Ok back to Journal. I think I got to make my journal a little formal as my mentor will be reading it as well.
Here goes the agenda of the day:
i) Hubei Museum (湖北省博物馆)
ii) Lunch @ Shou Yi Yuan Xiao Chi Jie (首义园小吃街)
iii) Huang He Lou - Yellow Crane Tower (黃鶴樓)
Our tour guide of the day:
Wang Jie (a very very good, detailed and knowledgeable tour guide)
We boarded the bus at 830am and had a lot of in-depth introduction in the bus by the tour guide. Especially the information she told all of us is related to my learning plan whereby I wanted to know more about China & its culture.
a) To buy an appartment in Wuhan is about 7,000 RMB. (Unsure if it's Buy/Rent)
b) Hubei Museum (湖北省博物馆) is one of the biggest museum in Asia. It is also very famous. which we had went by today!
c) Delicious and famous food in Wuhan: Wuchang Fish, Re Gan Mian (热干面), Duck's Neck (鸭勃) from England *long neck*, Bean Skin (豆皮), 面窝, etc.
d) Some nature flowers in Wuhan: 荷花 in 夏天, 梅花 in 冬天, etc
... ... and many more that I didn't really caught well enough as my Chinese language is not very good yet. However at least I did managed to stay awake to listen which most of them dozed off. For all the details that Wang Jie (our tour guide) explained about the history and culture in Wuhan, she went in-depth into the warring period. I'm inspired by it as China really has alot of substance to dig out and digest. Thus, I felt that going to Wuhan is really worth it as it is a good spot of tourist attraction that contains alot of stuffs that people should come if they want to know more about China.
Ok, enough of my saying, here's some photos of how the aweeesome museum looks like:
various of buildings contained the artefacts that made up the entire museum
Inside the museum, there are alot of things to go through. Because of the tight time frame set by the tour guide, we can't really finish studying every artefacts, as you know that those artefacts are very meaningful to the nation: China. Most of the things are excavated from the ground. In short, they are relics that carry a significant story behind it. Here's some:
vessels used in the warring period
bronze oil mining/dwafts in the past
halbedier heads/axe heads
King Gou Jian's sword/crossbow
The Gou Jian's sword is specially featured as it is used the finest material to refine this sword. From then till now, it doesn't have any rust on it. Furthermore it is very sharp where it could cut through a stack of papers easily.
axeheads/battlefield
pieces of jades
a sculpture of a crane with antelop's horns and bird's feather, etc.
Using my camera to take picture until here and it went low batt. Then I used my hp's camera. It turned out not bad actually. The tour guide brought us to the highlights of the museum. The pictures below are some of the important artefacts.
chimes played in ancient times
column holder (strong)
We only able to comb the museum till 1130pm. So it was quite short for us to explore more. So these are some of the pictures I took:
some kind of jade to be placed into the mouths of the dead
gold plates
interior architecture of the museum (bright & big yeah?)
So yup, we ended our museum trip and headed for our lunch straight. If given a chance for me to come back to this museum, I would really love to come back, provided I'm backed-up with a certain amount of knowledge so that I'm able to understand the artefacts. Therefore today's museum tour was abit too much for me to digest! But moving on, let's head to the 首义园小吃街 & keep me digest with food!
we're trapped!
首义园小吃街(entrance)/inner-view
The food here is marvellous! Still remember the food items I described at the start of the post? Guess what... It's all available in this 小吃街!! Hot and Fresh right on your hands, into your mouth and way down warming your stomach!
Before we make any purchases, we've to buy a card and input value into it. I think it provides efficiency to the transaction process and also to avoid the dirtiness of the money notes. Thus, the few others and myself punched in about 50 bucks and went in to whack on the food items! I think we realy enjoy alot on the food especially the "doupi", "re gan mian", etc.
The best part is when ah bing carlos shared the smelly/stinky toufu with me. At first, we thought that it's kinda stinky and we dared ourselves to go and try it. And, it turned out to be, "eh, not bad eh, the stinky taste blends well with the sauce and transform to a very delicious flavour." So ya, it was a great experience going through the food in that 小吃街! I love this alot.
Something I've learnt in this area is also that people are going in and out busily, especially those shopekeepers. Thus, they don't really used much notice verbally, instead they will just shove you away using their hands lightly. At first I felt abit pissed off when they do that, but after numeral times (-.-), I think I'm really such a hoggy and took it easy then.
*Video too big to be posted on*
Anyway, we had 1 hour for our lunch and we went off to "Huanghe Lou" next!
In Huanghe Lou, we set our foot in alot of chinese historical oldern buildings. For every building, it has its unique design and purpose.
far view of huanghe lou/inner walkway
goose pond behind this
a wall with 99 cranes (missing 1 crane will be in somewhere later)
wall with some words craved by "mao zedong"
Huanghelou is situated in the Mountain of Snake (Sheshan 蛇山), the present day county of Wuchang (武昌縣) in Hubei province (湖北省). It was built during the period of the Three Kingdoms (三國時代 220AD to 265AD). For several times it was destroyed by wars and each time the Government rebuilt it.In the spring of 1927, Mao Zedong (毛澤東) visited Huanghelou and he wrote a poem about it.
茫茫九派流中國 Wide, wide flow the nine streams through the land,
沉沉一線穿南北 Dark, dark threads the line from south to north.
煙雨莽蒼蒼 Blurred in the thick haze of the misty rain,
龜蛇銷大江 Tortoise and Snake hold the great river locked.
黃鶴知何去 The yellow crane is gone, who knows whither?
剩有遊人處 Only this tower remains a haunt for visitors.
把酒酹滔滔 I pledge my wine to the surging torrent,
心潮逐浪高 The tide of my heart swells with waves.
[Source: http://www.asiawind.com/forums/read.php?f=2&i=5730&t=5730]
a poem dedicated by a famous poet (below)
not ah bing/poet/not me as well
Tour guide explained this interesting story to us as well. Wang Jie was saying about that this poet was ugly looking however he came up with nice poems which makes him famous! Speaking of him, I cant remember his name.
walking up the stairs/final crane (the missing 1 from the 99 = 100)
an architect design structure of the latest entire huanghe lou (there's a showcase of other versions as well)
op views on the entrance of Huanghe Lou
below is the descriptive video of the scenery (footage of 3 districts in Wuhan)
funny description (maybe button is unavailable?)
Lesson learnt in Huanghe Lou: In the gift shop, I noticed that the shopkeeper is very good in pychoing people to buy the items he sold, especially the souvenirs. However, he's good in his language where he'll know how to phrase it till it really sounds nice in your ears! But, the bottomline of it is that, one have to learn to be be sure of what to buy. I nearly got pychoed!
After then, we boarded the bus and headed back to WUST. We reached back in WUSt about 5pm already. Then in the night, we (ahbing, joyce, kiat the da, me) went to buy dinner and I managed to get hold on some of the pictures of the streets outside.
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We went into a shop and bought a few packets of "tie ban chao fan", beer and duck meat (it was cold!). And because of today's puddle of water, I've to change my shoe for tmr's SHOPPING TRIP! So, I bought myself a Nike Sports Shoe. Hehe. Hey, it looks kinda nice. I'll upload it in the next post. So ya, watch out! By the way, I got that shoe for just 79 RMB = SGD 14. Isn't that cool?
Back then after dinner, Joyce initiates and came into our dorm and helped us to mop our floor! I was shocked sia. Ok, I don't wanna say much eventhough I think she really helped too much. Haha. If she's seeing this, I want to tell you that you're a kind and caring lady, THANKS alot for mopping our guys' dorm! Next time I treat you more beer.
Ok, I shall update until here. It's near 2am already and I haven't bath ever since I'm back from ALL day long. So ya, I'm gonna move it and body slam my bed soon.
Family & Friends in SG, do take care and enjoy the RAIN (I heard from my friend, correct me if I'm wrong). Have a good hols/working/shops/cofs/etc! Until then..
[I'll update my day 3-5 soon!]
[I'll be online in MSN soon!]
jac
