Today's weather: High = 14 Low = 3
Sunny and clear
With about an hour to kill in the airport waiting for my flight back to Shanghai, let's recap this weekend trip to Wuhan --- the first such trip all school year actually, as my weekends are ordinarly quite busy with stuff and trips are not often anymore.
In the last post I was excessively hard on Wuhan, so you got the 'yin' part of it. That would mean the terrible traffic, crowds, noise, and general chaos. Now let's go for the 'yang', the other side of the coin, as it were. The cheap and delicious food, friendly locals, great relationships, excellent job opportunities, stories around every corner, and an overall sense of adventure that you're truly living in the wild west. I mean seriously, if adventure and gaudiness is what you're after, it really doesn't get much better than Wuhan. This place will floor you. Even a 6km trip down hopelessly congested roads across a river becomes an adventure. You never know if it will take an hour or 2 hours. If you lack the patience but are brave enough, you'll get on a motorcycle and weave in and out of the most chaotic mess of cars you can imagine. Whether we're talking about the ying or the yang, my last post still stands: you have to be superman to hack Wuhan.
I was finishing off my 'hot dry noodles' and catching a cab to head off to the airport, early of course, because I was afraid of the traffic. Even though it's 8am on a Sunday morning and my flight leaves at 12, I take no chances with this.
Anyways I stumbled upon some sort of Chinglish sign on a piece of furniture board that read like this:
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I AM LEAVING THIS TOWN
I AM LEAVING THIS TOWN
MY LOVE
WHERE THERE IS GREAT LOVE
THERE ARE ALSO MIRACLES
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I nearly choked on my noodles after seeing that sign as it basically sums up the whole year I experienced last year while in Wuhan and how I felt right down to the letter. I'll be thinking of the interpretation of that during the plane ride over, but this would surely be a good thing to put in my book -- a pipedream project basically, one that will likely never happen, but makes for fun dinner conversation.
This weekend really got me thinking about the whole last year I was working in Wuhan, and also the year prior to that in the boonies on the outskirts of Shanghai. Both jobs were incredibly tough and needed a survival mentality to hack it through, but they were also full of adventure, daily challenges, and stories that would make for perfect book material. Maybe it can be called 'The Tough 2 Years' or something like that, who knows. It's a real toss-up as to whether Wuhan or the outskirts of Suzhou made for a more difficult experience, but one thing is for sure: I could only have suvived those years by a miracle.
Rewind two days ago to last Friday night, I fell asleep in the posh hotel that was arranged thanks to a local friend Jessie. I met her last year on a salsa dancing course and we got along quite well. To make a long story short, she used a bit of guanxi (connections) to help book me into a business hotel for over a 70% discount.
The next day I successfully crossed the river and regained my bank card with all the former cash in it. Also, I was doing a special delivery of Christmas presents for a former colleague. Things happened quickly as I got the bag from their friend in Shanghai and transported it on the train. We then met at the Gianos (famous western restaurant) in Wuhan next door to the Mr Mai's coffee shop -- frequently hangouts from last year. We caught up on all the school gossip over a delicious lunch.
This is the first time I can remember in my life that I actually finished a trip with more money than when I started.
After that, chatting with the former motorcycle mechanic who used to fix all our bikes from school last year. His business is thriving, thanks to the recommendations he has from teachers at that school. But much to my shock and horror, he showed me the scooter I had sold to a colleague just before bamboozling to Shanghai in June. This scooter went through a serious crash and was rendered unusable -- the mechanic said so himself. What basically happened was that the guy driving the scooter was cut off by a car turning left in front of him, and he flew head over heels over the car. The scooter was compeltely crushed, and he ended up in hospital with a full-leg cast.
That's gotta hurt. Thankfully he was wearing a helmet.
Because of that, there was a big push for everyone to get helmets, and then an ensuing police crackdown on scooters in Wuhan. This was something that we all knew was coming. We had enjoyed a free ride for so long, when would it stop? The police got out in full force around the school and surrounding areas to nab unlicensed bikes. Another former colleague had his motorcyle impounded and later got it back, thanks to a bunch of groveling and procuring the needed documents.
The secretary of that former school undoutedly made the crackdown worse by calling up the PSB and complaining about why they were cracking down on all the teachers riding scooters. Predictably, the PSB replied with, "Foreigners should not be riding scooters" which more or less equated to the secretary informing the cops that we were doing exactly this, and indicating where they should be focusing their next crackdown. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened.
So the unthinkable irony has happened -- it's actually easier to ride scooters and motorbikes in Shanghai now, where the police have stopped cracking down.
Anyways, after that, I caught a bus back across the river for a Saturday night party at the 'Blue Sky'. It took over two hours, but it was worth it -- my local friend Jessie and a bunch of other foreign teachers at a school in Hankou District were there celebrating. It was lots of fun, great local food, great western food, and a salsa dance demonstration as they requested that we do.
There's a lot of other stuff to write about Wuhan actually, more than is possible in a post. But I have to wrap it up as they're calling my flight boarding.
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