Hankou

Wuhan actually consists of three cities (or what they call districts): Hankou, Wuchang and Hanyang. They were consolidated in 1927 under Jiang Jieshi, aka Chiang Kai-shek, and his political party, the Guomindang. Hankou is the more commercial area whereas Wuchang (where I reside) is where most of the universities are located. I don't know much yet about Hanyang, but I will get around to it. Wuhan is much like Chicago in the sense that it is one of China's major transportation hubs. You can easily hop on a train to Guangdong in the south or Beijing in the north. I believe it's also the only major city to sit on both sides of the Yangzi, China's longest river - but I may be mistaken here. So, it's also a city of many bridges.

As is the case with most of China, there is a lot of history in this region. During the 19th century, Hankou was a major treaty port for Europeans who sought to make inroads into the Chinese economy. And in 1911, Wuchang was the site of an uprising that brought down the Qing government and ended two thousand years of dynastic history.

Last weekend, I went to Hankou for the first time with some friends. We initially intended to see the Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuchang, but the line to get in rivaled waiting to get into Disney World or a rock concert. As my Iranian friend has said, "This is China, so there are always lines." After observing the scene, we decided to check out Hankou. From Wuchang, it took nearly 40 minutes by bus and for a Saturday afternoon traffic was quite hectic. By Detroit standards, the Chinese easily overshadow us. Then again, this is a city of approximately 8 million people. Being in a city this big is not something I am accustomed to, but it makes me appreciate the fact that the university really is quiet. We didn't do too much in Hankou though. We ate a Chinese Muslim restaurant, strolled through the main commercial district (note the 19th century European style architecture in the photo below) and then walked to the Yangzi River where we took the ferry back to Wuchang.

One of the things you notice while walking around the city is that there is a vast number of poor people, but also a vast amount of wealth. I've always read that the income gap in China is larger than in the US, but being here it is physically visible. It's not just a bunch of statistics in a news article. Not only that, wealth and poverty seem to be thrown and mixed together unlike in the Detroit area. Given this, for an American who is new to China, it can be a little disorienting to observe this but it is equally all the more interesting for the sake of experience.

I took many pictures during this outing. However, I managed to somehow delete all of them in the process of transferring them to my computer. The picture below is the only one I salvaged.