Wuhan page 2 of Carter's China Trip |
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Lunch was in our hotel, the
lobby of which was a piece of art by itself. There was a ship carved of jade.
Chairs
made out of gnarled tree roots. Beautiful
carved wood sculpture graced the walls. And,
bordering the entrance were terra-cotta warriors. Many of the pieces
are probably reproductions but it
impressed this Midwest kid. |
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Pair of warriors at the entrance to
the 4 Star Hotel in Wuhan. One is far better preserved than the
other. You decide which is which.
This is as close as I got to a terra cotta warrior. When we got to Xi'an we saw the warriors in their natural state, but that space is off limit to tourists. Indeed, this warrior beside me is a reproduction. |
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After lunch we headed off to see the city. Wuhan as a city consists of three cities: Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang. In 1950 the Communist government conglomerated the cities and applied the name Wuhan to the amalgam. Today Wuhan is the largest industrial and trading city in central China. Click here for more about this city, a page with good links to many sites. Another site has a regional map of Wuhan that can be viewed at various regional scales. The city lies
along the Yangtze and the place is filled with large
lakes. It was here that Chairman Mao
Zedong at age 73 swam across the Yangzte River. He did it to prove he
was alive and healthy. I chose to not do it to stay alive and
healthy. Wuhan is known as one of
the three furnaces of China, because it is so hot in the summer.
Our experience does not counter this statement—it was about a 100°F
in the shade.
We got excited when we saw a large expanse of lotus plants growing in shallow water. We had to get photos. Here is one with Lily, one of our hosts from Wuhan University. I lost her name when I lost my notebook but we reconnected when she posted a message about a workshop on mobile computing at Wuhan University in August 2002. Then it was off to the Yellow Crane Tower, the great tourist attraction of the city. This is a very old structure that has been rebuilt many times. Chairman Mao visited the Tower in the 1970’s and recommended it be restored to its glory. Actually there are many structures on the site but the Tower is the focus. There are four floors as one climbs the tower. One floor is devoted to Chairman Mao, complete with videos and souvenirs. Obviously, Mao is more than a historical relic in China. Visiting the Tower is worthwhile. We crossed the Yangtze on the
way to dinner. We stopped for a
visit to a park area along the river. Families
were seen heading to the water to go swimming.
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A number of people had hauled covered swings to the floodplain to sit
and relax. Two persons were
flying kites. One kite consisted
of a string of small kites. The
small kites were in groups of ten, each group in a different color.
In total, there were 130 small kites on this string.
Wow. 
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Our dinner was hosted by our
Wuhan University colleagues. In
many ways it was the traditional meal we were getting used to, with watermelon
of course. Then we got a Chinese
Cabernet (it was not a very good year).
They gave us plastic gloves to hold the Seagull wings.
I was not particularly impressed.
Then the waiter came in with a snake coiled around this arm.
A couple folks had to get a photo with the main course.
Fifteen minutes later the snake was back on the table, served in crispy
pieces three inches long. I tried
it and much prefer it to the Seagull. |
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Our host, Michael and our guide for the trip to Beijing. The orange on green is the snake. It makes an attractive dish. This was after we had eaten. There was no lack of food or hospitality at this meal. |
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After dinner we went downtown to walk through the commercial center of the city. Here they had closed off the street to create a pedestrian area, complete with sculptures that kids were climbing on. Many people were sitting on lawn chairs and chatting. Far more people were on the streets than in the shops. Although it was hot and humid, this looked like a nice, safe adaptation to the conditions. It looked like the way we used to live in the cities of the U.S. before we became concerned with safety and got air conditioning. |
