CHINA 2010 FRIDAY 20th AUGUST

This morning’ challenge was to find some cornflakes! I had hoped ‘Carrefour’ the French supermarket chain would be the obvious place but a visit to this store turned into a nightmare. It was all well and good telling me in perfect written English that if within the next 7 days I found any item I had purchased cheaper within a 3km radius I would get money back up to the value of 100 yuan, only to find that there was not one English sign inside the store. So I had to go up and down most aisles with no sign of any cereals other than porridge oats. My next stop was the DVD shop we had previously visited. Could I find it? Even asking a young security guard, who hadn’t a clue what I was saying, and it was only “DVD/CD” which I thought was an international abbreviation, couldn’t help and shrugged his shoulders. Next I stopped two young girls on a shopping spree – “yes – no sorry”. I knew it was around the circle of shops and eventually I found it. If only I had exited ‘Carrefour’ by a different route the escalator would have taken me down to end opposite the shop. I was in there over half an hour browsing through all the non Chinese music DVDs and ended up buying 5. I asked if I could have discount seeing as I wanted many but again the staff hadn’t a clue what I was saying and if they did I could see I was not going to get them any cheaper. I arrived back home just a few minutes before Keith.
After lunch we took a number 11 bus to Huli Park located in the north of the island. Again we had studied the map so had a rough idea which stop we needed. The only problem was the bus turned a corner earlier than expected and we were not travelling on the road where the stop was. Not to worry all we had to do was watch out for a lot of greenery! The bus eventually returned to the road we needed and when we did get off Keith thought we would have to walk back down the road to enter the park. Luckily I spotted 4 stone columns a little further up on the opposite side of the road which turned out to be the main entrance into this lovely little park. The rectangle shaped columns had been carved with large ornate birds, their bodies and tail feathers stretching around the narrow sides. Also set in this semi circle was two large pictures, similar to the ones we had watched the girl create in the ‘Stone Sculpture Park’ on Wednesday, showing a scene of the area in around 1994 and the other in 2006. We followed the paths through the park seeing more topiary designs in the shape of a school of leaping dolphins and a little further along several arches. Some of the trees were in blossom especially the orange/red ones that are really showing their colour now against the small lime green leaves similar to the ‘Sensitive Plant’, and again we were to smell the scent. There was plenty of entertainment for the young children, a water shute which on closer inspection looked as though it had not been in use for some time although the paint work looked bright and fairly new in blue and white, a small roundabout in brightly coloured ‘bird cars’ and of course on the large lake pedal boats. As we walked up and down, not so many steps thank goodness, we discovered a sledge ride. Again it didn’t look as though it was in use as we saw lots of fallen leaves and puddles on the track but that could be from yesterday afternoon’s thunderstorm. As we reached the lake again we came to the start of this ride and saw two young men working on the sledges. No walking up to the top of the hill to take this ride as we saw the pulling gear and the wires laid in the bottom of the track to pull the cars up. I think it could have been quite good fun coming down the long winding route! We continued to walk around the lakeside which wasn’t easy in places as tree trunks had grown at an angle leaning over the fence around the lake. Whilst I ducked under these tree trunks Keith found an alternative route. We came to an area of a wooden walk way and stepping stones over the shallowest park of the lake taking care to avoid the children trying to catch small fish in their plastic bottles. We could find only one fault with this park – no beer stop! As it was getting on for 4pm we decided to head for home.
In the evening we went out to eat and walked in the direction of ‘the barn’ having said we wouldn’t eat there again but saw it was almost empty and so went in. Unfortunately we were guided to the table opposite the cashier again and although she doesn’t speak English or seem to understand the language she will take over and try and force us to have dishes of her choice from the pictures having taken control of the menu. But under pressure we coped and had two of our choices of the usual three dishes. When we had finished eating and sat talking over the last of our beer a little girl of about 3 came over from another table to say hello and so began our evening of entertainment. She produced 3 chopstick rests from her table and we began to ‘play guess which hand’. We were all playing quietly, no shouting and screaming, but the cashier took her back to her parents probably because during our last visit we made it obvious we were not happy with children running around screaming with excitement at one another. We paid our bill and returned home to watch one of our new DVDs.