Saturday 28th January, 2017  Chinese New Years Day                     1900

The milk I bought the other day, rather than being in a carton, came in packets (or bags). When cooking lasagne last night I needed some milk for the cheese sauce. I prefer that to béchamel as I like mine cheesy.

Having put the cheese powder in a small pan, I went to get a bag of milk from the dining table. It was getting dark outside and I had yet to turn the lights on. Bringing the bag into the kitchen I never noticed it wasn’t as malleable as could be expected and so picked up scissors and snipped off a corner.

When I tipped it to pour the milk into the pan I suddenly realised the liquid wasn’t pouring. Suddenly wasn’t soon enough, for the next I knew there was a small mountain of salt in with the cheese powder! As it was my last sachet of sauce (and has to be bought online), I painstakingly spooned as much salt out as I could before adding what was intended in the first place, milk. God, that was the saltiest ever lasagne! Don’t try this at home!

The fireworks started at 2330, why people don’t hold back until the stroke of midnight baffles me. At 2350 I decided to go to the square with my camera. There were fireworks going off in the distance downtown and isolated pockets locally but a few souls were in the square letting off their bangers and rockets. It was not on the same scale as in Chizhou and certainly nowhere near the cacophony I experienced that time in Tongling when I got back to my hotel room covered in debris but a passable effort given that fireworks are banned here and I had seen no evidence of any for sale. Maybe people bought them from Taobao. Rabbit is in Shanghai and told me today it didn’t seem as if it was new year because there is a strictly enforced ban there and there were no pyrotechnics at all.

I would say the bangs and pops stopped by 0030 so my fears of a completely sleepless night were unfounded, although someone did let off particularly loud and long-lasting fireworks outside my bedroom window at 0800. Not good, considering I had retired at about two.

Incredibly not only was my beer shop open today (as anticipated) but also the three stalls were open too. I avoided them like the plague in case they had more pigeons on sale. I did my bit for three of them yesterday and that cost me enough.

So it’s been a quiet celebration for me this year. I sent about forty texts late last night wherein I referred to the horse being supplanted by the rooster. Now, being a monkey myself I knew perfectly well that we were saying goodbye to the chimp but I wanted to see if anyone was actually paying attention. Only one person corrected me. He wasn’t Chinese either - it was my friend and fellow Marlaman who runs the Hilton in Shenyang! Of all the places I would expect to be castigated for my “error”, China is the one! But no.

As I consumed a month’s worth of my recommended salt intake last night, I am treating myself to a much less salty roast pork dinner. I would have liked to have made apple sauce but as aforesaid, I was avoiding the pigeon cage.

Friday 27th January, 2017  Chinese New Year’s Eve                        0130

And today I am supposed to thoroughly clean my home. Have a haircut (did that anyway), hang couplets outside my front door and then hide my broom. The dirt in my home apparently represents last year’s bad luck.

For starters I may well give it a sweep but not out of superstition and as for bad luck? I never had any good luck last year. I lost a holiday (and money) and a job, then spent a fortune moving to a new job so I’m not buying into that theory!

No, nothing to report from yesterday. A quick visit to the beer shop and the vegetable stall sums up my day. If I knew an hotel downtown where I might be able to join a party tomorrow night I might be tempted to join it and check in but it is 99% certain  I shall be here having spent an hour or so preparing lasagnes for freezing. I am sure there will be fireworks even though I personally have seen none on sale.

The isolation intensifies at this time of year in China anyway. People have to be with their families, it’s their duty, and anyway all the people I know here are students leaving or school staff who only interact with me because it is their job. There is one person I would love to have here right now but she is I assume at home with her folks in Suzhou in Anhui and I would go there in a flash if I could afford it.

1600

Amazingly although the little supermarket was closed when I went out just now, a smaller one opposite was open. I needed milk because I discovered mine had gone off when I made myself curdled coffee this morning. I had hoped there would be something going on in the square today and took my camera but nothing doing. Then to the beer shop (which also sells milk but they made me buy a great big box of the stuff the one time I did get some from them) and then I needed a carrot for tomorrow’s roast.

Only the bottom three stalls were still open, the first two are purely fruit, the third does veg, eggs and live poultry. I was rather hoping they didn’t have any pigeons for sale, given my promise to set any free as a new year gesture to save them from the dinner table. Unfortunately for me they had three.

I asked how much they were and was taken aback when I discovered they were 50y each. They weren’t even big ones. But I said I would do it and so I handed over money for all three. The owner then opened the cage door and one tried to escape. He shoved it back in the cage and his son came with a witches broom to ensure they couldn’t get out. I gestured for them to get back, turned the cage with the opening facing the road and shooed the birds out, only for the son to farcically start chasing them and trying to catch them again!

I shouted “BOO!!” (No in Chinese) and everyone, customers included, looked on in disbelief as the birds, seemingly surprised by the sudden freedom, wandered on the road for a second or two before an oncoming car prompted them to take flight, with me wishing them happy new year from the ground.

I am in no doubt that all present viewed me as a crackpot foreigner but the wife of the owner, as I left, treated me to a huge grin and a thumbs up. She, aside from having made a profit, at least understood what I had done.

Just maybe that will get me some good luck during the next lunar year.

Thursday 26th January, 2017                               0240

Well yesterday was the Chinese equivalent of the 22nd December in the UK. Just a normal Wednesday afternoon to go shopping to avoid the rush, yes?

God. I had already decided that I could get vegetables from the stalls around the corner seeing as they are still open for eggs, meat, fruit and veg but of course I needed supplies of grape juice and decent potatoes.

They had three weighing stations open just for veg (there was another for fruit) but they were still busy and it was time for me to turn green and expand to rip my shirt. After nearly 7 years here I am sorry but I still cannot abide people simply deciding they are next in the queue for service when there is a line of people waiting patiently. Even worse, all I had was one bag of spuds. Jesus did I send a load of people to the back of the queue! I may have made some friends in the customers behind me but probably more enemies in the people I shamed into waiting their turn. I am really past caring now about “face” because that, as far as I am concerned, is a myth, or to use the vernacular, bullshit. If they were so worried about face then they wouldn’t put themselves in the position of losing it but they do it all the time. Of course, the only reason I get away with it is because I am foreign, look enormous (albeit old) and more importantly I actually TELL them because the Chinese for some unfathomable reason simply accept it. I have never understood that and never will their acceptance that the bold come first. I reckon I had to pluck some virtual daggers from my back once I had queued for 5 minutes just to get my one item weighed and priced. God I wish they sold bags ready-priced.

Some meat, wine and a fruitless search for bicarbonate of soda (I still have that cleaning powder they say you can use for cooking). Then it was time to escape. I know not to go at lunchtimes but I really thought I had sussed out the right time, a few days before the big celebration when they all buy enough food for a month. If I am here next year then I shall be sure to batch cook weeks in advance because I merely lose my temper at queue jumpers.

Anyway, aside from the stalls locally I no longer have the need to go further afield unless I have an urge. I will probably go places though because the sense of isolation is oh so much greater than it ever was in Chizhou. There it was a month but a month when at least Chinese friends would invite me to dinners. Here my students have effectively left, Suzy goes to Beijing with her family on the 1st and the entire class leaves for Cyprus after that. My assistant has not contacted me apart from confirming receipt  of the exam results. I have to say I don’t think I have ever felt so alone in my life. However I will shrug it off, after all, when retirement comes that’s precisely what I will be.

Entirely unrelated to this blog, last night I watched an ITV programme hosted by Alastair Stewart  in which they show amazing footage from iPhones and the like. It was the very last segment that got me. There is a viral video on you tube which they showed along with some background information.

There was a chap, 79 at the time, who has Alzheimers. His entire life had been spent singing at working mens clubs, Butlins etc. Since his diagnosis his family had noticed he had become withdrawn and he had stopped singing at home. It took them a while to twig that it was because he couldn’t remember how to work the record player.

Anyway, the son took him to a supermarket to go shopping but put a camera on in the car and got him singing so he could show his mum. The old boy knew the camera was on and hammed it up but what a voice! I have watched it loads of times tonight and will sleep with kwondo, kwondo ringing in my mind. At the age of 80 he was asked to record a song and apparently got to number 3 in the Reddit chart (whatever that is).

Sadly of you aren’t in the UK you can’t watch the programme and if you are in China probably you can’t watch the YouTube footage but if you can, please do, it’s three minutes if you only watch it once!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IM9HExtnhY

Tuesday 24th January, 2017                     2200

Before going to bed last night I decided to have another bash at getting to RT Mart today. Despite getting up much earlier I found myself leaving a scant hour sooner than yesterday. This was because I was searching online for western food shopping in Lanzhou and trying to figure out how to get places.

I think I have figured Google maps out now, in particular the bus part. So I spent ages researching different shops and routes and before I knew it, it was one o’clock. By then however I had decided to hell with RT Mart (seeing as I’m not sure any of the connecting buses actually leave from the train station and I have no idea where they do), I was going to try Bai’an department store. At that time it meant no more to me than it does to you at present.

It seemed simple enough, just take the number 15 bus from here and 15 stops. The bus had an electronic sign with flashing lights along the route map to indicate where you were or what the next stop was. All in Chinese of course but I counted 15 stops on the map as we set off and checked thrice more. I wanted the stop two stops before the terminus at five streams mountain. Easy.

I think we were at about 9 stops when I suddenly realised that the big fat stop which I thought (because the writing was so close together) simply had a log name, was in fact two separate stops. I counted again now they were both fully illuminated and it appeared I wanted the third stop from the end instead of the second. I wasn’t entirely sure, not even if the shop still existed - the internet has told me lies in the past - so I tried to remember what I had seen on the map online in the vicinity of where it was supposed to be. Then we passed the Grand Soluxe hotel which I remembered was just before the stop I needed.

Sure enough, I recognised the building when I got off from the photos I had seen. The other side of a diamond-shaped  “roundabout”, it involved underpasses and plenty of stairs but I hadn’t made the effort just to give up at the death. Access to the supermarket (which is in the basement) wasn’t easy the first time. I ended up in a jewelry emprorium initially, then took the lift down to -1 and -2 but discovered only car parking.

By now I was beginning to think I had been sold a pup but persistence paid off. I found it. Not a big place by any means but some western goods in there such as dressings and dips, pasta sauces etc and oh boy, cheese! Expensive but importantly they had extra mature cheddar. I only spent 100y but I also bought a tin of proper peas, unlike the pea impostors I usually have to buy and then boil to death. Now I know where to go for cheese anyway, even if the bus takes an hour each way.

Getting back home was a different matter. I knew from the map where I needed to get the bus but again this involved underpasses and at some point I must have lost my bearings, for when I eventually boarded a 15 bus I found myself continuing in the same direction I was going when I arrived! Only 3 stops and yes a wasted fare but when it only costs 1y all I really lost was time, plus I got to stay on the same vehicle and bag one of the single seats I prefer. Earlier I’d had to share with an unkempt chap who by the smell of him had eaten a field full of garlic.

Slowly but inexorably and because I have no assistance, I am beginning to find my bearings in this city which is so much bigger than Chizhou.

Tomorrow the plan is to go to BHG to do a big shop before it become too manic in the run up to Chinese new year. Buy enough provisions for a week and then there will be no need to venture any further than my beer shop, given that the buses will only run limited hours for who knows how long.

And of course that will give me ample time in which to cook as many brown and crispy roast potatoes as I like, in contravention of the latest nannying and crackpot advice from HM Government……………  

Monday 23rd January, 2017                                2230

If ever I wasted a day, today was it.

Please don’t ask but I decided to go to RT Mart. Why?  To buy a French stick and see if they were stocking any cheese now. Or if truth be known, possibly just to shake off the sense of isolation I feel.

Being the sensible cove I turned in just after five this morning and set my alarm for ten. It doesn’t take a PhD to realise that the carcase I dragged out of bed this morning was of course sorry. I was still on choke until finally I decided to venture out at 1400.

Google had told me that once I got to the main train station I needed the number 10 bus (9 stops) or the 114 or 801 (stops undetermined as that information was not given). I was expecting an hour and a half each way with thirty minutes to shop and have a smoke in between.

The traffic was so bad it took an hour and a half just to get to the station but despite the fact I was faced with probably the same again to get to where I wanted, I scanned the station for the connecting buses but to no avail. By now it was past 1530 and mental calculations told me that even if I continued and made it, I wouldn’t be home until eight at the earliest. This trip at best should be viewed as a day’s outing, which is utterly ridiculous when you consider it is simply being made in the confines of the same city!

I got off the 131 bus but after seeing no evidence of any of the buses I could have taken onward and got back on after having a few puffs on a cigar. The same bus I had arrived on and Lord knows what the driver thought. On the way home I had the most idiotic thought. To console myself for the wasted journey I would try out the Pizza Hut not far from home. Surely a small pizza and a beer would be some recompense?

No. For starters personal pizzas were not available - presumably they only have half a dozen small trays available and they were in use. Instead of ordering a pasta dish I ordered the next size up pizza, a seafood mania and instead of a beer, I was feeling mightily hacked off and so asked for a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

Well the wine was very nice and the pizza, whilst hardly winning any points from Egon Ronay (or Anton Ego for that matter) was naturally too much for me. Of course I asked for a bag to take away the half I never ate but refused the box, I only wanted a bag because I knew I was going to leave it for the wild dogs. Why I had the idiotic notion to go there I know not because whatever they cook as long as I have the ingredients I can cook it better but I came away 217y worse off.

I did though get talking to a couple of young ladies. I don’t know their names but it passed an hour, one was a student, the other had a job and unbelievably neither had been to see the coloured mountains. I asked for their QQ addresses so as to send my photos and to my disappointment one of them was invalid when I came to send them. It may have been inadvertent but neither needed to have worried - I don’t have a QQ account myself and they certainly weren’t my type but I sent the photos to one, expressed my dismay and asked her to relay them to the other. It saddens me to think at least one had that opinion of me.

What a waste of an afternoon. There is of course some good to be found in all of this. With less than five hours sleep last night/this morning, I am absolutely knackered. In fact I fell asleep on my chair and the only reason I am typing this is because eventually I fell sideways and cracked my head on the window sill which rather brought me to my senses.

I may well try again  tomorrow but this time I will set my alarm for eight and leave at ten. Just for French bread (and not particularly good bread at that) and the off chance of some cheese? No, just to get out of the house.

Saturday 21st January, 2017                       1800

A more sensible time today!

I am sure many of my readers will remember the days when you went shopping and the shopkeeper added the price of your items in his or her head, then pressed down hard on the huge levers on Arkwright’s till? Yes? Well so do I.

I also recall the days when a bloody computer never stopped you from buying something that was for sale!

Did my shop yesterday to avoid the weekend rush (although there was one, spring festival is definitely under way) and when I got to the till everything scanned bar a frozen pack of peas and prawns. I wanted some shelled prawns to use in an omelette for tonight’s dinner. The packs with purely prawns in them were more expensive and had way too many in them, I can never have enough peas and I only need a few prawns for an omelette. The barcode when scanned made the computer say no. Clearly this item hadn’t been put in the system. No problem, thought I, I had memorised the price at 14.8 yuan. Oh no! if it’s not on the system even if we have a hundred packs on display we can’t sell it to you! Or that’s what I gathered from the Chinese being spoken.

Sometimes I really wonder whether the world has made any real progress since I was born. I had to leave sans my prawns.

So today I decided I would go out locally. I needed to buy a spare bulb for the bathroom light (having had to use the spare the other day) and it was haircut time seeing as I was getting dangerously close to needing a comb. I would then take a walk to another supermarket close by to get my prawns.

No rush, so mid-afternoon I decided to shower. The water was off!

So I waited until it was restored and cleaned up but by that time the idea of walking to the supermarket had receded and I decided bacon, egg and chips would do. The sun was low in the sky when I went out but I did take the photos I had planned to. One is of the fire station very close to my home (check out the sign!) and the other two are our local neighbourhood’s celebration of the coming of the year of the rooster.

I did get my bulbs and I did get my haircut. The owner it seems now knows I only want the young girl to cut my hair seeing as she cuts it short on top too. One time when I have plenty of time I will get her to wash it afterwards as well but only for my own gratification! The price is the same but I hate going to the barber with unwashed hair so I never need it.

Last night I watched “A Monster Calls”. I didn’t think I would enjoy what I thought was a kid’s film and only watched because I like Liam Neesson but it was actually very good. As for tomorrow, I don’t know whether to try and go to RT Mart again and see if they have any imported goods now. It’s 90 minutes on two buses to get there but finally I have figured out how to use Google Maps to tell me the bus numbers. I shall see how I feel on the day.

Check the sign

Very realistic!!

Friday 20th January, 2017                      0130

What can I say from China? Very little as it happens, life has been reduced to that of a housebound pensioner who gets to the shops once a week!

Ok, of course I can go out, I simply choose not to.

I have no timetable for next term yet nor any information as to whether the school will get the books I requested. Can’t remember if I said this before but feedback was that they were too difficult, which they probably would be for those who don’t study English. My response has been that it’s my job to make them understandable and the students’ job to understand. If they fail to provide me with books then although of course I can construct my own lessons, I shall need to seriously consider whether to start looking elsewhere for next year. Flying by the seat of your pants is fine for a while but without any clear objective to obtain, well………….

Regular readers will know that I am not fond of upheaval (or the cost of moving!) but to be honest I have to weigh the extreme latitude afforded me here along with my own locked office against not being given every facility to actually improve the students. I mean, which of you out there would like to be a teacher knowing nobody would learn?  I need to start pushing - everyone is now unfortunately in holiday mode.

I have been going to bed too late and waking too late since Alice left. That matters little in the grand scheme of things but it does affect my eating. Even that’s no great problem seeing as once a day is normally fine but what is happening is that because I sit on the computer checking the news everywhere after I get up, by the time I am ready I know the buses will be in rush hour mode and even if I have the ingredients to try something new, the light is fading. Ever tried cooking in a kitchen with one of those low-voltage bulbs? It’s a bloody joke, you can’t even tell if mince is browned - not even when you move your shadow out of the way - I get more light from the inside of my little oven.

So I panicked a little today. I realised that next Saturday is Chinese new year which means next Friday will be appalling and is to be avoided as far as shopping goes. So in the morning it’s a biggish shop with a follow-up next Wednesday. I need my wine, enough to see me past the big day (still haven’t noticed any fireworks for sale although to be honest I haven’t been looking) and at the moment the stalls around the corner show no sign of shutting up shop yet.

Talking of the stalls, yesterday I went to the one I often get my eggs and veg from. Talk about awful timing. Unless I am very much mistaken someone had just selected a live chicken not five minutes prior to my arrival. The man and wife team who run it were clearly delighted at my discomfiture upon coming upon the scene. The poor bird (and yes I eat chicken but couldn’t actually despatch one) had already had its throat slit, been plunged into boiling water and the husband had already almost denuded it of feathers. The only good thing I noted was that today there were no pigeons in the other cage, in fact there was no other cage. If there are any on new year’s eve and they are open I pledge I will buy any birds that can fly and let them go.

Hypocritical? Definitely, as I have eaten rabbit, chicken, beef and all sorts in my time and I am not averse to selecting my own live lobster from a restaurant tank. But seeing birds I would normally feed in Trafalgar Square caged ready for dinner? I think I would go berserk if I ever saw dogs but thankfully so far I have seen nothing of the kind. Then I would be opening a gofundme or crowdfund thingy so I could buy them all and open a refuge.

Silly really when my dad was a butcher and we kept chickens. When they stopped laying they became Sunday lunch, bit like Chicken Run. But then I never had to watch the deed being done.

Thursday 19th January, 2017                 0120

Not much happening here now and to be honest there’s not much likely to be before 27th February when I start work again with new students - none of whom will be English majors seeing as I am confined to giving lessons to wannabe Kindergarten teachers. But hell, it might be fun  and it pays for the smokes, drink and food. And this spring festival holiday is at least a fortnight longer than in Chizhou but I’m not complaining.

I suppose I could explore the city a little more (at 1y a bus ride it’s hardly going to break the bank) but that’s not really me. Goodness, were it not for Alice coming to visit I would probably never have seen the coloured mountains (or got some of the photos she took for me because she could scale the steps and I wasn‘t going to). Now give me a new city to visit alone and I might go but only if there are good hotels and probably more importantly, western restaurants and that’s where you will find me.

In fact I was looking yesterday and the city of Xining is close by. Well, about 90 minutes by fast train (the same one that goes to Zhangye and Urumqi) and it’s only 70y for a first class ticket each way. Plenty of hotels varying from 100-500y a night and two western restaurants I found on TripAdvisor. Whichever way I look at it, it will cost about 600y to go for one night and to be honest I need to spend less. I have eaten into the money I still owe and I do like to make my annual pilgrimage to Shanghai even if yet again I don’t return to the UK in the summer. I may weaken, after all, the mountains trip had me splashing out and for a few months I was paying out massive amounts for cigars and set-up stuff. We shall see!

Mosquitoes.

I have said before that they don’t bother me. By this I meant they very rarely have the audacity to actually bite me and that’s true. They DO bother me when I am in bed - when they buzz past my ear just as I am nodding off, prompting me to swat out and of course become alert again.

Unbelievably they are still around in temperatures that struggle to get above freezing even during the daytime. I can only blame the central heating for that because a couple seem to be reluctant to leave my bathroom.

Now in Chizhou they disappeared in the winter completely. The bathroom there had a tiled floor with the exception of where the waste pipe for the building went down in one corner and with typical Chinese workmanship they had left bare concrete around the pipe instead of cutting tiles to fit around the pipe. This caused a shallow water pool after every shower and it was some months before, for some reason. I turned the shower head onto the back of the pipe.

Hundreds of mosquito larvae suddenly got flushed out and down the drain.

This then saw me institute a summer regime of boiling a kettle every few days and pouring it there. Well, Chizhou does by and large have a temperate climate.

I have now discovered a similar problem here! In the dead of winter! You won’t believe this but they are laying their wrigglers in the joints at the back of the toilet seat! Now every time I take a shower I have to spray them out with the shower head and you wouldn’t believe how many new ones appear each day. At least I haven’t seen any snakes here yet although I am sure there are some.

I’m still seeing students dragging suitcases as they head home but I am hoping the buses will get less populated soon. Peili Square has been given the treatment for new year. Being the year of the rooster they have put up a display (I must take some pictures for you) of…well I don’t know how to describe it other than saying it is utter shit! It’s sort of white with bits of blue and what are supposed to be newly-hatched eggs and chicks. The trouble is, it isn’t redolent of either rooster or chicken when you have to look twice and know what year it is.

Never mind.

Monday 16th January, 2017                       1710

I find it ever so slightly sad that my life of late has reverted to revolving around my creature comforts. Well, it always has to some extent and always will but in situations wherein in order to be satisfied, planning needs to be done, it rather takes up more time than I would wish.

When you are wealthy these niggles disappear but when you are not and you are somewhere where, let’s say, the alternatives are not to your taste, yes it does occupy and focus your mind.

‘Ere long I shall lose Suzy, of whom it must be said has been the absolute best online food shopper I have had (searching for better deals rather than simply ordering what I said) and who has also been an absolute brick here in Lanzhou, without her I would have been climbing the walls trying to find things.

It would be great to be able to jet off to Shanghai for the entire holiday but even on UK wages I couldn’t afford that. So I am a bit stuck and therefore food looms large. Equally, when the cigar problem reared its ugly head yet again here, that became a worry.

I am happy to spend 10% of my income on my satisfying (even if others deem it disgusting) habit and assuredly I can find lardies in many places - for a price. I am not happy though with splashing out 20%, 30% or even 40% on this even though the smokes are superior. Hell, I even buy wine at 14.5y a bottle instead of 40y!

So as I mentioned, today the difficulty was going to reach crisis point. Ok, so I was wrong, I could have lasted until tomorrow night. Today Suzy guided me somewhere. Originally her Mum found a shop selling my brand and at my price but she decided to introduce me to the biggest China Tobacco shop in Lanzhou. As it turned out she never even needed to meet me (although she did) because I took the 131 bus and armed with the mental images of the internet photos she sent me earlier, I alighted at the Bank of Communications. China Tobacco was next door.

As soon as we went in I spotted what I needed. I bought a month’s supply (500 cheroots) for 500y and asked the chap if they would have them regularly seeing as I would wish to purchase the same amount every month. He actually spoke quite good English (which was a surprise) and even managed a disdainful tone when he responded with “You want 500 every month?”

Yes. Will there be a problem?
I don’t think so, you’re the only one who likes them.

I can’t think of a time before where I have been so happy to be faintly insulted! Yes, they are cheap but once you get used to them you don’t cough. I also doubt very much there are more than a handful of people in China who smoke the damned things as much as I do, whatever price they are. Now if they sold pipe tobacco the tale would be very different…..

So now I can turn my full attention to the food side of things. I had better get one final shop done by Suzy before I have to find a replacement “wife” next term. I also need to be aware of the date so I can stock up my freezer before new year, I have never forgotten the 45 minutes it took me one Chinese new year’s eve when I needed meat for the pets and a carrot. It will be worse here with four times the population, ergo I have no intention of needing to visit the supermarket. The Chinese are no different than the British on Christmas Eve when it comes to setting about stripping supermarket shelves.

And so that’s it. Smokes and eats. I could possibly visit somewhere nearby on the train if I could buy tickets but I think I have visited the only attraction really worth visiting for me now that’s within strike distance. I would dearly love someone from Chizhou to come and stay with me to celebrate the lunar new year but naturally that won’t happen because being with family is mandatory for them.

Ah well, can’t complain. I have plenty of time to perhaps try to conjure up foods I have been dying to have a stab at making.

Saturday 14th January, 2017                     1600

I must have eaten too much on Thursday, for most of yesterday I had a bad stomach. I felt a little better by the time dinner was ready but decided to fast the entire day, it has worked many times in the past.

We took the BRT to another China Tobacco shop which is almost at the end of the BRT going west but had no success finding my cigars. Certainly there is no shortage of smokes but at twice or thrice what I am used to paying, I left without making a purchase. The situation will become critical on Monday night so on Monday I will probably make the long trip to Wanda Plaza to see if there are any there, its where Sheila got me some before.

Alice had requested a frittata so I made a huge tray and put spuds, my home made ham, cheese and chilli oil in it. Considering she ate half of it (four eggs worth!) I guess it wasn’t bad. The remaining half I put in foil for her to take on the train, ditto the bread pudding.

When the time came to accompany Alice to town and the train station, I was down in the dumps but I think I hid it reasonably well. It had been nice having some company and now I was being left on my lonesome once again.

The night was cold but we both got seats on the bus. Then of course at the station she went through but without a ticket I couldn’t follow. It worked out that her train left at 2202 and three minutes later I walked into my home. She will arrive back in Wuhu at 0040 tomorrow morning, rather her than me. She has said she would like to come and visit again in the summer but I have a feeling next time she will fly. It should be said that there’s no guarantee I will be here myself then though!

Today I have done nothing and I promised myself I was not going to cook. I chewed over going out for dinner but decided instead to reheat the remaining lasagne. I can shop tomorrow.

Actually, I told a little lie when I said I had done nothing. I have emailed Janet the marks for the class along with my comments. After factoring in additional points for attendance and how active everyone was in the class, Suzy and Sheila were the only two to pass. The rest can only blame themselves for not being bothered, and God help them when they get to Cyprus! If the school thinks I failed the class then so be it, although I can’t produce miracles, had they applied themselves, ample opportunity was there for them all to improve but many preferred to text their friends or play games on their phones instead. I have pointed this out to the school twice now.

Thursday 12th January, 2017                                 1535

Well the lasagne was a triumph, thank God, as was last night’s ham. Aside from the weekend in Zhangye I have done little else but cook since Alice arrived. It would be so much easier if she was like me and only ate dinner in the evening but I have to make breakfast and lunch as well. And no, I don’t trust her to cook in my kitchen!

The trip downtown was an annoyance. Over an hour each way only to be told by China Tobacco they had none of my cigars. The reality was that we made that journey ultimately just for a Japanese lunch. I had intended to go out today to try and find that China Tobacco shop near here which I spotted not long after I arrived but decided on yet more cooking. We can search for cigars tomorrow because Alice’s train leaves at 2200.

So today’s culinary delights (mainly for her) were creamy scrambled eggs on toast for breakfast, lunch was another portion of lasagne (one now in the freezer for me another day) and dinner a roast pork dinner. The bread pudding is already made and so she will have plenty to take on the train. I shall miss having her here.

I forgot to mention about going for more electricity on Tuesday. The woman is now finished as of today and won’t be working again until sometime in February. Remember I thought she had given me 1,000y worth to see me through yet my meter only showed 500y? I got Brenda to call her and arrange for another 500y. When we went she showed me her paperwork and I was not mistaken, it said 1,000y but when I asked how come the meter never showed it she didn’t understand either. She gave me another 500y and when we got home, miraculously I had a thousand more than when I left! Weird…..at least I know it will last!

I am wondering just how quiet it will get around here soon. Nobody could tell me if the stalls will close (they are damned handy for meat, fruit and veg when I don’t want to go to the supermarket), only that the buses will run throughout although they will terminate early as in Chizhou. My little beer and jing jo shop told Alice they won’t even cloe on new year’s day so at least I don’t have to stock up. Oddly, I haven’t seen much evidence of fireworks on sale but I will lay money on them being let off to welcome in the rooster.

Tuesday 10th January, 2017                         1610

Last night I abrogated all my hosting duties and let Alice take the bus alone to meet Suzy and (I think) Sheila in town. No need for me to cook except for myself (egg and chips!) and of course the apple pie, which was emblazoned with her name on the top.

Apparently they went to the Whistling Street (don’t ask because I have no idea) and then went for the local speciality, beef noodles. Alice was quite enamoured with her food although I must say a bowl of noodles in water with a few scraps of beef leaves me rather unimpressed, however Alice found this particular offering was mouthwatering. Maybe I have been going to the wrong places.

I wasn’t expecting her back before 2230 but she returned a lot earlier than that. When she saw the pie she threw her arms around me in an uncharacteristic manner and gave me a hug. I must make more apple pies in future……..

Today no sightseeing was planned (and it’s sodding cold outside) so I suggested we go supermarket shopping so I could make the lasagne she wants. I gave her a breakfast of toast and strawberry jam (loaf baked last night) and then off we went on the BRT. I was going to take her to the fast food place in the underground at the BRT stop (the place where it seems no matter what you have it costs 11y) but then I though why not take her for lunch - after all, it had been nearly two hours since breakfast and for a skinny girl she can certainly pack the food away - at the Chinese place I used to use when I first came here and stayed in the hotel.

No, let’s go shopping first, I’m not hungry yet, we can go after.
So you’re not hungry now but you will be in 20 minutes?
Yes.

I know, I don’t understand either.

Of course after shopping (during which I bought Lux soap as I have come to realise Dove does absolutely nothing for my dry skin) she was miraculously able to eat lunch. I meanwhile wasn’t in the slightest bit hungry but of course the sun is over the yardarm and it doesn’t matter which time zone, a beer is always welcome and I hadn’t been to that restaurant since I took Suzy and Sheila. I was given a great welcome and Alice made a passable job of almost finishing what looked like a very tasty dish of fried pork and veg atop steamed rice. Had she ordered sweet pork I may have had a nibble but I didn’t want to ruin my appetite for the lasagne - it costs a fortune to make here, not to mention the effort involved in making it.

And so we are now back home and the sauce is bubbling while she who said she doesn’t need a nap is snoozing away in the other room. Tomorrow I thought we could go to my teaching campus to get my monthly cigars (I was paid last night), take her for a Japanese lunch and in the evening liberate the pork that has been curing for a week and turn it into ham for our dinner. I also might make bread pudding on Thursday so she can take a load with her on the train on Friday night to save her having to exist on pot noodles for over a day. Somehow I think after our flights to and from Zhangye she is perhaps regretting  a little bit that she never booked flights from Hefei. At least now she knows there are better options.

Sunday 8th January. 2017                         2330

Well Sherlock cut out after 6 minutes so I had to delete and re-download it overnight. Instead I showed her “Sully” which, after having flown already, didn’t phase Alice. She ordered breakfast for the morning for her and some meat baozi for me for 1030 as I had suggested our sightseeing today wouldn’t take long so there was no need to wake early.

Indeed, we never rose until 0930 even though I reckon both of us were awake long before. When breakfast arrived I wasn’t hungry but I had no feelings of guilt over not eating when  instead of what she had ordered arriving, they had sent the same order for two. The last thing I could ever face for breakfast is a bowl of noodles in water and a spicy boiled egg but there were two portions. The baozi? They weren’t meat-filled as requested, simply stuffed with some sort of grass that doubtless has a fancy name here in China for culinary purposes even though it is probably harvested at the roadside. Again I never broke my fast but I had fully expected such a result.

Not having to check out until one, we lazed around, me on the computer and she watching stupid “It’s a Knockout” type shows on the TV. At the appointed hour we checked out and went to wait for a taxi to the Big Buddha (Dafu) Temple.

Admittance was 40y each and if ever there were a waste of money, that was it. Even she voiced the same opinion. Certainly an old building but worth an absolute maximum of 10y admittance fee. I would advise anyone visiting Zhangye not to bother. At least the pagoda was in the middle of a square and was free to look at, with the added attraction of tame pigeons that people fed - see the photo of the girl with them eating from her hand. Tried to get Alice to do likewise by offering to buy a bag of food but she refused. I suspect she was too scared to have pigeons land on her arms.

With the day’s sightseeing done in  a rather short space of time, we went for lunch. Another hotpot but this time we also got steamed rice. Alice swore that her stomach was playing havoc because it had been a week since she had ingested rice! In the north they prefer their noodles. I prefer potatoes!

We ended up back in the hotel lobby to wait for an hour for the hotel car to take us to the airport and then it was off on the journey home.

No problems this time with security but to my intense annoyance, no smoking room airside. Had I known I would have delayed going through and had a last cigar. No alcohol for sale either.

The aircraft (Embraer 195) was indeed a flying straw with a two + two seating configuration. Very new judging by the upholstery and carpet and quite cramped but for a 45 minute flight, who cares? The prat in the seat in front of Alice had his seat reclined even after the announcement to have it in the upright position. I told Alice that if the cabin crew didn’t come and check that I would bring it to their attention.

They did check and made him put his seat in the correct position but once the stewardess had gone he reclined it! An “OY!!” and a smack of my hand on his headrest saw him put it back immediately, thereafter he never adjusted his seat throughout the rest of the flight. It’s arseholes like these who think the rules are only for everyone else that spoil things for the rest and of course in general the Chinese won’t say anything. He was unfortunate on this occasion in being seated near me.

We actually took off early and landed likewise although there was no way on earth we could have bought tickets for and caught the 1955 train which would have been great were it possible. Instead I asked Alice to ask when the next bus left. It takes longer but we had an hour to wait for the next train anyway. It’s leaving very soon. Quick! Buy two tickets!!

In fact it was leaving so soon that by the time we had the tickets it had left. Next one in an hour. Great. I managed to find a shop selling lighters for four times the price (normally 1y) so I could smoke and I waited outside whilst Alice stayed in the relative warmth. After my smoke I also sought refuge from the cold, which must have been -15C at that time of night.

When the bus finally came it was late but to both our relief it stopped an 11y cab fare from home and in a place where we hailed a taxi in a short space of time. It was good to be home in the warmth, I rustled up some home made cheese and egg burgers and Alice is now in the land of nod.

I am slightly peeved in that she is going sightseeing here tomorrow (at my suggestion) with Suzy. I had planned to make what she requested for dinner, namely lasagne and apple pie, but oh no, we will eat some local food so you don’t need to cook! Can we have those things on Tuesday?

Yus, m’lady……….

 Hotel lobby

 Hotel lobby
 Big Buddha Temple

 Main building

 Prayers

 Wishes

 Nice pagoda

 Trafalgar Square??

 Embraer 195

The airport surrounds, Zhangye

Saturday 7th January, 2017                1745

The hotel is a mix between good and bad. The room is as described although the facilities advertised are not all in place. As it happens they don’t have a restaurant and if your deal includes breakfast they go and buy it from outside restaurants and deliver it to your room. That’s fine but not when you asked for baozi, the baozi shop doesn’t open that early and they bring you a huge bowl of noodles and a spicy egg instead. Needless to say it went untouched and I did have what I wanted when we got to the bus station and found we had 40 minutes to kill. I couldn’t just buy two, they only sold them in sixes so Alice had two and we took two away in a bag.

The rickety old bus took an hour to get to Danxia Geoform Park and with it being wintry (well below zero today) and no crops in the fields, the scenery en route was decidedly grim.

As we approached the park however, it became apparent that we were nearing a true marvel of Mother Nature. Firstly I spotted a mountain range that was so black they looked as if someone had painted them. Sadly a picture taken on the move through a grimy bus window does nothing to show how magnificent they were and the remarkable clarity of colour. Despite the morning having started overcast, we were by now blessed with sunshine. I did remark to Alice that I was so glad I never acceded to her suggestion that we went to the park at dawn, as advised on various online sites..

And then we were dumped on a road. The entrance to the park must have been about three quarters of a mile up another road and once we arrived yes, it looked ok but nothing really special. 150y for the pair of us for entry and tour bus and we were on our way.

My God. It’s hard to imagine that mountains can have strata of blue, green, gold, yellow, browns of all descriptions and silvery greys all nestling up to each other. Yet that’s exactly what it was.

There were four stops for everyone to take advantage of the steps to gain the best vantage points for photos. Everyone except me of course. This tour is really only fully experienced by the strong of leg! I would have needed paramedics equipped with oxygen before I attained the halfway mark at the first stop and I knew it. Cue handing my phone to Alice to take photos for me from the top! I could have lied and said I did the full circuit but if that were the case I would be in a mortuary now and you would never be reading this.

At the second stop the fact I am observant came in jolly handy. The buses drop you off and then when more visitors come down from the mountains they drive off with them - disconcerting the first time until another bus arrives and does the same, so you realise all you do is get whichever one is there at the time. The second stop was different. I packed Alice off with my camera (I did take many of the shots though!) and duly waited for the group’s return.

Luckily I did a spot of wandering around at the bottom and noticed the walkway seemed to be leading the walkers (who I could not see, they were behind the hills) away to another place. I started walking and sure enough I saw Alice eventually emerge coming down in the distance! It would have been nice to have been told because I would have stayed on the bus to the pick-up point! No harm done and it was only at that one stop.

At the final stop of four, the one where in the summer you can take helicopter trips (which must be out of this world) and from a sign in Chinese I guessed you can also hire camels to ride, a little feral dog came to greet the tourists every time a minibus arrived. Being Chinese most of them were terrified of her but of course I just had to play. Her face was as ugly as sin but she had a lovely nature and had never looked in a mirror. The two baozi in a bag we had brought? No prizes for guessing where they went…………

The photos I am attaching in no way capture the full splendour of this deservedly UNESCO world heritage site but I hope you get some idea of how magnificent a wonder it is.

When it was over (about two hours in total although probably longer in summer because all the drinks and food kiosks would be open) we hiked back to await the next bus back to Zhangye. Standing there slowly turning into icicles, something wonderful happened. A young couple in a car who had been on one of the buses in the park with us, stopped and told Alice to get in, they would take us to Zhangye! They are from Xi’an in Shaanxi province and are on holiday so they dumped us outside their hotel, which is a spit from the temple Alice wants to visit tomorrow and also a pagoda I had mentioned. ‘Andy ‘arry - less than 10y in a taxi from our hotel.

Hotpot dinner and a beer (she got away lightly for 22y) and back to the hotel where I complained last night about the room being too warm. Were we glad to get back this evening!!

Once I post this entry she wants to watch the new, ninety minute Sherlock episode on my computer because the Chinese haven’t got it yet. I suppose it can’t all be roses…………

 Baozi breakfast

 Bus station

 I'm the black spot at the bottom

 The dog that got the Baozi!