The 5th April was the Tomb Sweeping Festival. We didn’t have any tombs to sweep so we took a little trip up to Wuhan to visit Cyrielle and Mathilde, who work for Alliance Française in the city. Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province, just north of Jiangxi. It’s an amalgamation of 3 city centres and is a major transportation hub as it’s very central and sits on the Yangtze river. So it’s really big.
I got a train in on Friday night, struggled for about 15 minutes trying to get out of the train station, then we took a taxi to the airport to pick up Bram. This trip took a very long time, probably because the taxi driver got a little lost in the countryside trying to avoid paying for a toll road. But we made it, the weather was warm and we headed out to a bar for a great night that ended in 5am massages at a 24hr massage place.
The next day it was raining and freezing. China really seems to enjoy its daily fluctuations between summer and winter. A couple of Mathilde’s students were performing in a French singing competition so we went along in the afternoon. It was a pretty standard Chinese competition – lots of noise and shiny clothes. But the students all seemed to speak better French than any of my students’ English. It was really interesting, but a little upsetting. I got to see one of the classrooms at their school which was even more upsetting – there was heating, real chairs and desks, and no piles of rubbish/spit/vomit on the floor. Who knew teaching in China could be so luxurious?
The rest of the Pingxiang laowai crew came up on the Saturday. On Sunday we went in search of cherry blossom, which Wuhan is famous for around this time of year. People flock from miles around to see the trees. The campus of Wuhan University is a good spot for it so we walked around in the rain and took generic photos.
The Uni was really nice – it had not one but two running tracks. Like some sort of magical dream.
On Sunday it was sunny and warm. Of course. We went to a park on the banks of the Yangtze.
Everyone was flying kites so we thought we should. Behold The Spongebob.
The Spongebob did not fly well. Or, if it did, we didn’t know how to fly it.
We spent maybe 20 minutes trying to get it in the air and the best part of an hour unwravelling the massive tangled knot that the string had become.
Terry and I went down to the river to have a look but it was not terribly inviting. Here I am by the crystal clear blue water.
Here’s Terry by the luscious green river banks.
There were probably some other interesting sights in Wuhan but we got too distracted by the overwhelming presence of Western food to notice. It was great to see the girls though, and to get out of Pingxiang and meet some new people. Unfortunately the only direct train back from Wuhan is at 1am so we had a typically sleepless night on a Chinese sleeper and nearly all of us were ill for the next week.
Worth it though.
