It was cold last night, the second cloudless night and the temperature fell. It was warm enough in bed, although my nose was feeling a bit worse for wear. Breathing that cold air along with the pollution is not good.

After breakfast I took off the thermals and swapped them for shorts and my gear for the park. When I exit the community gate the wind cut through me like a knife, its cold today. At the sand pit there are the usual faces, the three old men and the young martial arts guy. The other foreigner Peter has already moved on for a walk.

I warm up a little and then head off for a lap of the park via the monkey bars, do some pull ups and then make my way back to the sand pit. You can do sit ups, pull ups, push ups, there are parallel bars and you can make it up as you go along.

The park is empty apart from us and a few dog walkers and another couple of nutters doing some laps of the park.  Not many people have returned to work yet and Suzhou feels like a ghost town. Most restaurants and shops are closed, but thankfully the Muslim restaurant is still open and so I won’t starve. I won’t go out again once I return home after the park today; Sissi is getting a little upset I think because I am going out every day. The government have told people to stay home and self quarantine yourself; I on the other hand have been going to the park in the morning and then going out for lunch. If I’m around people I wear a mask, although that’s a bit difficult when you’re trying to eat lunch, but I do sit as far away from others as I can and most people will not sit at the same table as me anyway which is great. I think that you can still go out and take precautions and you should be fine.

The problem I have today is that due to the high pollution levels my sinuses are in pain and of course I have a runny nose and I cough a little which of course looks a little suspect when there is plague forming outside.

I still can find a place where I can buy masks and I only have one which is a bit old and I also feel that it might do me more harm than good, but until I can find new ones I have no choice. Maybe this is also why my nose is complaining.

I get bored easily and I’m finding it quite difficult to be stuck inside our four walls. If I was at my own house under the same conditions then at least I could go to the garden and potter around, or go to the workshop and make something or even go for a drive, but here I am stuck in a house with few options.

I do have a pile of books I brought back from Thailand and I have already read two of them and this morning after returning from the park I read another 100 pages of my latest read, a Henning Mankell book called the “Dogs of Riga”. I watched a bit of TV, I have even done some Chinese study and I have tried to write a little but I would rather go for a walk in the mountains which I might just do because it should be very quiet.

I have a visa run in March and so I am hoping that there are no travel restrictions by then and of course I am still healthy enough to travel. I will leave China in June for the last time and I will return to the UK and I will apply for another visa, I think I would like to come back here for a little bit longer.