Blackberry Juice: Wuhan - Young Heart, Polluted Living

Wuhan is the Palmerston North of China. High praise I know. Let's do a quick side by side. Wuhan is a landlocked provencial city of only 12 million, hardly the destination that springs to mind when thinking bright lights or tourist hotspots - no great wall, no terracotta army, no big square where tanks can practise squashing enemies of the state; Palmy is also a small provencial city of... ok slightly less than 12 milliion, and also is hardly the first cab of the rank in the must see stakes. Palmy doesn't have a great wall either, although it does have a square, but the only tanks are out of town in a sideshow called Linton and anyway are so underpowered they are limited to squishing the odd sandfly. Both cities are on the shores of rivers: Palmy is on the mighty "oh my gosh this is so scary my heart stood still" Manawatu while Wuhan is on the shores of the mighty Yangzee, third longest river in the world and arguably one of the most culturally significant. Ok slight points victory there to Wuhan. But neither use the river all that well: Palmy hide theirs behind a bit of greenery called the esplanade and a few scenic sheep paddocks, Wuhan has a flat expanse of concrete which they optimistically call the Bund in a bid to leech credibility from Shanghai. They forgot to leech the magnificent colonial facades of that city though. They also forgot the character. Both cities also consider themselves, for want of a better selling point, as transport hubs due to their central location: Palmy has an 'International' airport and Wuhan has a lot of ships passing by (definitely passing by) on the Yangzee. And both cities rely on man-made energy-producing 'wonders' as their main tourist drawcard: Palmy has a few twirling windmills in a paddock and Wuhan flooded 2 million homes and 3000 years of historical sites for the monolithic Three Gorges hydro dam.

So needless to say, your adventurers felt right at home. Particularly Mei, who was in fact home. Adventurers is, alas, no longer the right word. The life on the wilderness trail has turned into a pampered procession from one wedding banquet to the next. The only way to celebrate in China is to stuff oneself (hear hear proclaims Rock), so even the most distant relatives feel obliged to throw a ginormous feast for the newlyweds. At first it's superb - juicy roast goose, spicy sichuan eel, crackling peking duck - but gradually the sight of yet another fried dish rotating monotonously towards you on the table's central turntable becomes first routine, then tedious and finally nauseas. Thank the lord they sell Oreos here.

But after fives days of being prodded on poked as exhibit A in the "look how pasty and fat foreign devils are" show, it's time to hit the wilds again. Next stop Zhangjiajie - famous for its uhm... phallus shaped mountains. I'm sure there's a funny headline for the next blog entry 'up there' somewhere.

Regards,
Rochester Cahan
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