Pag 4
My obstinate and willful travel to China (Wuhan)
Made from 15 april 2015
I was very happy to discover the Center for Tradi-tional Chinese Medicine. Completely by coinciden-ce: I smelt a particular scent, and I asked my gui-de: "Do you know from where comes that scent?". She simply pointed behind me, and there it was!
And then she was upset: "You want to go INSI-DE?" For the younger generation that is obviously sometning non-dune, but I was excited to do it.
All my life I has never be in one, and thas was a missing that will be endly fulfilled! The doctor was pleasantly surprised that a Westerner did know why what was the serve of the cloth on the table: I layed my wrist on it for the feeling of my pulse.
after the consultation, the choosen herbs were collected and I got at last my own, particular herb medicine. Hurrah!
There are a LOT of Chinese restaurants in every city, quarter, and almost even in every street. Eating is one of the most common activities, pleasures and pastimes of all Chinese. But to be honest: I did not find the food SO delicious.
Therefore it was too much soaked in oil and too heavy to digest. And then that bad habit to hash animal food in pieces and throw them like that in the dish: hashed chicken, shrimps in their shells, ..... That makes eating more to a kind of cautious puzzle work to save the teeth, than to go really through with it. "Why do you ask always the same?", asked my guide. I did know why: a few negative surprises were enough in this respect.
Also pleasant was the playing of mahjong by day in the streets, and the dancing on Chinese music by night in the parks. More "funny" I would describe our visit to the Madame Tussaud Museum in the famous Han street. I could not resist to take pictures of me with the statues of a man I admire, a man I like, and a man I hate: the holy trinity haha.
I enjoy also very much our trips on the water: water is an element that is everywhere and immanent present in Wuhan. One have the mighty rivers the Yangtze and the Han, but also a whole network of whith each other communicating lakes and reservoirs. They had in earlier times their functions as reservoirs against flood, but today they mainly served for entertainment: fishing and boating. The ride with the speedboat I enjoy much, even if I did not scream like the guide, because I did not felt me 1 moment in discomfort.
This concludes the list of things I did like. The things I did NOT like, had to do with the pression and the stress of a modern city, with the discrepantion between the wealth that is exposed and the poverty that is hidden behind the first, and that made the general experience of Wuhan rather unpleasant and with a bitter aftertaste. A modern Chinese town is not a nice and pleasant place to live in, but mainly a hard struggle to survive for millions and millions of people. I will NOT spoke much about that, but let just the pictures and video's talk: see it yourself.
I will make ONE exception for an event that was at the same time typical for how negative China has becomen and was at the same time one of the highlights of my journey in Wuhan: our encounter with the autistic Yang Lian. She was rejected by her parents, but taken in care by her aunt and uncle. She has never get a visit in her life, so we went to visit her. It was nice to see how there is still love in the places where one expect it the least. And it was pleasant to see how my guide who was rather a closed person, florish suddenly completely open by the contact of that autistic child. I still become melting when I am thinking about that.
