Day 5 Wuhan

The flight to Wuhan was about 2 hours and the scenery from the plane was incredible. We later learned that the bright patches were fields of Canola, grown for it's oil. After it was harvested, the stalks would be burned and used for fertilizer.

Dinner was again very nice, but I began to realize that we were being served "American style" Chinese. There were a lot of locals eating dinner and they had some very different things on their tables. Paul stopped to talk to the people at one table, and we were invited to pick some flesh off of their whole fish. We tried it and it was VERY good. The other interesting thing was that they put chair covers over the backs of the chairs when people had their coats behind them. Our local guide explained that it was to prevent the jackets or wallets from being stolen.

After dinner we went to our hotel -- a Holiday Inn with a revolving restaurant on top. We were on the 19th floor with a view of the city, but it was smoggy and we couldn't see much. We again took a walk in the downtown neighborhood, where there were lots of interesting things going on, even though it was between 9-10 pm. We saw a fast food place that had duck necks and whole squabs to buy through the walk up window. As we were walking, we passed an alley-size street that seemed to have a lot of people congregating and making a lot of noise. There were huge paper flower arrangements lining the street and we finally realized that it was a funeral. The next day Helen, our guide explained that when a person died when they were very old -- over 70 -- and well respected, there would be lots of noise and paper flowers as a sign of respect. The second picture was of a street after all the flower vendors had closed. Some were in their pajamas, cleaning up after a hard day of work. As in Beijing, they lived behind their little storefronts.

The next day started in the revolving restaurant on the 27th floor. The third picture shows the some of the view, which was wonderful, except for the smog. The breakfast choices were amazing and varied. They had complete Chinese, American and European meal choices on the buffet going around the entire restaurant.

After breakfast, we went to the Hubei Museum. The big historical thing in the province was an ancient tomb that had been excavated. An important man had been buried with all of the things that would make him comfortable in the next life. A major find was a complete set of musical bells. The forth picture shows a performance of about 12 students playing the bells, zither, musical stones and some kind of flutes. The music was beautiful. They ended by playing Ode to Joy, which illustrated to our Western ear how beautiful the music really was.