Wuhan

From Chongqing, I took an overnight train to Wuhan. The hard sleeper bunks were comfortable and clean, and I chatted with a fellow traveler whow as in the medical supplies industry. I slept well, and got up around 6am. The sky was beautiful in the early morning, and the mist hung there, like a shroud over the air:



It cleared up after several minutes and several kilometers:



I arrived into Hankou station, at 7am:



Hankou (漢口), along with Hanyang (漢陽) and Wuchang (武昌), are the three major boroughs that comprise of Wuhan. I was planning to meet up with my friend from Wuchang, and so I boarded bus 536 to GuanShanKou (關山口), the stop by HuaZhong University (華中科技大學). As we waited for passengers to load, I could help but notice the bus driver was smoking, blatantly disregarding the no smoking sign next to him on the window:



Can't be helped. Anyhow, we got moving and the bus rolled through Wuhan, passing by many scenic spots.

HuangHeLou (黃鶴樓):



Wuchang:



Wuhan seemed to be a very clean, very likeable city. It was also huge, with plenty of places to explore.

My plan was to visit Wuhan for just the day, as I had a train ticket to Shanghai in the evening. However, it was troublesome to carry my mountaineering pack everywhere I went. So in Wuchang, I found an International Youth Hostel where I could drop my stuff off at:



Inside, the walls were delightful decorated by foreign travelers, similar to many other places catering to young Western travelers:



I rented a room for a day (without the night) for 34 RMB. It was a double, and nice enough for me to consider staying if I hadn't already bought my train ticket. After dropping my stuff off, I headed back over to HuaZhong University:



The University itself, situated close to East Lake (東湖) had a very nice campus, especially for China:







Soon, I met up with friend, one of the random people I met on my flight into Beijing initially. We had lunch and then she took me around to tour a little of Wuchang:





I was impressed - it was clean, modern, very welcoming. Already, Wuhan, along with Hangzhou and Chengdu, was beginning to rank amongst my favorite Chinese cities.

We headed over to West Lake, which was just a bus ride up from the school. West Lake had been compared with Hangzhou's East Lake at times, and while not as famous, it is a much larger, much less touristy lake.





Near the lake, there was a park called MoShan Park (磨山公園), also known as Mt. Mo Park.



Tickets for students were 20 RMB each, 40 RMB for full fare adults. Once inside, we realized the signs were a mess:



For example, it claimed Zhude Pavillion, which honored ZhuDe (朱德), the founder of the Chinese Red Army, was 16km away! Everything else was a few kilometers at most. We walked to the zhude Pavillion after just a few minutes:



Wasn't all that interesting to me, but the pavillion is situated on the first of a series of hills which overlooks East Lake:



We continud on. Soon, I noticed a very peculiar site:



It looked to be a slide of some sort, with a lot of promising potential, but no one was operating the rides.

Next, we came across the Chu Tian Platform (楚天台):



It was located at the top of the second hill. From there, we saw even nicer views of East Lake:





There was a small house in the middle of the lake:



Boats making heart-shaped ripples (as my friend pointed out):



Inside, there was a performance going on with traditional Chinese instruments:



Next, we headed to the last hill via a trail through the woods:



After about a couple kilometers, we arrived at the Liu Bei Offering Altar (劉備郊天壇), dedicated to Liu Bei, the ruler of the Shu Kingdom in the Three Kingdoms period after the fall of the Han Dynasty, and one of my favorite people in Chinese history:



It was there that we noticed something peculiar about the sky:



The clouds looked very peculiar, like a sheet of wool coming to cover the sky:



I have never seen such clouds before.

While at Liu Bei Offering Alter, we spotted a bridge that takes us from MoShan Park over to one of the islands on in the lake. We decided to head over and take a look:





It reminded me very much of Baidi or Sudi at East Lake, except:

1) There was no one there.
2) There were small bugs flying everywhere, due to the lake.

The second difference was probably the reason for the first. Note all the black specs on the side of the bridge:



They were flying, crawling everywhere. While they did not bite or sting, it was very much a nuisance to slap at them when they land on you, and roll their small, slightly squishy bodies off of your skin (perhaps somewhat reminiscent of the bugs on Joba Chamberlain's neck during the bug attack at Major League Baseball's 2007 Postseason ALDS Game 2 between the Indians and the Yankees). It makes me realize how much maintenance they must do in Hangzhou to keep East Lake the way it is - insect infestation seems to be a natural phenomenon around lakes.

We were about to make a run for it when a van pulled up and offered us a ride to the entrance for 20 RMB. We happily agreed and hopped on, and escaped from the swarm.