Jianghan University

Here are some pictures of our university:

 

This is the administration building and the front gate.





This building houses the foreign language department, and Red has several classes here throughout the week.

 

 

This soccer field sits right in front of our apartment.

 

 

 

 
Hang laundry is a pretty typical sight around both campus and town.



热干面 Hot Dry Noodles

This dish is very specific to Wuhan.  They are called reganmian or hot dry noodles and are usually eaten for breakfast. The typical bowl of reganmian will have soy sauce, sesame paste, pickled vegetables, chopped garlic chives and chili oil.  We tried them at a place across the street from our university one morning with some other foreign teachers.  Very yummy breakfast. 

 

Street Food

It seems that the Chinese love to snack. You can find people selling food on the street just about everywhere, and you can often see Chinese eating these snacks as they walk with friends or are on the way to class.  The food is generally pretty good and very cheap. 

 

 

We could see that these were very popular by the long line of people waiting for them. So we waited for 45 minutes to find out what the fried rolls were. They a kind of pancake fill with meat and green onions.  Delicious.

 

 

 

Local Market in Hankou

We came across this market in Hankou in the evening. It's pretty typical compared to other markets we've seen here, but the lighting was especially good at this time for pictures.



 

Hankou Night Market

The same day we first visited Hankou, we also went to the daily Night Market there. Here are some pictures. Enjoy!  

 

 

A visit to Hankou

Hankou is the commercial district of Wuhan. There is a very famous Jianghan Lu (lu = street), where there are many upscale shops most of which are western.  There are also quite a few interesting markets around that are a lot more local.  This part of town looks much more "Chinese" than Hanyang, the part of town where we live. We decided to visit this other side of Wuhan, and have posted some pictures of what we call "real" China.

We took this picture just before these (illegal?) vendors were literally chased off by police.

This is what is called the "Hankou Beach", but we are skeptical. However, there is a very nice walking and bike path along the Yangtze River.

Construction seems to be happening in every part of Wuhan. Here's a picture of some of the old with the new.

Handmade Noodles

 

Yesterday we tried some of the hand pulled noodles at a place right across from our university. They're called Lamian.  We had what is called tāngmiàn (湯麵), which is a beef flavored noodle soup. Quite tasty for just a little bit over $1!

Here are a couple of pictures taken of the master at work. 

Shopping at Walmart

After settling down a little bit in the apartment, Janay offered to take us shopping. The closest superstore is – what a culture shock – Walmart, located in the large Wanda Plaza mall, one kilometer away. Inside that mall, you could really be in Chicago: lots of clothing store all around, a KFC, a MacDonald’s and a Starbuck’s, an IMAX theater, an official Apple resale store; you add all of these to the beautiful modernity of the Wanda Plaza mall and it’s undistinguishable from a brand new mall in the US.

All these names are well known to us, but it’s another story once you go inside. The English language is almost inexistent, so we relied heavily on Janay’s expertise, and patience. How would you compare different kind of shampoos, or laundry detergents? Sure, some products feature the “China Environmental Council” label, which makes them more environment-friendly than the ones who don’t have the label. We also recognize some brands; it makes us feel less lost and helps us narrow the choice.

The food part of the store is even more of an adventure. We never met all these dried food items before, or may be for a second in Chinatown in North America. How do you use them? And, what is that? This is the beginning of a fantastic culinary adventure for sure. We’ll have to try everything. There is the soy sauce aisle, the noodle aisle, the rice area, and half of the vegetables are foreign to us. Here we can recognize some dried shrimp; some cute turtles and huge, nasty frogs are hanging out in glass cages, alive. Oatmeal is to be found, and that is good news for our breakfast. Real milk is around too, not to be mistaken with milk that is not really milk – from the outside, we don’t see the difference. We packed some rice and noodles to survive the Chinese New Year.

True, we didn’t tell you, but we arrived the day before Chinese New Year’s Eve. This is comparable to the day before Christmas Eve in the western world, with almost every business closed and everybody in vacations for a week after New Year’s Eve. Surviving this was our short-term goal.