the pretty places in wuhan

there is always something interesting to see in wuhan, but it isn't always pretty. over the last two weeks, though, i have seen some of the most beautiful parts of wuhan and hubei. yesterday, duff and i went on the spring outing with our students to mulan lake and mountain. i'll get pictures up of that soon. for the last two saturdays, we have gone with amy to see the spring flowers in wuhan. two weeks ago we went to the cherry blossoms at wuhan university. last week we went to the wuhan botanical garden to see the tulips.

wuhan university is the largest university in wuhan. everyone calls it wu da for short. the full name of our school is hu bei gong ye da xue, but we are known as hu gong. much easier. thousands of people come to wu da in the spring to see the cherry blossoms. university students from all over the city come to stand in front of the trees and get their pictures taken. the cherry trees, amy told, us, were brought to the school when it was young (wu da is over 100 years old) by japanese exchange students. the trees are planted all over the camps. it is a beautiful setting. wu da is on the shores of east lake and the buildings are all in the old, traditional chinese style.

i guess amy's 5 year old son, long long, had a good time with us, he wanted us to come on the next weekend's outing, too. he thinks we look really funny. he will sometimes look at duff and just start laughing. duff often teases him and makes faces, but long long laughs at us without the prompts. he loves to take pictures with amy's digital camera, of the flowers, and especially of duff. he also likes to quiz us on our chinese. he will throw out simple vocabulary and we tell him the word in english. amy, amazingly bilingual, keeps track of the points, and who is correct. long long knows a little english, and we quiz him on his vocabulary.

the wuhan botanical garden in a huge area along east lake. i believe amy said it is 1000 acres. the tulips were in bloom, so we went to see them. the whole place is beautiful, and very well labeled. we saw a knot tree, where lovers tie the new branches into knots as a symbol of their love and commitment. the most interesting was the opium exhibit. opium and drug use is still a big problem in china, and i gather from amy, has become much more serious recently. there was a mini-exhibit with gruesome photos about the effects of using opium. sadly, it was in chinese, and i couldn't read it. the pictures were enough, though. they showed arrests, dead movie stars, deformities, babies with opium related problems....and then the pretty flowers. across from the exhibit there was a cage, inside were opium poppies. they haven't bloomed yet. apparently they are legal if you plant fewer than a certain number. lining the cage on either side were the legal poppies. i want to go back when they bloom later in the year. i love poppies, they are my favorite flower.

this weekend duff and i are going with our friend carol to a city in hunan province known as phoenix. i don't know much about it, other than people say it is largely untouched by western influences and from there we can get a glimpse of old china. we are canceling classes on friday and leave thursday night. and we have a sleeper on the train, yes!

congratulations to mark and helen on their engagement!! mark and helen were part of the big group of foreigners we knew last year, and taught at the neighboring university. they are living in olympia, washington, where mark is working on his master's at evergreen. best wishes to them.