Hubei

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I spent the second part of my lunar new year holiday in Hubei visiting friends. Since all Covid restrictions had been lifted recently it was still a novelty to be able to travel hassle free. However, this trip didn't go as planned but that due to my Chinese friends lack of planning and last minute changes rather than any major events. I had intended to spend all my time in Wuhan but ended up spending the majority of it in Huangshi, a smaller city nearby that is my friend's hometown. I think Huangshi's only claim to fame is that it was the second or third city to get shut down back in January 2020 when Covid started becoming more prominent. Anyway, I've broke the trip into a few different sections.

Transport: I flew to Wuhan with China Eastern Airlines. The airline that had recently crashed (March 2022) on its Kunming Guangzhou route. Now, I am a nervous flyer so I don't know why I picked this airline, but I have flew with them numerous times in the past and it has always been good. Both planes were packed going in each direction. The flight to Wuhan was also flying on to somewhere else afterwards. Both flights were delayed, but not by too much. The airports were both a bit meh, but did have Starbucks so I was able to keep my caffeine levels high. To get from the airport to Huangshi, I took the airport bus. I had to wait quite a while well over an hour for the next one. The ticket sellers were lovely, showing me the bus and telling another passenger to keep an eye on me so that I got on the right one. The bus journey was uneventful and the roads were quiet. I think it took about ninety minutes to get to Huangshi. Within Hunagshi, we used Didis (Chinese uber) to get around, which was very convenient. In Wuhan, I used the subway which was efficient. It seemed really quiet compared to the subway in Shenzhen and I noticed that there were no train guards like in Shenzhen.

Food: I definitely ate well throughout my trip. I had a good mixture of home cooked food, take out, and restaurant food. The home cooked food was courtesy of my friends, friend's in laws, and their extended family. First off, home cooked food. I had a lovely meal at my friend's in laws place on my first day. We had quite a few different dishes; meat, fish, veggies and soup. My favourites were the beef ribs as they were in a delicious slightly sweet sauce, pork and peppers, which had a good kick to it, and stir fried cabbage, simply yet tasty. We also went to another family member's house for a feast of hotpot and other dishes. That was really good too. My friend made me a noodle dish, which was a kind of junk food as she threw loads of processed crap in it, I think its name is something to do with snails, anyway another good dish. Home hotpot was a highlight as we ordered a load of groceries online and cooked it all up in the hotpot pot. It was so nice being able to just walk a few paces to the sofa in my inevitable food coma rather than having to get home from a restaurant.

I didn't have time to eat out in Wuhan, but we did a bit of eating out in Huangshi. The first place we went was Hotel Lamborghini, one of the cities best hotels. Why do high end places always sound a bit tacky? They do a buffet and it was okay. There was a lot of choice and t was fairly busy, but there weren't any really amazing dishes. I find this to be a problem with buffet restaurants. They make so many dishes that nothing is fabulous, everything is just average and samey tasting no matter where you go. I did enjoy the made to order lamb cutlet that we got and the sashimi was nice. Another place we went was a Korean BBQ restaurant. While it wasn't particularly authentic, it was bloody lovely and it was nice to sit around the BBQ pan and warm up on a cold winter's day. Last time I visited Wuhan, I had a great dish of local junk food, which was called 'fry, fry'. I'm not sure if that was its real name or just what my friend called it or translated it as. My friends here in Huangshi had a different name for it and it is a popular local dish. We went to a small place that was a bit scruffy looking and the food was utterly delicious. It was similar to what I'd had in Wuhan but a little different. We had been for a bit of a hike that day and it was the perfect meal to warm us up. For take out, I had one of my favourite dishes, Reganmian (hot dry noodles) several times in both Huangshi and Wuhan. While it was tasty at the different places I had it from, none of them were as good as the place in Dapeng. That's a bit controversial as Wuhan is the home of reganmian. I also had another noodle dish that my friend recommended but I found that to be pretty meh. It was all the things I had in a noodle dish; watery, bland soup, a too high ratio of noodles to other ingredients i.e. the good stuff, and the noodles were too thick so the sauce didn't give them enough flavour.

Sights: This trip wasn't about sightseeing but I did manage to squeeze a couple of places in. In Haungshi, we visited Dongfang Mountain and the temple on it. We went on the day of the Spring Festival holiday where it is traditional to go and pray to the God of Wealth/Money. It was busy but not too ridiculous. I think the entrance ticket was about 15 RMB so pretty cheap. My friend had told me that the hike up the mountain would take about two hours, but it only took about 40 minutes to an hour with a few stops. The path up the mountain was well paved with steps, lots of steps. We were wondering why we’d bought tickets as we hadn’t had to show them at the start of the trail, but when we reached the entrance to the temple, there was a guard checking them there. The road leading up the temple was the busiest place and looked like a real ‘people mountain, people sea’ (the phrase used by Chinese people to describe somewhere crowded), but apart from that the crowds weren’t too bad and definitely tolerable. We spent a while walking around the temple. It was really pretty and I liked all the candles that were laid out on the ground. Some of my friends wanted to get their fortunes. I was going to do it too, but the system was so convoluted, that I gave up pretty much immediately. If people want my money they have to make it easy for me part with it... However my friends did get good fortunes for the new year so that was great and made them very happy. We had brought some snacks with us so had a nice little picnic in the temple’s grounds. There was another part to the temple but you had to pay another, more expensive entrance fee to see it, so we skipped it. We took a different route down the mountain along the road, which was easier on the legs.

In Wuhan, I visited East Lake. I had been before on my previous trip to the city and had found it a bit underwhelming. To be fair to the place, I had just come from travelling around in Anhui, which was completely stunning. This time I really enjoyed my walk around East Lake. The actual lake is a beast and there is no way I could have walked around the whole thing, but from the entrance I had a pleasant stroll in each direction. I liked the direction I went in first as it was rather quiet and picturesque. Although it was cold, the sun was shining and the sky was a pale blue. The lake stretched on and on. In one direction I could see a little bit of the city, but it didn’t have the built up feel like I have seen when visiting other cities in China. There were interesting statues and art installations every now and again. It was nice as it kept it interesting without being over the top. I also came to a nice pagoda style building. I was less enamoured with the other direction I walked in as it was a lot busier and not so much to see. I think this is a different part of East Lake as nothing really looked or felt familiar from when I had been there previously.

General: The weather was the part of this trip that I was dreading the most. The southern part of China doesn’t have central heating even though it gets cold and it is really miserable. I am lucky living right at the bottom of China as it doesn’t get too cold and when it does it doesn’t last too long. I was cold for basically my whole trip. I had plenty of layers on but I hate having to wear my coat indoors. It’s a hill I will die on that coats are for outdoors only. My friends freak out when I take my coat off to eat, but I find it too bulky to wear and to be able to enjoy my meal. My friend’s house wasn’t too bad as they have central heating, but still insist on opening the windows even though it is zero degrees Celsius outside because ‘fresh air’. It’s a cultural quirk that I doubt I will ever fully understand.

The people I met on my trip were lovely, very friendly. I definitely stood out in Huangshi, I don’t think I saw another foreigner in the whole time I was there. I was pleasantly surprised when my friends and I were playing on the grabber machines in the mall arcade and the young girl working there asked me in perfect English if I wanted to swap the toy I’d won for the one I really wanted. Also the delivery driver when bringing me my breakfast had a pleasantly surprised face when I opened the door and he saw a foreigner. Another guy when we were at a restaurant in Huangshi started talking to me and welcoming me to the city, although this might have been my fault as I was staring at him as he looked a lot like a former colleague of mine.

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Comments

[RENanDREW]

Food!
I've been missing the food photos and descriptions in your past few blogs, so I'm happy to see them make a reappearance here. Now I'm craving noodles :)

[Zephyr]

Lack of food
I know, I have being more day stuff so food hasn't made much of an appearance recently. I am away at the moment so have taken some food pics for when I get round to posting :）Hope you had some noodles to satisfy the cravings.

[RENanDREW]

I pimped up some instant noodles that night, but it didn't cut it :(