February 2021

I’ve been back from my two-week Chinese New Year holidays for more than a week already but let’s admit it, the holidays could always be longer. This year, Chinese New Year was celebrated in my husband’s hometown, with a brief visit to a nearby city in Hubei province beforehand. The week post-CNY was spent in Guangdong province in the south, close to my hometown. Good company, good food, and good times!

Evening stroll along the river that runs through the urban centre of my husband’s hometown.

Abandoned shack in Xianning, a city known for its hot springs. The graffiti on the door says “Zhang Fengming is a pig”. Hmm, I wonder whom Zhang Fengming offended…

Plum blossoms in full bloom in Xianning! Didn’t have to go to the plum blossom gardens in Wuhan to see them this year 😉

We encountered the plum blossoms along the boardwalk that runs along the Crescent Bay in Xianning. ZJ was probably chewing a sugar cane slice (a whole bag in his right hand) as he commented on the beauty of the plum blossoms.

Whereas we were still in mid-winter in Xianning, we immediately entered what felt like mid-summer when we reached Zhuhai in southern Guangdong province. Sun, T-shirts, and iced bubble tea are preferred here! This rainbow staircase in the Hengqin district in Zhuhai further brightened our day!

Instead of plum blossoms, we saw these bright flowers in Zhuhai, tentatively identified as araguaney by a plant-recognition app. Too pretty – I am in awe!

Not smiling here as we were resting during a hike on Jiangjun Hill. It wasn’t a tall hill but there were lots of stairs going up and down and up and down and…up up up. Do not underestimate even the most gentle hills…!

View of Macau in the distance, from the top of Jiangjun Hill. I had been there several times but Jian hadn’t, and the original plan was actually to visit Macau, but with COVID restrictions, that had to be cancelled. So close, but so far away…

Highlight of any trip to Guangdong: FOOD!! From left to right, top to bottom – 1: stir-fried gailan with beef in Zhuhai; 2: steamed garlic oysters in Zhuhai; 3: Hakka-style chicken in Zhuhai; 4: deep-fried spare ribs with beefsteak plant in Zhongshan; 5: wonton and beef brisket noodles in Zhongshan; 6: clay pot rice with chicken and spare ribs in Zhongshan; 7: steamed chicken feet @ dim sum in Shunde; 8: pineapple bun with roasted pork filling @ dim sum in Shunde; 9: shrimp pork dumplings (siumai) @ dim sum in Shunde. This is my type of food – I MISS IT SO MUCH!!

In the last photo, I mentioned Zhongshan and Shunde (a district of Foshan), which are cities in Guangdong that we visited after Zhuhai but didn’t further show in the photos. These places, especially Shunde, are known as food havens in China and they did not disappoint. With limited time, we were only able to sample a small portion of the local gastronomy offered by Zhongshan and Shunde. This definitely wouldn’t be the last visit…I will be back!!!

January 2021

Happy new year…again?! Yep, it’s Chinese New Year in three days and we’re on holidays. It’s also been over one year since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak and the initiation of Wuhan’s lockdown, and…how things have changed. This January has certainly been a lot livelier than the last, at least here in China. As usual, stay safe, everyone!

It’s sunset time again – this time across from the ancient city wall in Jingzhou, a city that holds an important place in Chinese history during the Three Kingdoms period.

I always find the patterns of branches fascinating and am often surprised by what awaits me when I look up during a walk through the woods. Though most of the branches are bare and leafless, they are such an intricate beauty!

You might think this is a work of Chinese ink painting and you’d be wrong. But it certainly is an amazing art of nature – these are actual shadows of bamboo shoots against a wall in the evening. When I saw this I literally said, “This is so beautiful!!” I had to walk through the bamboo bush to get close enough to the wall for the photo but I simply love how it turned out!

A visit to a museum (Wuhan Municipal Museum featured here) isn’t complete without some imitation art. Here ZJ is the live version of the heroic General Yue Fei – 80% resemblance, at least?

Crossing the Moon Lake Bridge from Hanyang to Hankou in Wuhan, on a lovely evening after a birthday meal for the husband…

…and this is the view of Moon Lake Bridge from the 24th floor, where we had the birthday dinner at a home-based restaurant. The view over the Han River is definitely one of the selling points of this small, cozy restaurant!

Happy birthday to my loveliest Mr. ZJ. Thankful for another adventurous year with you ❤

Another meal here, but at a much more local and down-to-earth restarant in Jingzhou. Piping hot dumplings in the midst of winter – can we dig in yet?!

Hello and meow. During my Wuhan coffee shop explorations I visited this chic shop, which sold an item named quinoa coffee. You can’t see it here but there’s actually quinoa at the bottom of the cup…definitely something new for me to try. And this little kitty seemed to want to join the coffee party 😉

Alrighty folks, time to truly relax and enjoy the long Chinese New Year holidays (it began four days ago for us 😉 ). See you in the year of the ox!

December 2020

Happy new year! Just like that, we left 2020 behind, for better or for worse, but we still gotta look back on the final month of 2020. Before that, I just want to present some brief stats for the blog: 9 entries were posted in 2018, 19 in 2019, and 38 in 2020 – a huge improvement! Looking back, there was a period of time when I had way too much free time on my hands because of COVID-19, and a lot of blogging happened then, mainly with the Japan and Norway series. These entries were of course not all posted at once, but they were pretty much written within the same period of time. One of the goals of 2021 is to blog more but I think that’s been a goal for the past few years…I mean, at least we saw some gradual improvement, right? Let’s try to do better than just posting the monthly summaries this year. First post of 2021, here we go!

Catching a fiery sunset in the quiet countryside of Hubei province. I love the silhouette of the trees and houses against the setting sun.

The moon was unusually round and especially bright on the eve of New Year’s Eve (yes, you read that correctly, December 30) and this photo doesn’t do it justice. Maybe even the moon was ready to say goodbye to 2020 for good…

I often take time during my lunch break to walk around outside even during the winter, and here is a random area beside a creek near my workplace. This photo was shot from an angle that makes it look somewhat clean and serene whereas in reality, the creek was full of trash and next to a road where loud trucks pass by frequently. But hey, you could always pretend or hope to be in a nicer place 😛

Headed to the Wuhan Garden Expo on a beautiful day with Mr.J, taking advantage of free admission until the end of the year. The Expo itself was nothing too impressive, but it was pleasant to spend a full lazy Saturday with Mr.J (no group meeting!) outdoors.

Our food explorations happen on a daily basis where every Friday I pick a new restaurant to try. This time we went for Japanese soy milk hot pot (tonyu nabe), which is something that I’d honestly never heard of but sounded great. With the soy-based hot pot we got a side order of fried shrimp and plum wine (along with other items not pictured here), all of which were lovely complements to the delicious hot pot itself ❤

Ohai. I don’t remember if Shanshan here has been featured on the blog before, but there’s always room for more cat photos. In fact I think I took too many photos of Shanshan that day from too many angles…

…and who is that behind the emoji pillow but yours truly?! There was a prize draw for the new year at the office and I picked up this guy from the draw – lucky me 😛

Went trampolining with some friends and one of the activities was wearing a sticky spider suit and jump-sticking onto the spider web…harder than it looks!! I didn’t manage to jump very high at all but Mr.J did pretty well. In fact, he seemed to enjoy his time on the web so much that I wasn’t sure I wanted to help him get down from there.

Happy husband, happy wife, happy to be healthy and with each other through thick and thin. Adios forever, 2020!

I’ve decided to revive Picture Worthy, which has been inactive since 2017, with a new series called “Alphabetical Cities”. Head on over and check it out, and don’t forgot to also take a look at The Food Gallery, which is updated on even-numbered dates. Till next post 😉

July 2020

Well there goes July. This month, Wuhan experienced an excessive amount of rainfall and as a result, the hot temperatures were slightly delayed and we got flooding in return, blah. In other news, J and I just came back from a short getaway to Guilin, a popular tourist destination in the province of Guangxi in southwestern China. It was good to finally be able to get out of the familiar for a bit – definitely a much-needed break.

Impressive cloud formations outside Guanggu 7th Road subway station in Wuhan, early in the morning.

View of villages and surrounding mountainous areas in Yangshuo, Guilin, during a motorcycle ride. Guilin is known for its beautiful karst hills and landscape that look like oil paintings.

More karst hills near Yangshuo, this time as seen with the setting sun from the Gongnong Bridge over the Yulong (meaning “meeting dragon”) River, a tributary of the famous Li River in Guilin.

View from my perspective as I was laying down to rest in a pavilion during a long(ish) hike in 36-degrees-Celsius weather…lots of stops and sweat required.

Evening falls in Yangshuo, which is relatively quiet because of COVID-19. Normally this town would be full of tourists, especially foreigners, but the tourism industry has really taken a heavy hit this year all over the world.

Lights hanging from the ceiling at the guesthouse that accommodated us during our stay in Guilin.

Brief pottery experience in Yangshuo! In about an hour I only got the hang of moulding the clay into a simple circular bowl/dish – fun but not easy!

Check-in at my workplace – that’s my expression of “it’s too early and I’m not ready for work”. Yep, not embarrassed at all posting this selfie – sometime I like it in its most natural, rawest form, heh.

Selfie time with Mr. J <3, at a Japanese restaurant that was decorated with abacuses on the wall.

In summary, Guilin was great aside from the fact that we went in scorching heat. August will (should) be an entire month of monstrous heat in Wuhan – bring it on, summer!!

June 2020

The Japan honeymoon series was the longest I’ve written in a while – check it out if you haven’t yet! But back to the monthly summary posts. The end of June marks the halfway point of 2020…WHAT! Half of 2020 is over…how did this happen…huh. So far this hasn’t been the best of years for obvious reasons, and one wonders what the second half of 2020 will bring. Let’s first recap the month of June and see what we’d been up to.

The term “retaliatory consumption” (or “retaliatory” anything) has gone viral in China during the COVID-19 outbreak. The term is used to describe the act of spluring in spending, after the outbreak ends, in response to forced reduced spending during the outbreak. Here we see what I think is “retaliatory going-out”. Once everything has been restored to more or less a “normal” state in Wuhan, people can’t wait to go and find themselves in the all-too-familiar comforts of the crowds of the big city (near the Jianghan Road commercial district here). Ah, cars, shoppers, street vendors, no discrimination, everyone gets a spot on the road even though there is no order to be seen! I guess it ain’t really Wuhan without the crowds and disorder…

J and I went to Jianghan Road to see if the city has recovered but we didn’t expect to see THAT many people, though we shouldn’t have been surprised. We did by chance stumble upon a place that sold amazingly delicious crispy beef buns. I only have a photo of the process of making these buns and don’t have one of the finished product (I do, it just doesn’t look SUPER impressive) but trust me – they were SO GOOD. SOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOD. Street food doesn’t get better than this and I’m gonna have to go back to Jianghan Road for this very bun again!

So, has the outbreak ended in China? Hard to say – “experts” will say that it will not end completely and we’ll have to anticipate living with face masks in the long run. Not exactly too pleased by the restrictions but you gotta do your best to be a law-abiding citizen and not create fears…most of the time 😉

Wednesday morning, 7:40 am, arriving at the office for a meeting at 8 am, *yawn*. The sun was only beginning to wake up so forgive me for not yet being fully awake @_@

This classy bookstore was a new discovery in June. I only went because I had a ¥50-off coupon for any purchase over ¥150 that only worked for vendors in the “culture and tourism” category (I was too late that week for the dining coupons), which included bookstores. Anyway, in addition to buying several books, I took my time enjoying the rare tranquility that was in the bookstore (there were perhaps only two others there aside from the store employees).

Entrance to the station where I sometimes take the subway home from work. I don’t often do this as the station is approximately 2 km from my workplace, and I usually take the bus with my coworker. But when I do pick the subway, I scan a shared bike and cycle there within 8 minutes.

A major event that happened in June was moving in to the condo that we bought! This would have happened in March if it weren’t for COVID-19, but there are no “ifs” in life, so June it was. Here’s one of the shelves that I’ve set up so far, mostly with random stuff so that the shelf doesn’t look empty. Hopefully the place doesn’t get too cluttered too soon 😛

So…food??? Yes, food. I mentioned earlier that there were coupons that could be claimed, and that’s actually the Wuhan government’s way of encouraging economic recovery by promoting consumption after the city began opening up again amidst COVID-19. Coupons of four categories (dining, retail, supermarket, and culture/tourism) are released every week and if you’re quick to click, you may be lucky enough to get one. J and I usually go for the dining ones because well, one must eat (not to mention that I love food too much 😛 ) That explains why we had so much good food this month…

…and if you thought that was all, you’d be wrong. We still cooked at home a couple of times a week, but those coupons were certainly great incentives (*ahem* excuses *ahem*) to dine out. I guess the plan to encourage spending really worked…at least on us. Contributing to the economy, can’t go wrong with that!

July so far has brought us a lot of rain – A LOT OF RAIN. This is the storm before the calm (AKA the period of flooding before the hottest summer days arrive). To myself – endure and survive, then enjoy!