A couple more things about Hubei province before I move on to more recent stuff. Our last 48 hours in Hubei were spent in the massive city of Wuhan (武汉). It is one of the most populated in all of China and reminded me greatly of Beijing. Two of the most obvious things I noticed that set Wuhan apart from Beijing, however, were the massive Yangtze river (长江) running through the middle of the city and the taxi drivers. The river was pleasant; the taxi drivers weren't. Beijing taxi drivers are generally very honest -- there's a 90% chance they know where you want to go, and if they don't, they'll tell you up front. Wuhan taxi drivers were quite the opposite -- they didn't know any of the places we wanted to go, but they claimed they knew the general vicinity of where we wanted to go and would therefore be able to take us. Each time I got in a taxi, the taxi driver ended up getting lost. One even got lost after I called the front desk at our hotel for him and had the hotel give him explicit directions. Irritating, but not enough to prevent me from going back to Wuhan.
While in Wuhan, we had a "cultural friendship exchange" with an arts university there. The university students were all extremely talented, and performed numerous dances and skits for us. We had been told ahead of time that we needed to prepare a song to sing on stage in front of the university students. What were not told was that we would be randomly chosen to go up on stage and be quizzed on Chinese history/culture as well. I don't do well speaking in front of people in my own mother tongue, much less being tested on Chinese trivia in front of people in Mandarin. Unfortunately, that didn't stop them from picking me to go up in front of hundreds of people to answer a question. I was so nervous I could barely hold the microphone, and my voice was shaking as I was forced to introduce myself and where I was from. Luckily, my trivia question was about a pagoda in Wuhan that I had studied in class, and I answered my question correctly. Doesn't make the experience any less terrifying, however.
Photo 1: Female students performing an amazingly well synchronized dance with umbrellas.
Photo 2: Male student (and two more students dressed as dragons) during the opening performance.
Photo 3: Me laughing (extremely nervously) during my time on stage. Photo courtesy of my classmate Jin Yunmei.
Photo 4: A Norwegian classmate of mine who had the guts to get up on stage and do a Kungfu routine, solo. To the lay observer, the movements appeared quite peculiar.
