Today was a traveling’ sort of day. Lots of bus time - card games, squatty potties along the way and new and exotic bags of things to eat from roadway stops. Our goal was Yichang - the city on the Yangtze wherein we’d find our river cruise ship - “our home” for the next four nights.
Honestly, it’s a long, slow process to even get out of Wuhan! Seems we drove for 90 minutes before we even began to believe we were getting out of the city. In the fog, only occasional groups of skyscrapers could be made out and, as always, lots of lots of the craziest driving one has ever seen. Why this population isn’t trimmed down simply on the highways is beyond us! Yet in ten days, we’ve only see one minor accident. Simply amazing. It’s not just the cars meandering about….our bus flies down the right lane, appearing to “hug” the curbing when ahead are two-three workers sweeping OR a bicycle laden with water bottles comes toward us…and….whoooosh - we jerk to the left to avoid them - and do! But what about the folks in the cars on the LEFT side of us? They, seeming to sense that this immense bus will soon lurch upon them somehow move aside and we slide on through. Have you seen those moves of fish underwater? The big fish swims in the middle of them and quickly turns - the smaller fish instantly change directions and save their lives….THIS IS DRIVING IN CHINA. :-) It truly is one of the most amazing adventures I’ve ever seen.
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| These photos are scenes in Walmart. :-) |
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| Candy. No idea what kind it is, but wow! |
A highlight today was a one hour stop at the WANDA MALL in Yichang and, wait for it….wait for it…. Wait for it….. they had a McDonalds, Starbucks, AND…wait for it…..wait for it…. WAL MART!!!! “Load up for the cruise everybody” and so we did. Ahhh, Wal Mart. Can life get any better?
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| View of Three Gorges Dam from highway. |
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| "Sun Deck" of Cruise ship |
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| The Cruise Terminal in Yichang |
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| Five story lobby of ship |
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| Library....yup, a library. |
Onto the ship at 8:30 p.m. A quick orientation and lots of excitement for that to come tomorrow. We’ll begin with an excursion to the “Tribe of the Three Gorges” followed by a visit to the one and only Three Gorges Dam.
I'd like to share another thought with you before I close. It's fascinating to visit with our students and see how new facts, thoughts, sights and sounds "sink in." For some, processing new information is rapid - for others (myself included) we tend to bring in the idea and mull it for a bit before responding in our own way to that which we've learned. I'm not sure how any of us can quite come to grips with the sheer magnitude of the population centers we've seen. It has ALL of us a bit baffled, frankly. To be told Shanghai has 24 million people is one thing - to be in the midst of them is quite another. To move about relatively easily on the highways is still quite another and then to see trains whisking people away at speeds
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| Our ship lies at the bottom of those concrete stairs.....and off we go! |
of 175mph on concrete highways in the sky becomes "normal." But none of this is normal. Or is it? Oh. Look, Wuhan has only 10.6 million. And look everybody -Yichang is a small town - only 4.6 million. They don't even need a subway as traffic moves so well here! And now, at the end of our cruise, we'll arrive and be whisked easily around 30.17 MILLION PEOPLE. Hello? Sioux Falls could fit in one square block of these cities - and we complain about 41st street! Ahhh, 'tis fun to process all of this. It's almost too much to comprehend. And yet, it all seems so very normal.
China - simply incredible.
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