30 April 2018
Monday night madness
Exploring the Wuhan pedestrian street
Tomorrow is a national holiday, May day, you have all probably seen the traffic and transport chaos that national holidays cause in China. Form what I understand today was a quasi holiday with schools closed and no one working apart from those running shops and restaurants, those people had absolute chaos on their hands.
Wuhan seems to be a very modern, very clean place, but with a touch of European architecture due to all the areas that were set up ages ago on the back of a visit from Marco Polo. The streets are very wide, and large parts of the city have banned cars, only scooters, buses and taxis try to run me over, well mainly the taxis, I am convinced they see a foreigner and aim at them.
There are still some parts of the city that are due to be demolished, people still live there, but I saw huge advertising screens in front of these areas advertising what was coming soon, yet more malls and huge apartments.
The malls here seem particularly flash, probably because they are so new, I went into 3 and they were all very busy, but still in the process of 'soft opening'.
Speaking of which, my hotel is brand new, so new that maps disagree on where it is. It is on the subway, but its on a new subway line, which also isnt on many maps. I thought finding it would be a challenge, I took a best guess at a subway station and managed to buy a Wuhan transport card (I collect these) board the subway, transfer, find my station. Then I decided to exit via exit A and try my luck on the surface......
Here is where I surfaced. Staring straight at the door of my hotel. I was impressed by my luck.
This is undoubtedly the nicest hotel I have had yet on this trip, and probably any trip since I last came to China, hotels are great value here.
This one also has a full kitchen, washer/dryer, and the largest shower I have ever seen.
I set out immediately on a long walk, I am feeling a little better, and had a lot of steps to get to meet my daily quota. First I decided to visit the Ming vase shop. If you live in Australia, you have probably seen this shop, it suddenly appears in a condemned building, seems to be open 24 hours a day 7 days a week, seems to be a front for some other kind of business because they never ever get a customer, then it just disappears. It is exactly the same story in China.
Walking around here was very easy, no cars, huge footpaths, nice trees. All very likable so far. When I booked this trip I wasnt sure which city would be the winner for 'least developed', Wuhan or Zhengzhou, so far I would have to say definitely Zhengzhou.
Here is a random art sculpture in the fading light.
Once again, if you live in Australia, approaching any holiday you will know that temporary crowd control needs to be erected around pandora shops because of Chinese girls. This PanOOra. I am wondering if its the same thing, or a very popular knock off brazenly advertising with a marquee in the main pedestrian street.
Dogs were not popular in Chongqing or Xian. They are very popular in Wuhan. Out the front of most malls the dog parade was on, with all the ridiculously decorated dogs being shown by their owners looking for praise.
I found an unclean part! The rubbish bins. This was outside a huge standing only food stadium arena dome. Those are full of sticks that used to have pierced creatures on them.
Here is an example of the European influence, this used to be a customs inspection centre.
Now its for brides in fetching dirty off brown dresses to pose in front of with cardboard gold crowns.
On one side of the road, not pictured, is old falling down multi level tin and rubble poor people housing. Rising from the ashes of a demolished suburb, these huge apartment buildings. Fantastic location, if I lived in Wuhan, it would probably be in one of these. I have noticed that in China the new apartment buildings seem to have more space between them than those that we are building in Australia. You would think in China they would stack them closely together.
I thought Jeans West was an Australian brand? Checking wikipedia, 'Jeanswest is an Australian clothing apparel chain store that is owned and operated by Hong Kong company Glorious Sun'. All hail Glorious Sun and their multi level Jeans West store in thematic cube located in Wuhan China.
Part of the main pedestrian street, this is the non busy end.
There were lots of people on stilts doing things, this guys is playing rock paper scissors with children.
Looks like London or Paris.
Pedestrian mall, busy end.
As well as clowns on stilts, there were probably 5 giant transformers advertising out the front of stores. China loves giant robots.
I wasnt going to get into a real restaurant, and I didnt want to stand and eat things off of sticks, so into a mall I went and found the Old fashioned home style Hong Kong diner for some roast pork and frozen vegetables. It is actually delicious, we have the same in Australia. It was about $3, the pork seemed to be very good quality.
Now for the three mall pics, this is the mall where on basement level two I found 50 restaurants and decided on Hong Kong diner food.
This is a random much larger mall I passed on my walk home which followed the elevated monorail.
And finally, this is my hotel, built on top of a mall. There is a door from the 9th level of the mall into the lobby of my hotel. So if you come to Wuhan you can stay here and never go outside, theres at least 30 restaurants and cafes in the mall including what looked like a flash ramen bar.