Wednesday March 27

The sun is shining in Wuhan and although you can't see across the lake where our apartment building is situated, the nearby buildings and structures are much more lit up than yesterday.

This is one of the community areas inside the apartment complex where we are staying complete with permanent merry-go-round

 
Today we are being taken by a Chinese friend, Grace, to the Tea Market where she has a friend with a shop. The amazing thing about the cities here is that various shopping malls can be so specific to warrant a whole mall for just one thing.  After a long bus ride, and a longish train ride on the underground system that is still being built here, we walk to a large red entrance that heralds the Wuhan Tea Market.  

Spread out ahead of us is a seemingly endless corridor of little specialty shops, all displaying something to do with tea making and drinking. There are teapots, tea cups and special serving trays for doing it all the traditional Chinese way. 

 


We also see some amazing ways of bundling tea leaves, some in circles like Dutch cheeses and some rolled into logs.

 
Grace takes us to a beautiful little shop nearly at the far end of the market and we are introduced to the owner who sits the six of us down around a special serving tray and cups and we have the whole performance. We try several green teas and a "red" tea which is what they call our black tea. The serving is incredibly intricate with much washing and rinsing and pouring and many of the leaves are quite large. Needless to say there are no tea bags here.

 

But one of the most interesting things is that the left over tea is poured over a couple of tea "pets" which look like cane toads with three legs. The fable here is that they signify a great deal of welcoming in that they come in and don't go out. I'm not quite sure how three legs accounts for that!

After this intriguing three quarters of an hour, we now head for Food Street - more of this specialty stuff.   This was a bit like the Muslim Quarter in Xian but much more variety of things being cooked.

 

I finally decide to have a try of things I've seen on a stick because I now have Kerryn to help with the translation of what it is.   I choose a dough based thing, beautifully spiced and cut circumferentially so it fans out along the stick. And follow this up by sticky rice balls rolled in sesame seeds. I decide to pass on the frogs on sticks.

 

There is now just time go to Wuhan's most famous tourist attraction, the Yellow Crane Tower, billed as "the most fantastic scene under heaven".    Now I'm not sure we should go that far, but it was first built in 223, when it was lower than the present version, now five stories high with typical Chinese up turned eaves on each storey.  

 

We climbed to the top for good views of the Yangtze River and surrounding parts of the tower precincts and the city.  
Inside were some stunning tiled murals relating to the history and mythology of the tower.

 

 

Just below was a group of buildings dating from the early 1900's where the revolution was planned in 1911.   Also apparent was a big red cross atop a steeple like structure which is a big central Christian church.

Home to rest our legs after the hundreds of steps and I am able to share in the family celebration of a Christian version of the Passover supper. It was lovely to do this with three lovely kids.