Aaaargh!!! We are stuck in Wuhan to strains of Hotel California! We have been unable to get any train tickets to Guilin. What was intended to be an overnight stop has turned into a potential 5-day enforced sojourn. Getting rail tickets in China is an immensely frustrating experience, as we are learning to our cost. The hostel staff have been trying their best to get tickets for us, but to no avail and it is now unlikely we will be able to leave before Sunday. This afternoon we decided to explore a bit more of East Lake – it is so large that we could easily spend our entire stay there and still not see it all. But thanks to Andy’s fallible sense of direction we end up at the Yangtze river! But as serendipity would have it we have stumbled upon the ‘Covent Garden’ of Wuhan for here, just under the gigantic two-tier road/rail bridge, there are several performers drawing sizeable crowds. Further along the embankment there is some serious kite flying underway as well as fishermen with bamboo-and-net contraptions down on the river’s edge. As night falls we decide to walk back to the hostel and we take in the local night market and ‘snack street’ on the way.
Buying rail tickets in China is a difficult and prolonged affair, at least in our experience. Tickets are released 10 days in advance of travel and are only sold in the town of departure. This makes planning onward travel quite tricky and it’s turned out to be impossible to get tickets for same-day or next-day travel or over the weekend. And because of our lack of Chinese we have to rely on hostel staff to get tickets for us. We did attempt to purchase tickets ourselves at a local agency which had ‘Train Ticket Agency’ displayed prominently on the outside of their office, only to find that no-one inside understood ‘Train Ticket Agency’ and certainly didn’t speak any English! So we are resigned to an extended stay here until at least Sunday.
The performers on the embankment turn out to be very entertaining if massively over-amplified and we take in each in turn. All are singers performing a variety of Chinese pop and traditional singing styles (the latter performed by one singer in an ear-piercing pitch), including one singer accompanied by a group of dancers fluttering large fans. The Chinese, curiously, don’t applaud; instead they shower the performers with one yuan notes during the performance, or hand them flowers which are thoughtfully provided by the organisers specifically for the purpose. The flowers being returned to a bucket at the end of each set to be used again for the next. .
Meanwhile on the opposite side of the road three groups performing Chinese opera are drawing a distinctly older crowd. The performers are drowned out by the noise blaring out from across the street, which is probably just as well as Chinese opera is a acquired taste for the Western ear. But the costumes and make-up are exquisite and the stylised acting is an intriguing spectacle in itself and we sit a while to watch.
As the performers begin to pack up we wander on. There are fishermen down on the river’s edge using large nets attached to bamboo poles which they periodically hoist from the water in the hope of catching their supper or perhaps something to sell. In the silt a man has created a small, single-terrace kitchen garden and is busy showering it with water from the river. A little further along there is some seriously skilful kite flying going on. Middle-aged men work their kites with amazing dexterity, getting them to soar so high they look like birds in the far distance and skimming them inches above the ground as they reel them in.
We walk back from the river as dusk falls and make an unplanned diversion down ‘snack street’ and into the night market. This doesn’t have quite the buzz and pizazz of the Beijing equivalent and some of the more exotic foods are absent. Nonetheless we are still left wondering what’s in most of the dishes on offer. We chicken out of trying anything – hygiene standards leave a lot to be desired and with Andy’s dicky tummy fresh in our minds we content ourselves with some mildly spicy peanut brittle.