Wuhan - Different Every Day!

Wuhan - so much more than just that place in China where Covid supposedly started. It is a real city, full of sincere and genuine people with real lives.

One of my most-lasting recollections of the day I left for China to begin teaching, is that while waiting in the Vancouver airport with the rest of the (much younger) teachers travelling to Wuhan on the 14-hour flight, my wife and I were actually mistaken, by those soon-to-be colleagues, for someone’s parents. It was assumed that we were simply on location to see our child off to the other side of the world, wish him or her well, then scurry home to tidy up a now-empty bedroom in preparation for prospective boarders in the upcoming university season.

I wasn't humbled by this mistaken purpose and identity until years later of course. So, on that first day I still managed to feel young and alive. I was ready for the new adventure on which I was about to embark. Adventure – the word brings back images of Radio-Flyer-wagon journeys with my brother and family drives on Sundays, skiing excursions with my mates and road trips with the various teams and classes I have been a part of in one way or another over the years. I had no idea at the time, exactly what a scathingly brilliant adventure I was about to experience in China and specifically in the city of Wuhan.

We boarded the plane. It took off. We flew across the Pacific Ocean. Twelve hours later we landed in China. Simple as pie when you say it fast. It did become slightly more complicated as time passed, however. After two or three hours of running around the airport terminal in Guangzhou, rerouting luggage and funneling through Chinese immigration and various security checks, we boarded the plane that would ultimately take us to Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province. Because I had just spent twelve hours in the air, I knew logically that, by now, I must be in China, but that was a Chinese “airport” (I know now that Chinese airports are typically spacious and bright and shiny and contemporary) so it didn’t actually count as China because, for all I knew, I could have easily been in any airport anywhere in the world. We carried on though, and finally touched down in Wuhan shortly after midnight and came out of the arrival gates into another well-lit and very grand and modern facility. I imagined that the airport in Wuhan would be different somehow – more primitive – and I would then feel like I was in the midst of the China experience. After all, Wuhan was a city that I had never heard of before - that is, before my wife and I made arrangements to actually live there. However, Tianhe, on the outskirts of Wuhan, was by no means primitive. In fact, it was the most brilliant airport I had ever been in. It made LAX, DIA in Denver and Heathrow in London, look old and archaic. YVR in Vancouver is clean and tidy and full of beautiful artifacts and shops but nowhere near as colossal as Tianhe. So, my “Welcome-to-China” feelings were again postponed. To add to the delay of ‘feeling’ China, we were greeted in a very ‘Western’ fashion by an English-speaking assembly of bright and cheery and very Canadian . . . transplanted Canadians! Even the Chinese Nationals in the welcoming committee spoke unblemished English and dressed very worldly and contemporarily. By now I couldn’t help wonder if maybe China was just like Canada – just farther away!

The comfortable air-conditioned grandeur of the Tianhe terminal did nothing however, to prepare us for the furnace-like blast of sweltering heat as we walked outside. We were scruffy and tired from our most recent two-hour flight added to our previous marathon flight over the Pacific and a methusalistic pilgrimage through customs in Guangzhou. It was almost a relief to climb on board a crowded chartered tour bus for the ride from the airport to our accommodations on the Maple Leaf School campus. We drove through the night and darkness. I had, of course, no idea where we were at any point in the trip. There were too many bags and suitcases piled high in seats to actually see out of the window so I never really noticed what we passed or what was out there in Wuhan. A ride which I originally imagined would take 20 to 30 minutes, was finally complete, 80 minutes later. After living in Wuhan for eight years, I came to realize that any journey within its limits would take at least an hour. Its sprawling land area was totally deceiving when it came to city travel. Add this to the fact that the entire city was, and still is, constantly under construction and it makes for long and arduous jaunts to other points. I have no sources to validate this claim, but I once heard that there were 30 thousand high-rise construction cranes in operation on a daily basis in Wuhan. Perhaps the most famous landmark in the city is the Yellow Crane Tower, but foreigners often joked that the Civic Bird symbol representing Wuhan was indeed the Yellow (construction) Crane.

On arrival at the campus, we unloaded our bags and gear and lugged it up four long flights of stone stairs to our apartment. Even at two o’clock in the morning the outside temperature was 40 degrees Celsius. Our new place was barren save for an off-white (perhaps dirty) couch, some dusky beige curtains and a bed with a bare mattress. If I had been less tired, I may have been somewhat depressed by the condition of the surroundings, but I was shattered and so, sleep came easily.

The next morning I awoke to an explosion of foreign sensory stimuli being manufactured by the various rooms in our new apartment. I don’t know if everything was actually different or, if because I was now fully aware that I was in China, my expectations were that everything would be different. In either case, things were far more different than I had imagined. That being said, when we left China, eight years later, the same features didn’t seem strange at all. In fact, it all felt very much like we were leaving our home.

By 11:00 that morning, the temperature in downtown Wuhan was 45 hot and muggy degrees. We had to be up early for our medical exams, to buy our mobile phones, arrange our Chinese bank accounts and secure some household items and food supplies at the big warehouse shopping centre somewhere deep in the heart of Wuchang (one of the three cities combined to make Wuhan). Slight body movements, such as breathing, caused one's clothing to saturate with an homogenized mixture of sweat and atmospheric condensation. Normal body temperature is 37.5 degrees Celsius and since the outside air temperature was eight degrees above that and since the humidity was nearly 100%, the moisture in the hot air actually condensed on our much cooler human skin. It felt like rain as the drops appeared on my arms. Looking up, I saw no clouds above me - only light-blue hazy heat. This was definitely the first time in my life that I had ever processed hot weather with all five senses. I recall telling the folks back home that it was so hot in Wuhan that one could actually hear the air. Anyway, it finally hit me, there it was - the moment for which I had anxiously awaited but for which I was not totally prepared on any level . . .

. . . On that August morning in the year 2011, in the clear, yet somewhat smoggy, light of day, I first experienced the moment of being in real China, and our home-town for the next eight years - Wuhan. I will never forget my initial encounter with the ubiquitous plethora of sights (traffic, street vendors, written Chinese characters literally everywhere) and sounds (the hum and buzz of unending traffic, the never-ending barrage of spoken Mandarin) and smells (street food, vehicle exhaust, the aroma of mind-melting heat) that emanated from every living breathing pore of that city for every second I was immersed in it. The city was very much a collage of old and new, urban and rural, primitive and space-age. Gargantuan amounts of concrete, steel and glass supported the fabrication of a matrix for what was to become a modern thriving metropolis. Shining skyscrapers and ribbons of freeways and turnpikes and high-tech digital billboards characterized the city-scape at first glance, while closer inspection yielded snapshots of recently transplanted and elderly farm-folk, sweeping streets and highways with tree branches and pedaling sweet potatoes cooked over hot-coal-laden metal drums. There was no apparent need for yellow or white lines on the streets, avenues and roads - a point made moot by the fact that the drivers in that city did not adhere to those restraints anyway. Even the bus we traveled on that morning took a sidewalk-shortcut on one occasion and at that, still had to yield to oncoming scooters, motorbikes, taxis and, yes, even the scores and scores of pedestrians who bore no malice for having to step aside for a bus on what should have rightfully been their footpath. The rules and laws of the road in Wuhan follow the same philosophy as that used in most team sports – fill the holes; if there is an empty spot on the playing field – go for it! One only need pay attention and yield to those in front of you - everybody and every thing behind you is of no concern - like maneuvering down a crowded ski slope. Like moving forward with the ball on a basketball court - if you can get your head and shoulders past a defender, any subsequent contact or interference will be the defender's foul. (I wondered if this approach was born at the same instant that Yao Ming became the Chinese answer to the question of basketball.) Surprisingly, given the perpetual heavy traffic, there were very few traffic fouls and, when there were, matters were usually resolved on the spot, and within minutes. I was once in a taxi that rear-ended another car. Both drivers hopped out and surveyed the damage. My driver came back to our car, grabbed two cigarettes, went back and handed them to the other driver, they both laughed and that was the end of it. Signal lights on vehicles in Wuhan are vestigial organs whereas horns have evolved into elaborate communicative devices. The auto horns in this central Chinese city were called on to signal a turn, indicate position, acknowledge other vehicles, request a pass, thank other motorists or simply to say, “Ni hao!” Horns in cars, buses, taxis or scooters were never used to show rage or frustration although with the constant bumper to bumper traffic occurring 24-7, it was almost unbelievable that they weren't. I was amazed to find out that even in the rare moments where hot tempers appeared to be flaring on the ‘dadao’, it was really just two friends shouting at each other above the din of traffic about something relating to the last fishing expedition they had taken on the shores of Donghu.

The Chinese language, and especially the Wuhanese dialect, is loud and boisterous. There are many hard sounds and, because of the tones, also many up and down expressions and volumes. The locals of Wuhan appeared very laid back and reserved until they started to talk. Then things sounded like the roar bursting from the pit floor at the stock exchange. Once, while walking through the airport in Shanghai during a wait for a flight back to Wuhan, I strolled past departure gate after departure gate, each filled with groups of travelers on their way to Beijing or Harbin or Chongqing or Chengdu or Kunming, or some other destination in China. In all cases, those would-be passengers seemed intent on reading, sleeping or playing on phones and computers as they waited to board. However, when I arrived at the departure gate holding the folks going to Wuhan, there was a Mardi Gras happening. There were women dancing, a live auction taking place, men smoking and singing. There were others standing on the chairs, children chasing parents, parents chasing children and it seemed like everyone knew everyone else. All 200 plus passengers were best of friends. Coincidence maybe? I saw it happen nearly every time I was in a Chinese airport. I found out later that being from Wuhan was like being from the prairies in Canada. Even if one doesn’t personally know the soul in the next chair, he shares the common thread of being from the same character-filled territory. Wuhan boasted a population of over ten million, but it definitely carried a bit of a small-town feel.

When our initial day of pragmatic inauguration and excitement was finally over, I felt overwhelmed. I realized I was not in the Canadian Heartland anymore. I felt like an illiterate. I could not speak the language. I could not read the signs. I didn’t know if I should walk on the sidewalks or the road. Crossing the street took the same mental toughness as deciding whether to jump off a tall building and, using a public toilet in anyplace other than the most modern hotel was more than an exercise in humility – it was exercise period. After spending merely a week in Wuhan and frequenting public toilets my quadriceps muscles screamed with agony every time I even thought about walking down a flight of stairs.

China generally, and Hubei and Wuhan specifically, helped me to uncover parts of my personality, my physiology and my psyche that I did not even know existed. I remember once, a long time ago, asking God for patience in my life, without specifying whether I indeed wanted to become more patient or simply to have more opportunities to practice being patient. In any case, I eventually ended up in China. My patience and determination were pushed to new limits. My curiosity awoke from a long nap and I began to notice people and their lot in life more than I had in a long time. China was good for that. There were parts of China and Wuhan that were, at first glance, not much different from the land whence I came. On the other hand, there were oh so many nooks, crannies and aspects of that place, which made a person feel like one was touring another planet.

The most heart-warming discovery though, in my eight years of living in Wuhan and travelling around China generally, would arguably be the people - the kind, caring, loving and down-to-earth people. People that looked upon any foreigner as a Rock Star, doting on us as if we were their own 'single child'. Li Na is a very well-known retired Chinese tennis player and is also a native of Wuhan. She achieved a career-high WTA ranking of world No. 2. Over the course of her career, she won nine WTA Tour singles titles including two Grand Slam singles titles at the 2011 French Open and 2014 Australian Open. To reiterate, she was remarkably famous throughout all of China. My wife and I were sitting in a restaurant in Bali and the Women's Singles Final Match of the Australian Open was playing on the big screen when Li Na won her last Grand Slam title. Half of the patrons were Chinese tourists celebrating the Year of the Horse. They immediately exploded to their feet and cheered as the last point was scored. Being residents of Wuhan, we of course joined the celebration. It seemed incongruent to me that there would be any famous people who called Wuhan their home, because mostly they were just everyday common folks like you and me.

Chinese people could well be the friendliest, happiest, funniest race of people I have ever met. Furthermore, if you enhance these qualities by one hundred times, you end up with the folks from Wuhan. I lived in Canada for 55 years before I moved to China. I had previously travelled to many parts of America including Hawaii and also spent some time in Mexico. I explored a little in the UK and parts of France. I have since visited Australia, Thailand and the rest of South-east Asia, India, Turkey, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, Europe, South America, and Japan. Not including the security and safety I feel in Saskatchewan and Canada where my family and friends reside, no matter where my travels have taken me in the past or where they may lead me in the future, I will always think of the people in Wuhan as being the ones who looked after me the best. From the Chinese staff and students in our school to the taxi drivers who solicited my patronage, to the shopkeepers and street-food vendors who smiled and joked and laughed their way through meal-time, to the hotel reception staffs and bus drivers and skating coaches and passers-by on the streets, the friendly folks of Wuhan always delighted in taking a foreigner under their wing. I suffered a heart attack while living in China and a very dear Wuhanese friend of ours - a retired yellow construction crane operator no less - drove me to the hospital. He convinced me in a most traditional fashion that it would be faster than calling an ambulance. The medical personnel, the doctors, nurses and technicians that cared for me were simply amazing, as were their space-age facilities and their high-tech equipment. Generally, the people of Wuhan live their lives to care for, and about, others. How simply refreshing is that? They always made me feel welcome and at home. They were forever patient with my slow uptake of culture and language and were unquestionably forgiving of my mistakes. In my life I am always excited about change in the world and I am curious and interested in what lies around the corner and what will happen tomorrow, but I am not in a hurry to see the humor, love and caring I received from my Chinese friends ever diminish or change. But, why would it? I do believe that Chinese culture is so traditionally deep and rooted in ancient stories and customs that it would take a tremendous amount of energy in another direction to overturn the positive character of its people.

So, it seems I fell in love with Wuhan and especially its people and, I remain so. I thank them graciously for their warmth, wisdom and understanding and I look forward to another time in the future when I can visit again. Xie xie! Wo ai ni, wo de péngyou!!