CHINA 2010 WEDNESDAY 25th AUGUST

An afternoon of exercise and rescue as we hired a pedalo in ‘Zhongshan Park’ for an hour, we felt this was long enough. The waterways make it a pleasant adventure rather than going round and across a lake, however we found some of the bridges were too low for our canopied boat to go under so had to turn around. Sometimes we attracted the attention of people strolling along the waterside, but as expected from a Captain, we always did the perfect turn! It was on one of our return trips we encountered a trio of teenagers, two girls and a boy, in an electric submarine having already said “hello” and accused them of cheating by having the electric motor. Their response was “we don’t speak English”. They had got themselves aground and another pedalo had arrived to help. The man and his two young boys were trying to rock the submarine free without success. We moved to the front of the two boats and asked one of the girls sitting in the front with the imitation machine gun on the submarine to give us the rope, indicating what we meant with our rope. Once we had secured the rope to our boat Keith and I set about peddling like fury but going nowhere so Plan B was put into operation, getting one of the girls to climb aboard the other boat. This caused a lot of laughter especially when the heavier of the two girls, who had been manning the machine gun, got off and the submarine began to move. Surprisingly we did not attraction any attention during this escapade. We left them to it and continued our meandering around the canals taking more pictures of the ornate bridges and two lovely white ducks sitting under large leaves of lotus plants, not to mention the lovely reflections in the greenish water. In the shade on the longest canal the ‘cleaner’ was gently rowing his boat whilst standing, the front of the boat having a pole across with a net suspended under part of the boat and trailing in the water to collect fallen leaves – what a simple but effective idea. As our time was nearly up Keith began to say his ankles ached due to the short legroom whilst I was sitting almost vertical as I tried to reach my set of pedals. The shade had been wonderful but as we left the boat I found the back of my blouse and trousers very wet!
As we began to leave the park we were surprised how busy it seemed for the time of day. There were lots of old men sat around talking, whilst on our boat trip we had spotted the ladies doing a little upper body exercise before setting down for a serious game of cards. (We discovered where many senior citizens disappear to in the afternoons when walking down one of the narrow alleyways in the old part of the city – they go to the Mahjong Halls. Quickly looking through the open entrance to one of these halls we were surprised how far back they went and how many green baized tables they had managed to squeeze into the space and every table occupied.)
We walked home and came across a young Mum showing her very young son how to burn the imitation money for ‘Ghost Day’. In Dalian people used to burn the yellow paper squares on the streets or wasteland leaving piles of black ash everywhere whereas in Xiamen small, usually red coloured, ornate metal bins are used. It seems the practice of ‘sending money’ to the dearly departed to make life better for them in the afterlife now lasts the whole of August.I cooked again tonight – duck in beer and no there isn’t one less duck in ‘Zhongshan Park.’ I was fortunate to find packs of chopped duck in ‘Trust Mart’ which I thought was much better than buying half a duck and have to cut the foot and parson’s nose off before trying to get it my small microwave pot. I had not expected to find the head in each pack though! I was following the instructions in the cook book and it turned out okay but I think I over did the ground black pepper rather than the chillies tonight! The soup will come in useful tomorrow when I am going to use noodles. I spent a long time in the supermarket deciding which pack of noodles I should by. From top to bottom of the shelving and across 3 sections I had to decide did I want ‘For long life’ or ‘Seafood Flavoured’ – you name they came in every flavour and ones for babies too! For dessert I thought we would try a pomelo – a huge green citrus fruit, but on cutting it in half found it was all peel and pith and hardly any flesh and what little there was was hard and dry so into the bin it went and I won’t bother again. For the same money I could have bought a large bunch of grapes!