Mar. 1 - Wuhan

River traffic at Wuhan

Up at about 6:00 this morning to get ready to head into Wuhan.  This city is the capital of Hubei province.  It has the biggest population in central China.  The Han River comes into the Yangtze River here.  It is a major transportation hub, and has dozens of railways, roads and expressways passing through this city, which has a population of about 9.1 million people.  The city is considered the political, economic, financial, cultural, education and transportation center of central China.

Getting ready to leave

It was cold here today.  There was a bit of drizzle at times, and the temperature was about 4 degrees with a wind blowing.  The smoke coming out of the boats' exhaust stack was blowing upstream, the same direction the boats were traveling.  When we left for our half-day tour, it was not raining, but the wind was quite cold.

Entrance to East Lake Park

Fun sign with English translation

We drove for about half an hour to East Lake, which is the largest lake within a city in China.  We stopped at East Lake Park for a brief look at this area (about 20 minutes).  Then we boarded the bus and drove for about five more minutes to the Hubei Provincial Museum.
 

Hubei Provincial Museum

Main wall at entrance

This museum contains the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, an actual tomb that was discovered and determined to be from about 2500 years ago.  Our guide, Harry, was great, but there were so many guides talking to their tours, that he was difficult to hear.  Both of us left the tour group and wandered on our own, looking at things that interested us.  Most displays in the museum had Chinese writing, but also English translations, so we could at least tell what the items were.

View inside the museum

Tomb of the Marquis

There was a photography museum there too, which we walked through.  The photos showed a chronology of China, from Mau Zedong (Mau Tse Tung?) rule up to present times.  Most of the photos were large 20"x40" black and white photos showing the various leaders meeting with various worker groups at different times.  It was interesting to look at, but after a while, one photo begins to look like another, so we didn't take too long to walk through the exhibit.

Lisa, our tour group leader found us some Pepsi Zero (we asked her to pick us up some Coke Zero a couple days ago, so she thought we might like this, too).  We didn't need any more, but took those because she had already purchased them for us.  It is very nice of her to look after us so well.  Today, we started taking some chocolate bars with us on our tour, to give to the driver and the local guide at the end of the trip.  I'm not sure if they understood what we gave them, but they were certainly pleased to get recognized.  We also gave one to Lisa today.  Faith told us that they like our chocolate bars, so we brought a package from Costco.

Where our ship was docked

We were back at the ship about 11:45 am.  I thought they were in a hurry to get away, but I'm writing this at 12:30, and we are still sitting docked.  I wonder if one of the buses is not back yet.  They are very careful to ensure that everyone is back on board before we leave.

We left Wuhan while we were eating our lunch, traveling upstream toward Jingzhou - a trip of about 23 hours.  We are getting farther away from the big cities now, so there isn't as much industrial activity along the shore, and although there are still lots of boats, there are not as many as there had been, farther downstream.

Interesting Ship at Wuhan

Dinner was a traditional sit-down Chinese dinner.  We all sat at the table with a lazy-susan on it, and the dishes were brought to us.  When we first sat down, there were a number of dishes already on the table, and it didn't look like much.  We figured we might be hungry when this finished.  However, this part turned out to be the appies.  We went around the lazy-susan and took a portion of each of the items.  There was a menu, but it wasn't very accurate.  Lucky for us, we have John and Alice (a Chinese couple) in our group, and Alice was able to tell us what each of the dishes were.  They have been a great help when during the trip.  When the staff or others on our tours don't understand what we are requesting, Alice has always jumped in and spoken Chinese to let them know what we are looking for.

After the appies, they started bringing the main dishes out.  This was the part where we decided that this cruise, being their first of the season, was a training cruise for the staff members.  The cooks had some trouble keeping up, getting the items of the menu correct, and getting things in the right order.  However, the food was very good, and if we didn't care for the taste of something, we didn't have to eat it.

Donna's birthday celebration

About an hour in, everything stopped, music started to play, and they invited everyone who had a birthday on the cruise to come to the front and get recognized.  Donna, one of our table mates, had a birthday a couple days ago, and she was the first one called up.  She had to put on a party hat, and received a cake.  Each person was called up, and received the same thing, and then everyone sang Happy Birthday to all of them.  It was a lot of fun.  Donna had the cake cut up for us, and we each got a piece to try.  She also had a piece cut for Lisa, our tour guide for the cruise.

We figured that we were finished, but they started bringing more food, after we had the cake.  Strange, but true.  They brought some curried chicken, then the dessert fruit, then rice, and then some vegetables (yes, things were out of order, but by this time, we were very full, so not much of this was eaten.  After that, we sat around and just talked among our group.  We like them, and they are easy to talk to.

Both of us were quite tired by now (it was after 9:00), so we headed back to our room.  Dawn found a movie on TV (Argo) which we started to watch, but before long she was asleep, and I wasn't far behind.