We spent the last couple of days on a final holiday trip before JD returns to school next week. We had been invited to join four other families at a spa resort nestled in the mountains of LuQuan. It's a winding 2½ hour drive there and back, but the views are spectacular. The spa hotel was surprising nice and the various pools were clean and ranged from warm to piping hot. There was also a kid's water play area and an outdoor swimming pool. And with a good restaurant/snack bar, new friends, dry weather and amazing surrounding scenery - what more could you ask for?
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Yesterday, we went with friends to an island town on TangLangChuan (literally "Praying Mantis River") in the countryside, about an hour's drive away. We had home-cooked banquets with friends of our friends and took a pleasant afternoon walk down the riverside to the enormous DianChi Lake. Then, on to a farm where we pulled up fresh vegetables for the evening meal and annoyed a huge goose. JD's favourite activity was fishing in the river with his new net. He managed to catch three little minnows. For me, it was nice to spend a little quiet time with the wife, with mobile phones turned off!
I saw this sign in a public toilet the other day. Apart from the confusion between "sweeping" and "mopping", I was bemused as to why they were asking the toilet-users to do the job. And what does the tagline bottom left mean? ..."Patriotic Health Seven Special Actions"?? What's patriotic about mopping a toilet and what are the other Six Actions?
With just a week of holiday left (for me, JD has a further week) we are ticking off the activities we had planned to do at the beginning of the break. Today was junk modelling a stream train and then painting it.
So a new year starts in China. We celebrated with a big meal (cooked by Jiajia - Ma is "dying with cancer" again i.e. she has a sore throat), a visit from Druncle, and JD's fireworks. This time last year we were returning from our holiday in Vietnam and hearing news of a possible new pandemic in China. How things move on....!
On the positive side, yesterday's Superbowl was played at a very reasonable hour of the morning here and I found a free live stream. On the negative side, the picture did hang every 5 minutes, and it was a very one-sided match. But a welcome dose of western entertainment all the same.
We shared a nice pre-Spring Festival banquet with families of JD's old Kindergarten friends last week. The other fathers got gradually drunker through the evening and were loud and tactile when Jiajia told them I had got my green card ("You are us Chinese", they slurred in broken English, hugging me!). But towards the end of the meal they insisted on lighting up, as usual, despite me pointing out the very obvious "No Smoking" signs behind them. A fume-filled end to an otherwise lovely get-together.
JD had his first filling today. I think I'd had half a dozen by
his age! Fortunately it wasn't too painful and he was brave! |
AuthorPaul Hider started this blog to share his rather odd life living in China for over 20 years. Since returning to the UK in 2024, the blog now records his more "normal" lifestyle! Past blog entries
September 2024
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