Wuhan, China
Tuesday, July 15, 2008

In the morning we had another Music class with Dr. Zhou. We listened to many different types of Chinese Operas. The term Opera is not that accurate however, because they incorporate dance, martial, arts, ballet, and lots of other movement. She played some clips from the Peking (Beijing) Opera. Some of the more ethnically diverse operas were a little too high pitched for my taste. We also learned a very popular folk tune called, “Jasmine Flower”. It was actually the song was played at the close of the Athens Summer Games in 2004. It is a beautiful song and very famous in China. When we learned the tune and sang it.., let’s just say our performance did not match our effort.

Just one of the everyday awesome sights in traffic

After lunch we traveled as a group to the Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan. The museum is the best in the province of Hubei. They had an artifact that was easily the most cool one I seen thus far, the Sword of Goujian. The sword was unearthed in 1965 and is as legendary to the Chinese people as King Arthur’s sword. It was found in water, after being buried for about 2,000 years. It was still very sharp and not very rusty. It could still cut twenty pieces of paper very easily, after 2,000 of being buried in water!!!! We also listened to the playing of some of the instruments that we just learned about in class, including replicas of ancient bronze bells. They played folk music but closed with Beethoven’s “Ode to joy”.

The Sword of Goujian

These are the original bronze bells. They played replicas.

Sleeve dance to folk instruments

After the museum we toured the East Lake Park, which is the largest lake within a city in China. It was a nice walk around a huge lake, it reminded a bit of my hometown. The highlight for the group was me slipping in mud and pulling a gainer off the path. I am totally to blame because I wandered off the path to take a picture of a lotus flowers in a small pond. I had a large amount of mud on me. Another testimony of the kindness of the Chinese people was the fact that this happened in front of a tour bus of Chinese people. Instead of laughing they pooled together a bunch of small paper towels and Kleenex and gave them to me. I have yet to meet a mean Chinese person.

Pete, before the fall

Scene from the East Lake

After we returned Dr. Kung, the leader of our trip, gave a night away from group dinners of Chinese food and suggested we grab some western style food. Done and done. A few of us went to a Pizza Hut down the street. Just to prove that crazy is not confined to America, we witnessed a fight over a parking place. These two women had a forty minute showdown for a parking spot that involved shoving, slapping, and what I assume was cursing. So in the end when your “fine dining” is at a Pizza Hut, right outside of Wal-Mart, you are going to see rednecks, even in Wuhan, China.

The highlight of the meal was our waitress, Lusika. Every Chinese kid takes an American name when learning Chinese, as you can probably guess she made hers up. She was student at Hubei University. We stayed after her shift was over to talk with us about China and America. We tried to tip her but she refused. Here is what she e-mailed me later on, (all of us exchanged e-mail addresses),

“About the fee(tip). chinese pay nothing to waiter usually,but if someone who is very generous or rich or come from abroad give fee to waiter,the waiter will very happy to received extra income. For me ,when you want to give me fee,I'm very happy ,too.but ,I regard you as my friends,between friends, fee is no need. Do you know what I mean? In conclusion , I wish you love china, and like me!" Lusika

Lusika and the gang

I mean really. Mark my words China is a force to be reckoned with, besides the parking thing, which WILL be an issue because only a fraction of the people have cars and the streets are already crowded beyond reason.

More photos and videos from the day