The City of Wuhan

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 in: News, Travel

My first morning in China was consumed by the search for a decent method to access facebook. For some reason, China has deemed that facebook contains pornographic or inappropriate materials, so they’ve blocked the entire domain. I had to give up to take a shower before Ben arrived to take me to the next hotel in a more convenient neighborhood.

The buses are flat-rate in the city, for 2 yuan a ride (only 1 if the bus doesn’t have A/C). 1 Yuan is about 13 cents. We piled into a double decker “sightseeing bus” and Ben handed me a bit of toilet paper to wipe the condensation off the windows. “In China, you need to prepare your own toilet paper,” Ben warned me.

We dropped off my bags at the new hotel and hit the streets to check out the surrounding area. A quick stop at the Cellphone store and my iphone was fully functioning. Ben showed me around the shopping district, a popular hangout for the young crowd. The large mall was a repurposed government building from the early 20th century. A lot of turn-of-the-century buildings had found new life in this way. The American Consulate in the 30’s was now a community center.

The buildings lining the road were an interesting mix of architectural influences, with levels of style and detail varying greatly from building to building. What really caught my eye, however, were the cracks between the buildings that revealed the squalor hidden behind the facade. I felt like the “New China” was like a mask over the old, but if you peer through the wrinkles, you an still see the true age of this place. People have been living here for thousands of years, it’s impossible to sweep all that history under the rug. The crumbling sidewalks and the soot-encrusted alleyways are evidence that we’re treading on the thin topsoil of civilization. Maybe I’m just thinking too deeply about it; it’s just my second day here.

Ben took me to see the Yangtze river, only a few blocks from my hotel. The riverside was a spacious avenue with well-kept shrubbery, providing an unhindered view of cruiselines and commercial vessels plodding down the river, churning the opaque water. The Yangtze is the 3rd longest river in the world, and where we were, it was over a kilometer across. Most of the foreign tourists who come to Wuhan are here to take a river cruise; actually, that’s how my grandparents came to know Ben in the first place.

We caught another bus back to the shopping area for some coffee. Approaching a fancy-looking building that had an oddly familiar looking red logo above the doors. “We’re going to Pizza Hut?” Ben just smiled as we stepped inside. “Pizza Hut is a lot nicer here than in the states,” Ben proudly stated “but it has a great deal for tea-time, free refills and an appetizer for 25 yuan! That’s still expensive by local standards, so it’s pretty empty, but the atmosphere makes it worth the value” Indeed, the only other customers were a group of deaf people holding a silent conversation.

I bombarded Ben with questions about Chinese language, culture and geography. I took out my Lonely Planet China phrasebook my aunt had given me, and Ben thumbed through it as I studiously jotted down names of places and useful words. I’d never studied pinyin before, but found it rather easy. In fact, I found written Chinese to be pretty simple, considering my experience with Japanese; similar characters with similar meanings, but only one way to read them? Score! Of course, spoken Chinese is a whole different battle; I’m not sure I’m ready to tackle it, but I’m going to have to try!

Ben had told his friend about me, and we were invited out to dinner. The restaurant was the fanciest I’ve been to yet. The more formal the situation, the less comfortable I feel, especially when I’m being treated. As grateful as I am for it, It almost bothers me that I have almost no opportunity to pay for anything! These people don’t know me, yet they treat me like an honored guest… I feel like I have to live up to the name and be respectful and honorable. His friends hadn’t arrived yet, so I asked Ben where I should sit. “Oh, we’re old friends so we don’t care about that stuff, just sit wherever.” This newfound freedom crashed into my sense of obligation, and I slumped into the nearest chair. Ben’s friend arrived with his son (who introduced himself as Andy) and son’s schoolmate (Tom). The boys sat next to me, and started to debate with each other on how to communicate with me. Andy’s dad was a gracious host straight out of an old movie, cheerfully translating for the boys. Their other friend and her daughter arrived later. The girl was very shy, barely saying a word to me, but was very keen on taking photos and videos of me talking to the boys. The kids were all 6th graders in elementary school (Chinese education is broken into 6 years of primary school, 小学, and middle and high school are combined into 6 years of secondary school, 中学). The meal was delicious, and the boys seized the opportunity to teach me the names of the various vegetables that apparently had no English equivalents. Andy then wrote and recited for me an old poem he learned in school, and his father helped me translate it into English. The meaning was sad, but it sounded very pretty in Chinese.

The boys asked me about the yo-yo, and I gave them a short demonstration. Andy then asked if he could try, and I warned him that this kind doesn’t come back. To my surprise, he knew how to bind, and even did a few tricks. Apparently he’d learned from his classmates. I was very impressed, as he’s the first kid I’ve met who was able to handle a zero-response yo-yo. Or should I say 悠悠. We were going to go play ping pong, but the boys were tired and so Andy’s dad drove me back to the hotel. I thanked him and we made plans to hang out on Sunday so I could show the boys some slacklining. I’ve got to try somehow to demonstrate that I’m a worthy guest of such gracious hosts!

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