Wuhan: Day 2!

On the streets of Wuhan..

It's now our third day in China, early in the morning, and the sounds of the bustling city and slightly angry sounding high-pitched Mandarin is streaming through the paper thin walls.  I've managed to finally get the internet to work well enough to add some photos of our rainy exploration of Wuhan yesterday.. it's quite a magical feeling place.

Yesterday we had an amazing day exploring Wuhan with Leslie- who arrived here a week before us and has learned her weave her way around the local streets with ease, so we haven't even been lost once. Considering the crowdedness and overall newness of this place, this is quite an accomplishment!

The magical buildings of Wuhan..

a sculptural arrangement 

We only had a bit of difficulty find the shop that sells duck neck which she wanted us to try, since it is the local specialty, but we managed to find it by spotting the cheery sign- a smiling (and appropriately neckless?) duck face! They cure the neck, and pretty much every other part of the duck- even the head and feet in this spicy, slightly tangy & sweet flavoring. Leslie loves it, and surprisingly enough so did Jon and I, after mustering the bravery to bite into something it wouldn't even occur to me to eat!

Cleaning shrimp on the sidewalk..

Mangoes sand, Grilled oreos & Cool mango bing. Yum!

Dumpling makers..

Do dumplings cure jet-lag? Not quite. But they're still delicious!

She's cute, but somehow I don't trust her question mark soup.

We also went past lots of curious looking little shops selling such curious items as corn ice cream, gigantic frogs kept out on the sidewalk in bins (to be eaten, of course!), mysterious looking mechanical parts, or the glittery high heels that the women wear on these streets. Between the piles of trash, mud, loose bricks and slick mud it's pretty amazing that they are so motivated to look delicate & feminine that they put up with hobbling around painfully with muddy toes!

A lovely apartment in one of the old districts.. very miyazaki feeling!

Leslie & Jon by a curious garden sculpture

Another incredibly shocking thing about being here is realizing what severe pollution actually feels like. We hear about it all the time, and it's very easy to talk about how bad it is that humans are polluting the earth. But it takes on a whole new dimension when you look out from Christy's apartment window and the city is clothed in what would be a dreamy looking fog in San Francisco, but is actually just the mid-day pollution. Or walking around in the streets and realizing the air has not only a taste, but a texture. Christy has mentioned many times about how bad it is and how it's the norm here for people to have respiratory problems. But it's so hard to imagine how oppressive bad air quality can be until you experience it- and I've only felt three days of it!

from Christy's apartment, around 7am

 I now understand why she is so excited to get back home to Florida, and nearly tears up from emotion when seeing a rare patch of blue sky..

They recently demolished the land behind where she lives..

I try to look on the bright side though, so the bright side of this pollution is that you can almost imagine it is fog, in which case it is quite beautiful at filtering light and gives the city a very dramatic feel. Last night we hung out for a bit on the roof of Christy's apartment, which is above he 32nd floor. The city looked surreal- thousands of tiny lights beaming through the mist (well, the pollution..) and the buildings- which must've looked very futuristic indeed in the 1970s & 80s style stand patiently, but rather dejectly under 20 years of what appears to be grime, fire damage and haphazard wrecking balls operated at night under the direction of flashlights (Christy has actually observed this!). There is a certain beauty to the resilience of it all- the fact that in spite of everything, life goes on here and people are on the streets smiling, laughing, eating, trying to make a better life for themselves, just like all the rest of us..