Seeking the Tourist RMB

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One of my students, Jimmy, invited me out on an excursion to his hometown of Chibi Saturday. Chibi City is an hour drive from Wuhan...most of the drive is actually through Wuhan, since the city of Wuhan seems endless.

Chibi City is known for two things: the site of a major battle between the Southern and Northern Kingdom of China in the 3rd Century AD; and Qibu Lake made famous by a popular TV program filmed years ago there by CCTV, the Chinese government TV company. The Chibi City tourism website promises:

In Chibi city, you can enjoy the comfortable of transportation for driving a car you can reach most of place, and the traffic is extremely convenient.

A few words about the battle that put Chibi on the map. In 218 AD, China was split into 3 kingdoms; two in the south and one in the north. The two southern kingdoms united to fight the stronger north. Here in Chibi they developed a strategy to get the North to pull their significantly battleships together on the Yangtze. Then, so the story goes, the South sent a couple of small boats and lit one of the battleships afire. The wind along the Yangtze did the rest. One battle won, though the war was ultimately lost.

Chibi is working hard to leverage this famous battle. Jimmy hadn't been to the site for 10 years or so. He thought it would be a brief visit, remembering a simple site on the Yangtze where the battle took place. On arrival, we found a new, large hotel, a dancing fountain, a reconstruction of what somebody imagines the South's fortress to have been like, and a 150 RMB ($22) per person admission charge! The Chibi equivelent of Disneyland.

Not exactly. We were some of the few who actually paid the admission. Once inside, there was little to do except walk among the reconstruction..oh..and to fire tennis balls out of a cannon (at an additional charge, of course). But we felt compelled to hang around and enjoy the place after paying the steep admission.

Which meant we missed Qibu Lake. It was about to close when we arrived. (Who would have thought that a lake actually closed?).

The day was by no means a total loss. I enjoyed getting to know Jimmy and his cousin a bit better, learned a little more Chinese history, had a great dinner in Chibi City and saw the old Chibi City wall and gates before heading back to Wuhan.

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