Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

4/1/2005, China trip day 9: Wuhan, Yellow Crane Park, eating hot pot

Yellow Crane Park in Wuhan

In the morning, we got off the boat and took a bus to Wuhan for a steep ≈$6.  In Wuhan, we went straight to the Yellow Crane Park.  It was definitely a place for tourists, but it was certainly interesting and full of pretty things to look at.

Much of it was like a traditional garden, though not as pretty as the gardens I've seen in Japan.

There was also a small museum of amazing rock formations and the like.

Here's one of the rock formations in the museum.

David and me posing in front of a sign made for posing.

There was a big pagoda that was, to some extent, the biggest attraction in the park.

Here is a shrub cut in the shape of a character that means blessings.  There's another one above it that says "thousand".  Together, they mean "thousand blessings".

As usual, David's picture of the same thing is much better than mine.

Same pagoda.  But, notice all of the smog in the background.  It was like this in every big city we went too.  The polution in China is terrible.

Nasty polution in Wuhan.

We went into the Pagoda.  We expected an old buildings with a few interesting things or signs.  Actually, there's a ton of beautiful artwork inside.  I'm not sure if it was old or not.  But, it was beautiful.

Artwork inside the pagoda in Yellow Crane Park.

Artwork inside the pagoda in Yellow Crane Park.

Artwork inside the pagoda in Yellow Crane Park.

A sign on the fifth floor of the pagoda.

Artwork inside the pagoda in Yellow Crane Park.

Artwork inside the pagoda in Yellow Crane Park.

Artwork inside the pagoda in Yellow Crane Park. (photo credit: David Dewey)

Ceiling of the pagoda.  (photo credit: David Dewey)

I thought this little girl was cute.

Eating hot pot in Wuhan

For dinner, we walked around for well over an hour.  Finally, we decided to eat "hot pot", a Chinese dish similar to the Japanese shabu-shabu.  They put a little stove on your table along with a pot of broth.  Then, you order various ingredients to go in your stew.  We ordered thinly sliced lamb, mushrooms, cucumber, greens, and various other stuff.

However, as we were ordering, we were taken aback by the crazy English on the menu.  Apparently, they didn't speak English, but they wanted to cater to foreigners.  So, they looked up every character and wrote it's meaning, without accounting for the fact that most words consist of more than one character and the two words don't necessarily mean separately what they mean together.  We couldn't help but giggle.

We both took pictures of the menu.

One page of the menu.  Soil bean cake.  (In Chinese, the characters for soil and bean combine to mean potato.  So, this is actually a potato cake of some sort.) Also, "the heat fucks", "spread the son", and "small a round flat cake in gold".

As we looked at the menu, the waitress stood there.  She was cute and bashful before we saw the menu.  I think they don't get many foreigners.  We decided we wanted her picture.  But, she was bashful and wouldn't allow it.  Besides, we had just been taking pictures of something we thought was ridiculous.  She didn't want to be part of that photo album.  It took about half an hour of trying, but we finally got her picture.  And, we got pictures of many other people working there, as well as the owner.

Wait staff with David.

Waiter with me.

Waitresses with David.

Waitresses with me.  The one next to me is the one who got us into the picture taking.

David and the owner.

We got their address so we could send them pictures.  (Which reminds me that I need to send thos pictures ASAP...)

And, we actually did eat, in addition to all of our socializing with the staff.

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