Wow. Oddly enough, the domestic air flight was not that bad. We piled into this old 737 and packed into our seats -- they must have compressed all the seats forward a bit to fit a few extra rows in, because there was just enough space for me to sit down without my knees hitting the seat in front of me. The taller folks were really compressed -- had to either spread their knees out or press them into the back of the seat in front of them.
Takeoff was smooth and normal. A little turbulence but once we hit our cruising altitude it was smooth flying. We had been warned not to eat whatever meal they served us, but they just gave us prepackaged rice crackers and nuts, which were quite good. Landing was better than Tokyo. One of our instructors said that China Airlines had taken so much flack that they'd had to clean up their act. I guess they must have, since the flight was really no big deal.
Wuhan is actually a pretty cool city. I was really worried because the guide in Hangzhou described Wuhan as one of the ``Three Furnaces'': the three hottests and most humid cities along the Yang Tze river. (One of the others is Nanjing, but I don't remember the third.) But humidity is relatively low and it's been very cool. It got quite cold last night -- had to wake up, turn off the A/C, and look for another blanket.
Wuhan has a population of 7 million or so but it seems pretty spread out. Pollution doesn't seem that bad and the city is cleaner than Shanghai and Suzhou. Lots of lights and the stores are open late. Nice.
We went out walking last night and found a whole block devoted to video and computer game arcades. They actually had rooms where you could sit at a networked PC and play Warcraft and Command & Conquer against other people for a fee. Neat. I thought about going in and asking if all those copies of C&C were pirated or not, but I don't know any Chinese and I wouldn't want to spark a trade war. (Imagine the headlines... ``Gweilo starts streetfight in Wuhan over software... Beijing decries US covert anti-piracy actions...'')
Several martial artists from Hunan that our head instructor knows have met up with our group and are tagging along to Wudang Mtn. to see the demonstration. One of them is a big Eagle Claw practitioner -- apparently he's famous: been in 30-some films, always as a bad guy. For a Chinese guy, his forearms are massive. I'll bet he could rip your face... clean... off...
Ahem.
At the buffet for breakfast this morning, that John Denver song ``Country Road'' suddenly came over the stereo system. Huh? I sure wasn't expecting to hear that here...
So now we've just started moving on our 8-hour train ride. I was hoping we'd go faster than 40mph this time but that may not be likely. We're heading up into mountainous country, so there will probably be more curves and such.
Ah, the wonderful outhouse smell of train bathrooms. It wafts through the entire train just when you sit back and think you can relax for a second. Next time I'll bring a can of Lysol along.
We just had lunch in the dining car. It was not nearly as bad as it could have been, I suppose. The food was okay -- it was all recognizable, at least. I was just bothered by all the flies and the grime all over the ceiling fan. Didn't make for the ideal dining experience. I shouldn't complain -- things will probably get worse in the next few days.
It's been a very long train ride. The sun is starting to get low and I still don't even know how close we are to our destination. It doesn't bother me that much -- this is some of the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen. The fields are so thick with green that you need to look almost straight down on them to see the water underneath them and realize that they're rice paddies. The hills are low and rolling, with spindly, puffy trees of some sort. In the afternoon you could see farmers scattered here and there through the fields as far as you could make out, all wearing those straw hats and often nudging yaks along. We're starting to get up into the hills a bit, it looks like, but either we're not very close to our destination yet or it's not as far up in the mountains as I thought it would be. It's incredible, though -- the terraced rice paddies creeping up sides of the tiny valleys that these little villages are tucked in to. It actually reminds me a bit of Colorado for some reason, although there are no giant Rockies looming in the background -- the hills just get gradually higher higher, spreading out until you can't see them through the haze. The buildings are old and a bit worn down, red brick houses with battered roofs that just seem so familiar.
Another Train View.
We're going through a long, long tunnel now... must be a couple miles or something, because we've been in here a long time... Man, and I thought the Eisenhower tunnel was long...