mushrooms in their natural state right next to some seaweed also in its natural state.

On the same stall I also spotted these mushrooms which I have never seen before. They look like they might taste just fine but as we’d already done this week’s shopping we didn’t buy any. I was busy working out how I could keep them in one piece and use them in dish presentation.

Normal life is resuming and Her Ladyship had to go out for deportment classes this afternoon. Being a practicing gentleman I decided to escort her but when we got to our gate she told me to go home before the rain started, but not before taking the ladies’ picture.

Having dutifully turned round and headed for home I looked up at the sky and decided that I knew better than the Queen of the Weather and turned right round again. Taking a different, and longer, route than they did I arrived at the OAP Uni before them, much to Yú’s surprise. Huan wasn’t surprised to see me at all!

Leaving them to it I headed via the riverside to the bap market to talk to the cat and the dog. Despite it being nearly half past three none of the stalls were open, even the dog and the cat were enjoying their siesta. I didn’t disturb them because I didn’t want to be the one to wake up their humans. Note how the cat has the comfort of a box while the dog has to make do with the cage with his legs hanging off the edge.

As you can probably tell I didn’t have the Fuji with me today, I was prohibited from taking it out just I case it rained! The next photo could possibly have been better with the Fuji but I’m not really sure. It is a photo of the post office window but those flowers and butterflies you see are not stuck on, they are part of a video display. You can see ‘through’ the video to the shop inside but I couldn’t go in to show you the other side, I didn’t have my mask with me.

I did take a video with my phone; you can see that here - https://youtu.be/w6QvEeYMR8I

My luck was in today and I was home before the rain started. Even Huan made it home although she just scraped in before the rain came back.

So we come to the end of a very uneventful week. Next week we do have a day and a half tourist trip planned, in Wuzhishan. If nothing goes wrong there should be some new photographs and two or three “Eating Out” videos. My fingers are crossed that the trip will still go ahead if the weather is bad, which, according to the computer, it will be! There is even another typhoon on the way, Kompasu, due to reach Hainan in three to four days with a predicted path between Sanya and Wuzhishan. Until next week then, au reservoir mes amis!

Walking Partner Back, Happiness Reigns

September 28^th Should I be worried? Another night of very broken sleep followed by another morning where getting out of bed was almost impossible. Maybe it is just age. Still, it gave me more time to do some binge watching.

September 29^th A much more normal day today, well for me anyway. I planned to walk the ladies to their final rehearsal but they had a lift from “the lady with the funny eye’, another member of the hulusi group. That meant I could wander off on my own straight away so I headed for the clockwise route around the mountain park. Going through the area with the ‘no title deed’ houses I checked up on the empty villas, if nothing happens to them soon they will disappear under the foliage never to be seen again.

Walking on this road I always want to burst into the scout song, I don’t really know why.

Snowbirds are returning, I passes some going up and saw some, the early birds, coming down. However, it was still mostly a quiet and pleasant walk.

Men at work are up next, or at least one man is, he is harvesting the rubber.

Birds are quite vocal on this walk but we never see them, in fact we don’t see much life at all, apart from other people of course. There was some fowl play today though; these chickens were not running away from me, at one stage they seemed to be following me. I suspect it must have been close to feeding time.

Going down was just as quiet as going up, just the off few people to pass the time of day with. At one stage I spotted a large spider’s web so took a snap of that for you. Only when I got home did I see the rather large spider in the middle.

Nearing the bottom I thought I would show you another bridge to nowhere, a pedestrian one this time, with a chain at the other end.

What is at the other end? Somewhere that we probably shouldn’t go exploring down without long trousers and boots on. It doesn’t say “Here be dragons” but there may well be leeches, other bugs and maybe even snakes!

This was the view I had heading over the road bridge into town, nice isn’t it? Given the choice I would rather live near the sea but I can’t complain with the river and the views we have here.

Reaching our gate I found a surprise, loads of electric rental scooters, or mopeds. You use your phone, scan the QR code and off you go. One of these days, perhaps a quiet afternoon, we’ll have to get one each and try and teach Huan to ride.

That was my morning plan complete, I felt quite pleased with myself for a change. In the afternoon I planned to chauffeur the ladies to their show, my services were not required, their morning chauffeuse would be doing the job again. Normally I would go with Huan to provide moral support but on this occasion I decided against it. They were not playing, or singing, any new songs at all, only the same ones as the last show. In my mind that was a mistake on the leader’s part, the audience will know. Huan did receive some photos via WeChat so I’ll put two of them here. Forgive the quality; the files are much too small really.

September 30^th Is life back to normal at last? It would seem so, Huan had no classes at all today, and she should be free at least until after the holidays. That meant a joint walk was on the cards and Huan had the choice of which route to take. She chose to go down the main road out of town and then back through the countryside, not a bad choice, a long way but no hills to worry about. Normally we would find a fair amount of shade going down the main road but as you may remember they chopped a lot of trees down. We had no idea why but today we saw that they are digging a long deep trench where the trees used to be, could be water or gas pipes or maybe storm drainage. There were no pipes to give us any further clues.

Coming back through the countryside and the villages we spotted a lady weaving. We have seen this before in tourist places but this is the first time we have seen it anywhere else. She was happy enough to allow us to take photos and even gave us a big smile when we asked.

The weaving lady was just after our first water stop, a very necessary one because of the road ahead. As you can see there is no shade at all and it was a hot day!

We turned off this road to take our normal route back into town down a shady track. That track is now being converted into another access road for the villages so most of the shade had disappeared and the going underfoot was not so easy either. Luckily, the drainage ditch had concrete edges so our feet stayed mostly dry and clean.

Eventually we were back to the town river walk, no market today, but you can see all the flags are out for China’s National Day tomorrow.

Next up was something we don’t see very often, big motorbikes, well, big for Hainan anyway. I was once told that there was a limit on Hainan motorbikes of 125cc, the largest bike in this collage is 500cc and the other three are 600cc. Three of them are registered here in Hainan, in fact in Wuzhishan, the fourth is a mainland number. The rider of the large bike was there so we had a chat with him. He and his friends, there was a fifth one who hadn’t arrived yet, are taking a road trip to Tibet over the holidays.

Yesterday, just before home, I spotted lots of rentable electric scooters. Today I spotted the service ‘truck’ for one of the brands, not the yellow ones. Here it is, full of spare batteries which they were replacing in some of the bikes outside the local vocational school. Unfortunately I didn’t take the photo as he was replacing the battery, I went back to capture it, but by then he was ready to move on to the next bunch.

We did well today, 11.3 kilometres! Mind you, we both needed a kip this afternoon, me more than Huan, I ended up having about two and a half hours!

October 1st Happy China’s birthday to all! Today is the National Day of the People's Republic of China 中华人民共和国国庆节. “When is your National Day?” asked Huan and of course had to tell her that we don’t have one. Another lovely day beckoned today and Huan was again at my side. Do you remember the electric scooters we showed you earlier this week? Well we headed off over the bridge to nowhere this morning and stumbled into the breeding ground!

Beyond the bridge to nowhere the road is coming on, not ready for progress photos yet though. At the first village I went for a look at a very old ruin, (no it wasn’t a mirror!) and Huan took some photos of me heading back to the road. She took too many as always.

You read a lot of stories about the mistreatment of poultry in various farms around the world and I’m sure China has those farms too. However, chickens in Hainan are most definitely free range so although they will still end up in someone’s pot they have a fairly good life before that.

Today’s route was fairly new, Huan didn’t remember walking this way before. I chose it for the trees and the shade but also found a large dead machine. Huan was very impressed that the tyres were nearly as tall as her. I was impressed that nature was reclaiming it.

We couldn’t hide under the trees all the time, sometimes we had to ‘hit the road’. This is the view from one that used to be a dirt track but it has been upgraded for the farmers. I managed to find a spot with no power lines, near or far, this may well end up as a Facebook cover photo at some time in the future.

We haven’t had many individual dragonfly photos this year, not sure why, but while taking a landscape photo I ended up with a few. Skipping the landscape I cropped out the ‘cluster’ or is it a ‘flight’ of dragonflies, there’s quite a few there.

Leaving the villages we passed by the pond where last February, we watched them ‘corralling’ the fish for their Spring Festivities. Will they do the same next year and if so, what will they do with all the vegetation that has taken over the pond? There are still fish in there, eagle eyed Huan spotted a few of them.

Perseverance is the word and we still keep trying to get nearer to those pesky birds for you.

Being a Friday we had to film another episode of “Eating Out In China’ so we headed out to our new little shopping mall to visit a ‘rotating individual hot pot restaurant. To our surprise it was empty, in fact we were the only customers all through our meal. The owner explained that we were early and also, being the first day of the holiday, some people would have been having dinner at home with their families. You can view the result here - https://youtu.be/u7yKxserN1k

October 2^nd The weather has certainly changed for the better although that also means it’s warmer. No long walks today, Saturday is market day so it was just a walk down by the river, via the lottery ticket shop. To our dismay, that was closed for the holidays. Never mind, at least it means nobody else can win either!

We spotted a miniature taxi, actually another Wuling Mini-EV. I told Huan that her picture was on the side so she pointed out the monkey driving the car at the back and said that one was me!

We were asked to wear our masks going into the market so we dutifully obeyed. Can you spot the others who did the same?

Huan was explaining this next chicken for me, telling me that it was ‘no longer a boy’ since it had been ‘chopped’. It looked a bit on the chubby side so I explained to Huan that the reason for my pudginess was the same, too many boy bits have been chopped!

Next up was a strange hat; we’ve included two photos so that you can see why. I guess the idea is to keep the sun off your neck but I’ve never seen anyone actually wearing one.

For our last picture of the day we are back to cars and a quiz question for you. What is this? I’ll give you a clue, it is a Volkswagen. Now did the letters fall off and they put them back in the wrong order, or is it perhaps a different model altogether?

October 3^rd Sunday brought another choice from Huan, she decided on the walk to the fish farm in the small reservoir. As usual on the way we passed the ‘villas by the lake’ and as usual we wondered why on earth people bothered buying them if they never meant to live in them!

Passing by the cement works we thought we would try and be a little artistic, here we both are at opposite ends of the same storm drain.

Just after that we took a diversion and instead of heading up to the reservoir went exploring instead. At least the surroundings weren’t crawling with leeches, in fact it was a very pleasant ramble during which we found a new ‘back road short cut’ from the fourth main street turning to the fifth. Finding these odd routes gets us off the roads and into the countryside.

Usually it is Huan who takes too many photos of me which I then convert into a gif for your amusement. Today it was my turn although I only took two photos; I do like the gif though.

We came back out of the woods near a militia training base; Huan doesn’t think they have such things anymore. Discretion again was the better part of valour and no photographs were taken.

The lady with the pointy finger was beckoning me back again, she often does that, this time to a butterfly. Surprise, it was near enough for me to capture a snap!

Different kinds of bugs are up next, snails. Yes, we’ve seen them before and we’ve even showed you some but we’ve never seen them in a cage before.

More bugs follow, this time photographed by Huan. She spotted something on my hat after I’d been walking in the bushes at the side of the road. As you can probably guess I am still trying to help her get the hang of what little telephoto we have so the creature is very small. I wondered if it was looking for the ‘human’s brain cell’ or whether it was an escaping brain cell!

Why don’t we finish with yet another bug today? I reckon this one is an alien spaceship with the aliens sitting in a cockpit towards the back. What do you think?

Not much rest for us on the Sabbath, we walked just over ten kilometres today. That’s the third long walk for Huan this week so we’ll give her a rest tomorrow.

October 4^th Sheer bone idle! That describes us today, apart from the mandatory weekly shop. We’ll be back on our walking feet again tomorrow, we’ll see you next week. Bieeeeeee!