After being mucked about by Qantas on Monday 25 Aug, I finally landed in Wuhan, China on Wednesday (27th): the scheduled 22:50 flight out of Tullamarine was delayed and delayed (maintenance problems) until at 03:30 they announced that the flight had to be cancelled! So Qantas bussed us to the Citigate hotel in Queen's Road at ~ 4:30am.
My Chinese English teacher contacts (including the deputy Dean of the Wuhan University of Science and Technology) have been very kind to me and have allowed me to stay in one of their spare units close to the University. It's in a terribly old and dirty-exterior building; inside not too bad, but bathroom and kitchen are horrible (I'm told that the Chinese are more concerned with living and bedroom areas!). Apart from the dirty exterior, the unit itself isn't too bad - enough room to swing more than one cat. Not that I've spotted any cats here at all - makes me wonder what they have been feeding me at the restaurants!
There's absolutely no English spoken anywhere I've been and there's no takeaways - I'm living on fruit, cereal, and bread and spreads until I get more settled and comfortable with eating at restaurants by myself. Good thing is that one of my Chinese contacts is always at the end of a mobile phone call - on two occasions I've had to call her, whilst in a taxi, so that she could direct the taxi driver to the shopping mall or to my place (not easy to find - it's a lane off a lane, off the main street!). I'm told Melway-type maps are not available and what is available is in Chinese characters anyway. However, I'm starting to get my bearings to the point where I can direct a driver once he gets close.
I guess there's no such thing as a free lunch, hence, they have asked me if I can help out (a couple of days a week) with teaching writing to level 7 English students who are about to continue their business studies at RMIT. My helping role is to teach them to critically appraise documents and write university business-type critical reviews. Some examples I’ve seen are: "Contrast the positions which Charles Darwin and the Catholic Church have on man's creation", and "Consider the Enlightenment position that one is not born with a culture but is coerced into accepting.........", and on it goes... Sounds like fun.
I have an Australian contact who is working approx one hour away from Wuhan. To date we have visited:
- The Hubei National Museum (including the impressive “Ringing of the Bells”)
- A large and popular recreation area called East Lake (a bigger version of Glen Waverley’s Jell’s Park)
- Chairman Mao’s lakeside summer retreat villa, where we saw his house and many of his artefacts (including his swimming trunks which could accommodate 3 average people!).
Yesterday I walked to the Yangtse river (approx 2 blocks away) and it is “ginormous”: the width alone resembles a huge lake. The river divides Wuhan in a similar way that the Yarra separates North and South of Melbourne, except that everything is on a bigger scale: I’m told the population of Wuhan is somewhere between 8-10M people.
The traffic here is unbelievably chaotic: the only rule here is the biggest vehicle and the gamest driver gets right of way. As you can imagine buses and trucks do very well – this is combated by the nippy cars (especially taxi drivers) who swerve in and out of lanes (regardless of which side of the double lines!). Whenever I need a thrill and an adrenalin rush I go for a taxi ride!
Lastly, what little English is on public display in Wuhan is generally called Chinglish: I went to the main police station yesterday to register my temporary visa and I was taken by their motto on the wall, in big bold letters:
"Enforce the law with civilisation and serve everyone with enthusiasm".
I was going to suggest "Enforce the law in a civil manner and treat everyone fairly" but I was jokingly told that if I did do so they may send me back to Australia!
Regards… Renzo
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