Wuhan, Parts III and IV

Wuhan, Part III


We came back from the gong factory, passed out in the room and slept for several hours, giving quiet thanks for a 5-star hotel. God bless the Marco Polo Wuhan.


Refreshed and ready for dinner, we asked our buddy John Chen to tell us how to get to a Brazilian BBQ restaurant that was listed in the hotel brochure. He quickly told us it wasn’t any good and sent us to another of his favorites, which was a 20-minute walk from the hotel. Twenty Chinese minutes… 45 American minutes. Again, it was hot as hell and we didn’t know where we were going, so we kept trying to dart into auto repair places because we couldn’t read the signs.


Finally, we came to a gigantic building with hundreds of tables with white tablecloths, and hoped this was the place. And even if it wasn’t the place, we were eating there. Period. Patti was not walking one more step because Patti wanted to take a taxi to start with and Leanne said, “Oh, its only a 20 minute walk.”

So we go in and people stare at us like we’re monkeys in a zoo. They don’t ask us to sit down, they don’t ask us anything, they just stare at us. Finally, they gather their wits about them and seat us a table right by the door so more people can stare at us as they come and go. We are the dinner entertainment. Little children turned their heads all the way around so they could stare at us. One little boy couldn’t help himself. He just had to stop and talk to us. It was a one-way conversation since he was speaking Chinese. It’s hard to explain to a 4-year old Chinese kid why you can’t talk to him and his parents didn’t help a bit.


We proceeded to order and thank God they had picture menu books. However, “water” wasn’t on the menu and we had to go through three servers before we could communicate that we wanted water. Our waitress was so thrilled to know what we wanted that she came running out of the kitchen with the water bottles. The food was really good, we paid the bill and people continued to stare. 


We took a taxi back to the hotel. 


Wuhan, Part IV


Hard to believe we had only been in Wuhan for 24 hours. But 24 hours in hell is still only 24 hours. Little did we know that this was only the gates of hell. The depths of hell was yet to come… but more about that later.

The next morning, we had enough time before our flight to go to one more thing we wanted to see; the Hubei Provincial Museum. We knew this was too far to walk, so we asked the bellman to get us a cab, which he did. A Citroen, which we have learned is not a very good car. This was reinforced  because (a)the transmission sounded like it was going to fall out and (b)it wasn’t going very fast. So about six blocks from the hotel, the drivers pulls over, we get out, he pops the hood and rummages around and pulls out a black piece of something. And then looks at us and says “Sorry.” To his credit, he sets about flagging down another cab. Which took forever. Meanwhile, its 100 degrees. Again. All we wanted to do was go to a museum. It just couldn’t be easy.


Finally he gets another cab -- from his company, which is what took so long -- and off we go to the museum. After 6 blocks more, we notice a distinct smell of burning electrical wires. The drivers notices it too and points at the air conditioner. You know what’s coming -- he turned off the air conditioner. He did turn it back on before we were completely cremated and we arrived at the museum.

The museum was wonderful, and like the Shanghai Museum, it was free. We saw lots of antiquities, including real Ming porcelain that was just beautiful. There was also an fantastic set of 2-tone temple bells that were excavated from an emperors tomb, circa 200 BC. 


And then  we came back, got our stuff and took a taxi to the airport, heading for Xi-an.