My first snapshot of Wuhan came as the train slowed within the city limits. It was going slow enough that I had occasion to glimpse outside the window at this city I’d never been to. Rain poured down as though to clean the town up for me, and lent a patina of shine to the tiled façade of the buildings. Other than that, it looked like China: power lines everywhere, people riding bikes and scurrying off to unknown directions, hopelessly snarled traffic and street sweepers sweeping with twig brooms whether rain was falling or not.
When the train stopped, I followed the crowds to the station exit, wondering what Sam, my sponsor looked like and how I would find him. I would be easy to identify being the only foreigner in the entire station, but how was I to find him amongst all the Chinese men there? I had no clue what he looked like. I hoped he would be right at the platform exit, bearing a sign with my name on it. So such luck.
As I progressed through the station I was accosted by porters wanting to carry my bags for me and offering me a ride to my destination in hopes of a fat tip. That would have been welcome yesterday, but now I was on homestretch and I could certainly manage my two wheeled bags on level ground. “Bu yao” I told them – “Don’t want”. Still no Sam. Now I’m getting worried.
I turned around and there, standing maybe 5’6” and looking all of 16 was a bespectacled young man holding my name placard in one hand and an umbrella in the other. Thus I made Sam’s acquaintance. Don’t let his little size fool you, the man can move at marathon pace! He shook my hand, grabbed my laptop bag and took off for the parking garage like a blue streak, talking all the while.
We were looking for a Buick minivan, and ran around the parking garage before calling the driver several times to get a location on him. Finally we connected and loaded my bags up. I was offered a bottle of water, which I gratefully accepted, climbed in the back seat and took my first swallow of water of as we broke toward open air from the underground garage.
Eyes glued to the window I made a perfunctory but sincere apology for being such trouble because of my travel arrangements. I was assured that I was no trouble at all and that they (the driver and Sam) were glad I had made it safely. I still don’t know who the driver was, but he must have qualified at the Indy 500 and had no care whatsoever about his suspension or blowing a tire. He sped down what I suppose were roads, turning here and veering there, never slowing down much. I could not tell how the roads were marked; with no lane markings or curbs they seemed indistinguishable from the ground 5 or even 10 meters away.
The roads in Wuhan are in terrible shape! We are not talking potholes here; I’m trying to convey the image of holes so big that ½” thick sheets of steel are required to cover the deepest part of them! To make things worse, the steadily pouring rain caused a lot of these ‘road traps’ to be invisible under puddles so that the minivan jounced and bounced down the road. Everything appeared muddy brown and defeated: the rain, the ground, the puddles, the people. I did not see any trees. The driver made no concession to the condition of the roads and I found myself being tossed around like a rag doll in the back of the van. It was hard to keep looking out the window, but on the other hand, there didn’t seem much worth looking at.
Wuhan is a very dirty city. Everything is either in a state of construction or destruction, adding a layer of dust and grime to an already depressingly gray environment. Part of the traverse through town involved driving down a stretch of road between two construction retaining walls painted blue. That, along with the scaffolding they were supposed to hide, and rain constituted most of what I saw from the back seat of the jouncing van. Not an inspiring picture.
We took a back road to the college. This is a relatively new campus, some buildings still under construction so the roads leading to it were dirt and… you guessed it: potholed. We passed farmers on bicycles, more advanced farmers on motorcycles, and some pushcarts, sometimes leaving only a few centimeters clearance between them and us. Pedestrians abounded, but got out of the way when our driver sounded his horn. At least here he slowed down a little bit. Approximately ½ mile and the campus stood before us. Finally a decently paved road, but we only drove on it for a moment before backing up to a yellowish-tinged building with iron bars on it, which housed my apartment.
For better or worse, I was home.
No comments:
Post a Comment