Wuhan, China
Monday, July 14, 2008

Today was one of the best of the trip so far. It started off after and epic sleep fest on my part, 9pm till 7am. It felt great to get caught up on sleep, I would need it today.

Play that funky music fat boy

The morning class, which lasts from 9am till 11:30am, was on traditional Chinese music. Dr. Zhou Liling was our professor. She is a quite accomplished zheng player and a professor of Music at Hubei U. She described several different traditional Chinese instruments. Along with an explanation the instrument’s history she also played a video selection featuring its sound. It was really interesting. I am clueless about all music, yet alone, Chinese musical instruments, so I was a blank canvas for class. I just soaked it all in. I was most impressed by the Pipa, Erhu, Sheng, and the previously mentioned Zheng. I even volunteered to be the guinea pig and learned a small tune on the Zheng. Dr. Zhou is likely coming to Memphis in September for the one year anniversary of the Confucius Institute to the Germantown Performing Arts Center for a performance. I highly suggest one attends if they can.

Dr. Zhou on the Zheng

After class Paul and skipped the school and headed for McDonalds. Yes it was a weak moment but we both desperately needed some comfort food and the Mickie D’s hit the spot. We took the good old 811 bus to and from campus, a cost of 2 Yuan or 30 cents. The service was awesome and the place was packed. As a note wherever we go we get stared at and usually draw a crowd, if you can imagine that. I guess being the first live American that many have seen and being a…, big boned guy, does have a tendency to draw a crowd. Add to that a loud mouth and staple giggle. Enough said. The little kids in China are so darn cute, one of my program mates stated that she “Wanted to put one in her back pocket and take her home.”

After our McDonalds run we had the afternoon class, 2:30pm till 4:45pm, which was on culture and Chinese philosophy. This was one of my favorite classes. At the present time, I am a bit infatuated with Confucianism, so I greatly enjoyed the detailed history and explanation.

Street scene in Wuhan

You have to check this out.

After dinner we went exploring in what some of my other classmates have dubbed, “The Quarter”. (A reference to New Orleans). The area of Wuhan is across from the university but might as well be from another place in time. The street scene had a Blade Runner quality to it. The mélange of sights and smells were a sensory overload. There were vendors of food that you only see on the Discovery channel. I had some potatoes that were out of the world. We found our way to a spot that served some beer, about thirty cents a beer. We stayed for about two hours and just took the whole scene in. There were little kids, families, animals, and a bunch of Americans. Again, and I can not say this enough, the Chinese people were fantastic. They were always smiling and bent over backwards to help us out. They family that owned the place even got their daughter out because she spoke the best English. We played with the kids and simply had a blast. It was a sight to behold.

Another Great Day!

Them taters were good!

A game of Chinese Chess.

Fernado playing card tricks with kids.

More photos and video of the day