So, at the time of this post, I have already spent my FIFTH day at Shanghai, which is my second city (Second week at China). THIS MEANS I AM HORRIBLY BEHIND SCHEDULE WITH MY BLOG.
So I decided, instead of having it each day split between replies, I’m jam them into one post.
So let’s begin.
Day 1 (Monday).
I couldn’t do anything on Monday, as I spent the entire day flying. You can read about my flight: The Flight to the Middle Kingdom (Travel... vlog? Part 1)
Now we get to the proper holiday parts
Day 2 (Tuesday).
On Tuesday, I had to attend some personal affairs (which, I will never reveal.) which were very important. And then after eating lunch (literally just Sweet and Sour Pork because I was in a rush), I went to the POLICE STATION. Because I’m an Australian, I had to do something so that the authorities knows that a foreigner as entered Chinese soil (They do this to any nationality that is not Chinese). And then after a while it was evening. So I decided to stroll a nearby park called “健康主题公园” (Literally meaning: Health themed park). Here’s some pictures.
There was a massive pond at this park, with some structures.
But the main purpose of going through this park was to access a really large mall.
This image was only a small portion of the exterior. The mall had 8 levels.
But frankly the mall had nothing much, so I went to an AI Art exhibition (it was mostly just about AI generated art such as images and stuff. Government funded, by the way. I should have taken some pictures of the exhibition though.)
Day 3 (Wednesday).
Finally we do something interesting on Wednesday. On this day I went to one of the most iconic structures of Wuhan. The Yellow Crane Tower. It was a tower that was burnt down and repaired multiple times and stood resiliently. Each level has their own story about the history. I won’t write about it because I can’t remember also they have an entire English translation so if you want to go there then please.
And this is the view from the top. (By the way that large bridge at the back was built by the Soviet Union)
After that I strolled around for a while and then “accidentally” arrived at **The site of the Fifth national congress of the CPC (Communist Party of China). To simplify, the CPC has national congress (which is basically a discussion of what they do). At this period of time, the CPC is only a group of workers, farmers and others (like soldiers, intellects etc), and weren’t in power in China at the time.
This image is the interior of the Chamber where the congress took place (remember they were allied with the Nationalists to unify China at the time.) Despite this I never thought I would ever see the KMT flag in China. By the way the three images of the figures from the top down is Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Sun Yat-sen. (Sun Yat-sen was the founder of the KMT and bought an end to the corrupt and colonized Qing Dynasty. No need to worry about the words on the top, it’s written from Right to left in traditional Chinese and says "Fifth national committee of the Chinese Communist Party)
There were a lot more than this though, including but not limited to the “War against American Imperialism in Korea” (basically the Chinese helping the North Koreans during the Korean war. It’s worth having a look) and Mao Zedong’s residence (it was actually pretty decent during that time). This exhibition is free and permanent, so if you want to learn a bit more of Chinese politics, you can come here if you like.
Day 4 (Thursday).
On Thursday I went to the Hubei Provincial Museum. It was good because it was a somewhat cold and cloudy day. The Museum was absolutely huge, way to big to take it all in and basically it was about the history of Hubei Province.
Southern Entrance:
Naturally, I wasn’t too interested in learning the ancient history of Hubei Province (I ended up still going to the exhibitions and reading it anyways), I was more there to witness the Bell-Chime Concert (Rough translation, I don’t have an English name). This tradition dates back 2500 years to ancient China, 500 BCE. Hubei Provincial Museum is the only place where you can see this performance.
The important instrument of this concert are the series of bells on the back. You can ignore the others (just kidding, they all have a very long lasting history).
I recorded pretty much the every song, but somehow I couldn’t find it (I promise the moment I get my hands on the recordings I will post them in a reply to this topic. Expect them in the next 4 to 5 days.). I should have remembered the names of the series of songs they were performing. I regret not doing that. I also went to an Arcade in the evening. It was pretty bad and small, and I quickly left. Yeah that’s day 4.
Day 5 (Friday).
On Friday I went to this insanely large Buddhist… Temple? Church? Tapestry? I think it’s just temple. I’d like to make it clear that I am not religious. I sometimes learn and study religion to understand them better, but I do not actively follow them. The temple is simply called “Guiyuan Temple” and it was the first Buddhist temple built in Hubei (built in AD 1678) It looks small on the outside, but it is MASSIVE on the inside (not as massive as massive as the museum, but still covering an area of 100,000 square meters). By the way I can’t take pictures of gods, that is disrespectful according to them.
Buddhists are vegetarians due to their religious beliefs that eating meat is killing. So they found a way to REPLICATE THE APPEARANCE, TASTE AND TEXTURE AND SMELL OF MEAT WITH VEGETABLES.
Day 6 (Saturday, last day at Wuhan).
I started packing my luggage, as I would head to Shanghai the next day. There was nothing of interest but the fact I walked passed a Genshin Impact sponsored Pizza Hut. You can read it here: Truly a collaboration of all time.
Day 7 (Sunday)
Left for a flight to Shanghai lol.
Overall: Wuhan was pretty fun. However the hygiene of some parts of the city can be very much improved. The food was alright, Hubei province doesn’t have some of my favourite foods (Sweet and Sour Pork is Canton/Guangdong food, not Hubei). Weather was mostly cloudy.
I give Wuhan a solid 7/10. Would I recommend it? Yes, but there are better cities.
