rapidly changing wuhan

one of the most pleasant weekends i have ever spent in wuhan has come to a close. i am sad, but i look forward to more like it. after four inches of snow a week ago, the weather is now sunny and in the mid-70s every day. this is wuhan's very brief spring. i can't remember when summer set in last year, but it was brutal. sun, humidity, smog, and temperatures over 100 degrees every day. fellow wuhan dwellers: enjoy spring while you can. in a few months we will be dragging home from class, dripping, and panting to lie under the air conditioner until it is once again time to leave.

duff and i took advantage of the excellent weather to explore more of our surroundings on foot. friday night arrived with most of our friends out of town. we decided not to venture into town and took off in search of a restaurant. last year, i taught at the same school as i do now, but i did not live on campus. five of us came with a group out of olympia, washington, that was placing teachers in wuhan. duff, nick, jon, brain, and i lived in a house in the red light district right by wuchang's long distance bus station. reflections of that experience could fill a book. i took a taxi to work every day. when i first started the year the smog was so bad i wasn't entirely sure what we were driving through. when the cloud lifted for a brief time in the fall, it was clear that i was driving through a war zone. or, at least, that is what it looked like. all year i watched an area turn from agricultural fields to construction tents. there were no roads in many places. the city had paved a grid of roads before they started to develop the area, but with the heavy construction trucks, they were constantly torn up. we passed through pot holes bigger than the taxi i was riding in. as long as the taxi, but sometime they were deeper than the taxi was tall. always an exciting jarring ride to wake you up in the morning, in lieu of coffee.

china's development is amazing. i am often amazed here how quickly the landmarks i use to orient myself disappear. things change here very fast. the area i drove through on the way to school is being developed into upper-income high-rise apartments. last summer, when we left, the skeletons of buildings were up. friday was the first time i returned to the area, it is not on my normal route. duff and i walked two hours in search of a restaurant called the 'shrimp king' i would pass last year on my way to school. we found the restaurant, one of the first in the area. we had a really enjoyable dinner of shrimp and rice. they gave us a pot filled with about 50 shrimp (heads, creepy legs, and all), with a wonderful sauce. The meal took forever because we had to peel them all, but it was so much fun. duff removed the heads, and then i would go at it. even though mom, dad, and i got a taste of shrimping while in south carolina last summer, i still have no love for pulling off the head of a shrimp.

the area with the restaurant had completely changed. surrounding us were high-rise apartment buildings 30 and 40 stories tall. most of them were yet uninhabited, but it will not be long until they are filled. the street level is full of shops, all fit into little nooks. walking in, we passed these shops and small restaurants. since the apartments are uninhabited, the restaurants were filled with camouflage-clad construction workers and their families. the stores didn't sell a lot of groceries, mostly alcohol and cigarettes. people migrate in from the countryside to work on these huge construction projects. their families come along, and for the year or more that it takes to finish, they live in a camp of tarps and tents, or in the unfinished buildings. last year, i could see the buildings going up, but already there would be cots, and sheets hung as walls, and laundry everywhere. when the high-rise residents move in, some of these people will stay on other unfinished construction sites nearby, but many will move on to the next big project, further south or west, as wuhan expands into the countryside.

the rapid pace of china's development is so often discussed. china's economic growth has averaged 10% a year for the past decade. when i visited china with huxley college in 2004, every meeting we attended touched on the topic. i'll never forget standing at the top of the oriental pearl tower in shanghai. there are sky scrapers and high rises as far as you can see. the huang pu river has the most boat and barge traffic i have ever laid eyes on. also, the largest ships i have ever seen. i remember hearing an estimate, and i cannot account for my source, that asia has 80% of the world's construction cranes, and 80% of those are in china. i have also heard that shanghai has 20% of the world's cranes. wow. wuhan is developing rapidly as well. i can think of 8 cranes just on our campus. and then there is the campus next to us, and the new high-rise developments, and the new bridge.... more and more. i can't even remember the last crane i saw in america.

china is huge, and it is just getting bigger. there are more than 200 cities with over million people. on saturday, duff and i took another walk, and visited what will be urbanized wuhan in another 2 or 3 years. our university is on the city fringe, so walking 30 minutes, we are out in small villages and agricultural fields. there are one lane roads, and carts, and rice paddies and orchards connected with dirt paths. take a bus from our campus in the other direction, and you couldn't be in a more urban area. not where we decided to spend our saturday walking. we crossed over railroad tracks on our walk, and we could have been 100 miles or more from the city. in places, the transformation from city to countryside can be pretty abrupt. already, there is a lot of development in this area, but not urban development. in the little village-like settlements we passed through, farmers are building nicer houses. where they used to live in a small, one or two room, one-story brick houses, they are now building a two-story structure. instead of one layer of bare brick, the houses have brick, tile on the outside, and dry wall within. money is creeping into these once remote communities. we were walking through the area that provides our campus with food. people here still do all their farm work by hand. the xiao bai cai we eat (chinese cabbage, but similar to spinach) is picked by hand, placed into a huge basket, carried to the road, loaded onto a cart (probably pulled by a motorbike, or bicycle) and eventually winds its way to our vegetable market. we have some pictures, and a lot more exploring to do in wuhan's hinterland.

after our dusty walk, we continued our weekend by dining with our friend lindsey and her boyfriend harrish. harrish is from mauritius and is a wonderful cook. he also had another friend there from mauritius, his country-mate, but i never mastered the boy's name well enough to repeat it here. harrish made a green curry and a yellow curry with fabulous salads (with tuna!), and fresh cucumbers, and pineapple for dessert. thank you, harrish! his food is amazing, and a great break from our daily fare. duff and i are going to have a dinner party for our friends in wuhan. we brought spices back from india, rather than souvenirs for everyone. duff and i are about to start experimenting with indian cooking, but harrish is going to help us preparing our feast. i can't wait.

sunday was a continuation of the best weekend ever. i sat on my balcony in the sun all day, reading, and catching up on school work for my 10 classes. for dinner we went to hot pot with a katrina, our wickedly clever chinese friend, and two canadian teachers from our school. now, all i have to do is figure out what lesson i am going to teach this week.