2 May 2018
The not so shiny and the not so new
The architecture of Wuhan
Rather than show nice new shiny parts of Wuhan tonight like the last two nights, it was time to show how the regular people live, the people still waiting for their Lamborghini to arrive, the people still waiting to work out how best to exploit people like themselves so that they have enough money to lose it all on cryptocurrency, or perhaps the people whos parents failed to work hard enough to hand them a life of luxury.
Anyway, I wasnt far from the centre of Hankou, the main part of Wuhan, so I doubt I had ventured into anywhere truly 'poor', I was still among people that had real jobs, sent their kids to school, and screamed into their iphones. It was all quite interesting, and I expected much more of central China to be like this rather than the shiny modern conveniences these behemoths of cities have become.
I did of course eventually end up back in a nice enough area to find my dinner, buy a drink, and find the subway back to my room, a bit earlier than usual so that I can make sure I have got all my socks out of the dryer.
Today was my last opportunity to do a load of washing in China, tomorrow I go to Hangzhou where my hotel does not include a washing machine and kitchen. It will again be a long train ride, not as long as the last one, but still a tick over 5 hours. It is also an earlier departure, thankfully my chances of going to the wrong station square this time are very low, but you never know, they may have reconfigured the entire station in the 3 days that I have been here.
Instead of walking along a main road with its nice apartments, I went 2 streets back into the everything happens directly on the street zone.
It wasnt too dirty, the actual road surface and footpaths look like they had been re done recently. The back of everyones apartment is an enclosed tin cage.
The local mall for the less well off is an absolutely enormous structure with boxes and carts everywhere inside, rubbish in piles, rows and rows of tiny shops, fire exits with bars over the doors! I left quickly.
Cheap high rise apartments. This is what my Melbourne apartment will become very soon. I keep reading stories in the news that its going to happen any day now. Any day now all of Melbourne will be the worlds biggest slum. Any day now. Probably next Tuesday. There is no doubt. Any. Day. Now.
Bundles of mystery wires is as good a place as any to dry your clothes on.
Here is the local recycling centre. I quickly drew them up a new waste movement plan to maximise their tricycle throughput.
Restaurant street! Whos hungry?
I diverted from restaurant street to mall world and found omurice. You STILL cannot get omurice in Australia. This is the real mystery, forget about that missing Malaysian airlines jet, how come I can get every type of food in Melbourne including Chongqing noodles, but not one of the most favourite of all Japanese fast food options, omurice? I demand answers.
I also ordered pickled cucumber with chilli, and then blended the two for Japan / Sichuan fusion. Very delicious! My curry sauce was mushroom, but I noticed it had what looked like bacon, could be horse I suppose, but the menu didnt show the meat symbol! Vegetarians would struggle in China.
Who photographs the photographers #2. Another city, another photography school in progress. They were very interested in me photographing them once they realised thats what I was doing.
Here is what they were photographing. I presume they all had zoom. I do not.
Wuhan also has a lot of dancing, I didnt notice it the other nights, perhaps because it was a holiday the dancing teacher refuses to dance?
My journey to the subway took me past a walmart. In China the battle for supermarket supremacy is between French Carrefour and American Walmart. I think Carrefour is winning. Trump has sent over a trade delegation to demand China ban Carrefour.