Wuhan is where we first met Lydia and where we stayed our
first week as a family. Before our
Journey with Lydia trip, I tried to remember what Wuhan was like. Here are the
images that came to mind:
- People using bicycles as delivery vehicles – carrying everything from lumber to coal, vegetables to live animals
- 4-5 people riding a single motor scooter, including babies and toddlers
- Greyish-brown skies, dirty buildings, and scattershot development
- Taking our lives in our own hands to cross all the noisy streets
- A very, very tired me with a very, very unhappy (and heavy) baby…and Dave being a bit mystified as what to do
Not exactly things that made me think “Gee, I can’t wait to
go back – it was so relaxing!”
Though we loved our time with the Fan family, it was nice to
be on our own again to explore. We had a
leisurely start to the day and decided to walk a half-mile to accomplish Item 1
on our day’s agenda: get Western food for breakfast.
It was the first time we’d been able to take a good look at
Wuhan in the daylight. My first
thought? “Where ARE we? This is NOT the Wuhan that I remember!” Like so much that we’ve seen on recent trips
into China, the city has transformed.
There were way more cars (mostly new) on the new-looking roads, none of
the “pile as much stuff/as many people on a bicycle as you can” themed scenes, and
it was actually rather quiet. And, there was Starbucks - I don't think you have any idea what this would have meant to us in 2005!
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Then there was the architecture. What a surprise – we clearly missed this part
of Wuhan, the “Hankow Historic Concession District”, the last time.
These elegant, built-to-last structures (banks, businesses,
and consulates) are NOT what you expect in a “mid-tier” Chinese city. We were intrigued by it and impressed with
the wonderful job the city has done at preserving the area. The names etched on the buildings, like “Banque
de l’IndoChine”, made us really curious to find out the history.
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| There were lots of photo-shoots going on in the area. We liked the color coordination of this couple. |
Since I’ve been back from the trip I’ve done a bit of
research. Information, at least from
Western sources, of why foreign governments/businesses wanted to invest in
Wuhan is sketchy. Clearly it had
something to do with the location on the Yangtze River and a trade route. How the Chinese felt about it is less
sketchy. A report from the University of
Wuhan, School of Urban Design says: “The Hankow historic concession district
was formed by Western countries’ aggression in China during 1861-1898…” The fact that Chinese people generally were
not allowed in the district probably did nothing to warm the East-West
relations. The concessions were held by
Japan, Britain, Russia, France, and Germany (the US only had a consulate in the
area), but were abandoned between 1917 and 1946 as a result of the wars in the
intervening years.
Anyway, we made it to a less historic place for breakfast –
McDonalds. Sometimes you just need a plain
old English muffin. Well, at least that’s
what I needed after a couple of days of oily Chinese food; others, like my
breakfast companions, needed some Western-styled sausage, eggs, and
grease. :) But, that’s not to say that it wasn’t interesting!
We soon began a conversation with the only other Westerner there
– a Swiss guy named Jacques, who told us he owned two small snack shops around
the corner. He had just come from
playing tennis with a local official, explaining that that’s part of doing
business in China. He told us many
other fascinating stories of how normal business practices are so radically
different than in the West, then took us to his snack shops so we could see for
ourselves.
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One of the
shops only sold Shanghai dumplings – pork dumplings with soup inside. Dave and Lydia were given samples and both
reported that they were delicious. They
must be- the shop sells 1000-1500 of them a day. We parted ways with Jacques giving us his
contact information and good advice on where to eat dinner. After we got back to HK, Dave saw a profile of
Jacques in an online newspaper.
You
never know who you’ll meet!
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