Ah, rabies. My old friend. But we'll come back to that.

For National Day, Ella and I decided to take a trip to a place we've always heard about, but never been. In fact, way back in Thailand-days, we were discussing where to move in China. And one of the places on that short list was Wuhan. Because we had both heard lots of nice things about it, it's pretty centrally located, it's pretty consistently warm year round, and... well, that's all I guess. So off we went to have a look.

To start, Wuhan is a city divided by the Yangtze River, and it's pretty much in the dead center of the populated parts of China. It was where the Wuchang Uprising happened, which started the downfall of the Qing Dynasty, and establishment of the Republic of China (the one now controlling Taiwan - not the mainland People's Republic of China). Other than that, it has a long history as sort of the "hub" of China, Silk Road, railroads, yadda yadda.

But what is there to do there? Well, we didn't much know ourselves, so this would be a trip of discovery. It's about a 4 hour train ride from Shanghai, and we arrived around dinner time. Our hostel was in the heart of a massive outdoor market/pedestrian area, truly the largest I've seen outside maybe Taiwan's Keelung's Temple Market. Blocks and blocks of food, shops, and more food, I don't think you need to go anywhere else to get any Chinese cuisine you want. Western though is another story, and throughout this trip I was surprised at how few western brands there are in Wuhan. And I don't mean like, White Castle, I mean like anything. There aren't even many convenience stores. It was a bit of shock coming from Guangzhou and Shanghai, where you can't walk for more than 30 seconds before passing another place to get a drink. It's more of a reminder of what I remember China to be when I first moved here, that if you don't know how to find what you want, you're going to be pretty miserable. Like, coffee. Good luck with that. But we did eat a lot, from Wuhan's famous Re Gan Mian (Hot and Dry noodles - with peanut sauce and pickled vegetables) to the not so famous Cheese and Sausage Stick (which was amazing, btw). Overall I found Wuhan's food to be really plain. Not that it isn't made well, just that their dishes tend to stick to very few ingredients, with one of them a starch of some sort. Like, brown sugar cakes - literally just a rice cake with brown sugar on it. Or Chinese donuts (you tiao). It's just fried dough. They do what they do well, but I'd prefer something with more variety.

But anyway, for the first stop we went to the Hubei Provincial Museum, which according to the internet is one of the better museums in China. Now, this is now the 3rd "one of the best" provincial museum I've been to (Guangdong and Hunan before this). I gotta say... provincial museums, I'm not feeling you. The Hunan one in Changsha was probably my favorite of the three, but nothing there blew me away. And the Guangdong one is sort of special because Ella reciprocally-proposed to me there. Hubei's... meh. They have a nice sword. I liked the sword. The coffee shop on the roof was nice. Other than that, skip it. Internet, you have lied to me.

BUT, next to the Hubei Provincial Museum is the Hubei Art Museum. The internet had glowing reviews for it, including "Not worth the 10 yuan", "Maybe stop by if you're passing, but otherwise skip it." "So-so museum". Internet. You sit on a throne of lies. The Art Museum is waaaay better than the provincial museum, and I hate art. This place had cool art. This is like, top 5 art museums I've been to, and per Ella's interest in them, I've been to a lot. I actually took pictures of art. Do you know how rare that is? Also, it wasn't 10 yuan ($1.40) to get in, it was free. So, definitely go to the Hubei Art Museum, and skip the Provincial Museum. Unless you're super into old swords, I guess. It was a nice sword. But not worth the trouble to see only that.

So, next we went to a place that could only exist in China. This mall called "City of the World" decided that they have way too much money lying around, and that it's high time they live up to their namesake. Maybe you are thinking "Oh, it's sort of like Epcot, with little touches of different regions, and samples of the world's cuisine." And you would be wrong. By "world", they mean Europe. And only a few parts of Europe, possibly because they got that far before finding out how ridiculous this is. But they managed to finish a Little Italy, Little Spain, Little France, and Little Germany. It sounded just bizarre and worthy enough to take a look. What would follow is one of the weirdest things I've seen in China. (until we go to Fake Paris near Shanghai - look for that in the future) It was the uncanny valley of western culture. It was like, 99% there, but that 1% missing just made it seem like something was... off. Maybe it was The Cathedral of the Burger King, I dunno. Then again, maybe it was the T-rex on top of the German Beer Hall. While I applaud their grand vision, the thing that sullied it was there was not a single damn foreign food restaurant in the entire place. We looked. In person, and on the internet. The closest was a super fancy French restaurant about half a kilometer away, in a mall. That German Beer House? Full of noodles, rice, stinky tofu, and milk tea. Why? I don't know. Such a missed opportunity, but then again, the fact that so much effort was put in to miss the opportunity makes it unique and special. I will miss you, weird Europe. But you probably want to see more pics, so here they are.

The Cathedral of Saint Burger

Keeping with the weirdness, another site was a temple. I know, I know. "You've seen one temple, you've seen 99% of them.", says I, many times. Well, I suppose this was the 1%. It's a Buddhist Temple that was made to look like a Christian church. Why? I don't know. I've given up on Wuhan making sense, they have this weird thing with making things look European somehow. Even the buildings in the city have a sort of European vibe to them, which they actually pull off in a way. But this temple... whew, where to begin? It was made in what looks like an old parking lot of a working class neighborhood, but there were still a fair number of people there. Mostly posing for photos. Still, it had a kind of "half done" sort of look. It is worth it for the photos, but not much else.


If you look on any travel guide of Wuhan, the #1 attraction in the city is Huang He Lou, or Yellow Crane Tower. No doubt your search will show countless images of a beautiful, ancient looking Chinese Pagoda, maybe lit up at night, looking all majestic and cool. What they don't show you is that to get that photo, they had to shoo about a million people out of a place the size of a Starbucks. In truth the $10 ticket gets you more than the tower, it gets you access to a park. oooOOOooo, a park! With tourist things to buy! And overpriced food! And well, we didn't go. I'm not entirely surprised, it being national holiday, but I've been to other Chinese pagodas before. Leifeng Tower in Hangzhou, for example. It's taller, prettier, and has a great view of West Lake. Huang He Lou has a view of the back of someone's head, most likely. But otherwise a Chinese city. Anyway, we saw it from a distance, which seems good enough. Cool architecture.

Other than that, a lot of our time in Wuhan was just checking out the city. As mentioned earlier, they have a lot of European inspired architecture. I don't know if that's a leftover from past colonial missions, or they just want to be cool, but it looks a little different from other Chinese cities. Around the cobblestone street area, there's a lot of little restaurants, and even a couple of cafes. Now several days without coffee, we stopped by one to get a very overpriced but very much needed coffee. And this is where our stupid story gets interesting. This cafe had a lot of cats. Like, six? Seven? As we were enjoying the break, one cat nearby was being very playful. So I wagged my finger around, and he decided that it was a thing to be destroyed, as cats do. I didn't notice until later, but he had actually gotten me to bleed a bit. But I just washed it out and went on with my day. Then Ella mentioned the "R" word. This had not crossed my mind, but I thought more about it, and it seemed quite ridiculous. First, I had a rabies shot 5ish years ago (stupid monkey, I will never forgive you). They supposedly last 5-10 years. But more importantly, the owner knew these cats, it wasn't really a bad cut, I washed it out, cats rarely have rabies, and it's usually from a deep bite. But it's one of those things that when you get in your head, it gets really, really hard to push the "What if... death?" out. I was reminded of the time when we had just left the house for our trip to Indonesia, and Ella said "I wonder if I closed the refrigerator door." THANKS, ELLA. But really, I'm glad she said something, just to know we're looking out for each other. Anyway, I've just been dying to use my new health insurance, so off we went to a clinic to get a rabies and tetanus shot. The poor nurse working there at night during national holiday, who was probably straight out of med school and drew the short straw, said Wuhan actually has a bit of a rabies problem now, so I guess it's for the best. Plus now I'll be all up to date, and I shouldn't need many shots this time.

BUT, here's where the story gets really dumb. First, this nurse wanted to give me one of the shots in my ass. Huh. Well, that's new. Fortunately, the clinic we were at was pretty quiet, because this trip has been full of us passing people in the street and me getting stared at, with people whispering "psst pssst foreigner psst psst" under their breath. So I am glad my butt did not become the center of attention for the 5th People's Village Clinic of Wuhan. Second, and far more destructive, is that I am under strict orders to not have zero alcohol and only light caffeine for one month. I find this instruction dubious at best. I mean, I can understand not drinking a bottle of vodka while getting the shot. But caffeine? A beer once a week? When I go to another, proper hospital for a follow up in Shanghai, I have promised Ella and myself that I will follow whatever the doctor says. Ella is so wonderful, she said she'd join me in this. Let's see how long that lasts, for our joint sanity.

I feel official "settled" now.

I'm going to bore you a bit and talk to future me about our new life in Shanghai (with photos!). To sum it up, living next to "things" is a game changer. I think one of the things I didn't like as much in Guangzhou is that the only place in walking distance was a supermarket and a few local restaurants - and even that was about 15 minutes. What a change to here, with so much being a few minutes walk. Farmers markets, western and local restaurants, banks, Carrefour (like Walmart), movie theater, malls (they just opened another yesterday, so now there are four right next to each other), and two metro stations. One of the lines has a lot of the popular sights and nightlife of the city, and the "fun stuff" starts just 3 stops up. So this is definitely the closest I've lived to the heart of a large city, and the closest I've lived to a metro station. I think it's not a secret how much I like metros, so the only way things could be improved is if I could move my work and home on top of one. (or in one?) But for now, I thought I'd give you a tour of our neighborhood. There's so much around that I feel we still have a lot to discover, but at least you'll get an idea of what "regular life" in Shanghai looks like.

Outside our door

Our street

One of the malls

Footbridge from the mall to metro

Not on the commute, to Ella's disappointment.

Speaking of work, I have my commute worked out. I've walked once or twice, but it's about 25 minutes. Then I took the bus, which took about 15. I found out it's much faster to take a bike. China is pretty big on these dockless bikes, where you scan a QR code on the back and it unlocks. They cost 1.5 yuan per rental (20 cents or so?), though you can buy packages to lower the cost. At first I was a bit nervous about riding a bike, as I hadn't done it consistently since Hangzhou. But in Shanghai it feels a lot safer. They have dedicated bike lines, and I'm by no means the only one using them. I'm starting to recognize people who leave around the same time as me, so I like to think we're the most uncool bike gang in the world. I never thought I'd be one of "those" people who bike to work, but here I am.

Speaking of work, work is... not what I expected. I thought working at an IB school, everything would be run professionally, I'd be the newbie teacher, and at the start I'd work my butt off to catch up to everyone else. Nothing could be further from the truth. Essentially, it's not that much different from any other school I've worked at, minus a bit more collaboration between the foreign and local staff. While I'm not the only new IB teacher, during an icebreaking game I was surprised to find I'm the 2nd most experienced in our department. But it's good in a way, not unlike my situation in Thailand - people just sort of assume you're doing the work and leave you alone. I like it, but I can understand how some (such as Ella, for example), would find the lack of instruction (and confusion on where to get things) unnerving. One nice thing is that I only have two classes, whom I each see 6 times a week. This is the first time I've gotten a chance to really know my students well, and although there's more lesson plans to juggle, it's overall less and more satisfying work. I can't say I'll be there for 10 years, but right now I like it. Let's see how that changes over the next few months.

This is the part where I talk about all the amazing sights we've seen in Shanghai. I'm sorry to say there's not much to talk about. In truth, we've been super busy socially. We've been hanging out with two couples a lot, who are all just stand up folks. The six of us are new to Shanghai as well, so we're all trying to figure out where the cool stuff is. For example, we recently went to a stand-up comedy event, which surprised me at how funny it was. We did that once before in Bangkok, but I felt this time was even better. Other than that... lot of malls, eating, and drinking. We even had a pal from Guangzhou stop by, which was a very welcome surprise. However, I do want to mention something. I noticed one of our new couple friends, who-shall-remain-nameless-to-potentially-avoid-embarassment, takes photos of their food. Now, I admit I'm not on the Instagrams. I don't know if that's the culture there. But should I be taking photos of my food? I suppose it is different than what you get in the US. I just can't think that anyone would care. If you would care, give me a shout, I'd be happy to oblige.

We did explore a little bit though. One stop was Longhua Temple, which I just thought we'd see because it was a metro station wee passed. It's a nice stop if you're in the area, not worth a trip. It does have a lot of stray cats though, so it was a big hit for Ella. The more interesting temple option is the Jade Temple. While I didn't really see any jade, it is a remarkably well preserved (or more accurately, renovated) temple that wouldn't be out of place in a kung fu movie. I feel this is worth a trip if you're a visitor to Shanghai, and maybe if you're a local. Although as I've said many times before, "If you've seen one temple, you've seen 99% of them." Still, it's been a while, so it was a nice distraction. Next to the temple was a weird sort of arts district, which had an exhibit on technology. I don't really know what a live display of German flight logs has to say about art, but... well, it's there I guess? They did have these cool AR displays though, so that's more my speed.

Another place we went to was the Shanghai Movie Museum, which is pretty cool despite me not knowing any of the movies or actors. Normally it's 60 yuan ($9), which is probably not worth it. But they had a discount week of 30 yuan ($4), which is worth it. It's not exactly huge - you can blow through it in about 45 minutes. But they did have some interesting stuff. For starters, when you walk in there's a light up red carpet complete with the sounds of an adoring crowd, which basically made the whole thing worth it. But in addition to that, there was a lot of stuff that you can appreciate even if you don't know Chinese cinema. Things like video cameras from the early days of movies, props, projectors, and film development. They also had some interactive stuff for the kids (and me), demonstrating stop motion and other physical animation stuff. Worth it if you're strapped for stuff to do, probably not if you're just here briefly. But because I live to embarrass Ella, I took a video of her there which I am quite proud of.

Anyway, next week is National Holiday, which means a week off of work. Ella and I have tickets to a place neither of us have been before, so you'll have to wait for the next update to see where that is.