Warsaw to Bangkok

The city of Wuhan (properly pronounced Wooo-haaaan, got you all in check!) is an artificial city. It is actually three cities glorped into one. Wuchang is on the east side of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze). On the west side, seperated by another river, the Han Jiang, are Hankou and Hanyang. Hanyang is the Staten Island of Wuhan and we shall speak of it no further.

The Chang Jiang at this point is a good kilometre wide, and with smog being so thick you can barely see you hand in front of your face, it is not easy to even see Wuchang from Hankou and vice versa.

The streets were great for walking. Nobody harassed me at all. The variety of street food was impressive. Each stand and stall had its own dish. Fried dough with meat and onion stuffing is a great breakfast, especially when taken with hot soy milk (the only way to drink soy milk). Out front of the Technical College, an entire street of food vendors awaits, all with unique offerings.

The main reasons for visiting Wuhan were to arrange onward transportation and to do a little beerhunting. The first taken care of (so I thought), I proceeded with the latter. I was searching for the Kaiwei Beer House. This brewpub is a Wuhan institution, but I couldn’t find it for the life of me. I had an address, but the Chinese don’t concern themselves much with such matters as street numbering, and when they do they don’t take the exercise very seriously, scattering numbers randomly on buildings as if they were thrown to the wind.

Finally, good beer!
Kaiwei was even indicated on my guidebook map. I decided, though, that if such a place still existed, the map was wrong, and went into a nearby hotel to get the real story. Of course, it was wrong and when I walked into the hotel I found myself in a loud, bright hotpot restaurant. With a brewery in the back!

The beer was quite good. The concept of popping into a place for a couple of beers but no food is unknown in China, so they were quite relieved when the brewer took me into the brewhouse to drink back there and talk about the beer business. Kaiwei is now a large company with five outlets in Wuhan and a further three or four in other cities in the south of China. He advised me to pay a visit to China’s brewing school, located at the Technical College in Wuchang. Wuchang? After just 14 hours, I was already a Hankou snob. Wuchang indeed. Why don’t I go to Dartmouth while I’m at it?

But go I did. The brewing school is a German joint venture. In practically every country I’ve been to, someone has asked me “Sprechen sie Deutsch?” I’m going to have to add this to the list of languages for which I have a pipe dream of learning, I guess. It took a while to scrounge up enough words of English amongst the staff to get some basic information and bottles of their delicious Weizen to go.

Exiting Wuhan
returned to Hankou, collected my bag and went to the train station. I don’t mess around with Chinese train stations – I immediately grab someone to help direct me to the right place. According to this person, the right place was the Wuchang train station! They’re not supposed to sell Wuchang tickets at the Hankou station, but they did! I’m pretty sure nobody explained it to me at the time, either. I did not have time to get to the Wuchang train station.

I kept a level head, though. I only freak out when all hope is lost and at this point I knew I had to work hard to find a solution. I was led to the ticket office. They pulled me to a side window. They worked on the problem, and while they were doing this, several pushy Chinese not only lined up behind me (the window still said closed), a few decided to line up in front of me. Hey, who cares that someone is at the window and being helped? When they were summarily dismissed, it put a not-so-secret grin on my face.

Still, at first the clerks could only offer me the same train the next day. Wuhan is not a cheap place to stay, so I checked about an upgrade to first class on a later train (second class was apparently sold out) in the hopes it would be cheaper than staying the night. No such luck. But could I please just take the train tomorrow? I hung my head in distress. It was a little overdramatic, yes, but I have little more than body language at my disposal here. The phrasebook never has the phrase I need. They took me to the VIP room and twenty minutes later produced a ticket for the train later that night. The same train I’d originally requested and for the past 36 hours had been categorically sold out!

So all was good and the next day I arrived in Yangshuo, a backpacker hangout one hour south of Guilin, in Guangxi province.

Tags: China, Travel

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