China for the New Year (6): Yichang
After just one night in Hua’s home city of Wuhan, we travelled by train to the smaller city of Yichang where most of Hua’s mother’s relatives live and where we will celebrate the Chinese New Year.
When I made this journey in 2010, the station in Wuhan was old and dark and seething with humanity who were all standing, pushing and shouting. Now the station has been completely rebuilt and brightly light and still awash with humanity but these days all seated and studying their smartphones.
Last time, we travelled in an old double-decker train, with every seat and corridor space occupied, and it was a local train that took an incredible six hours. This time, we travelled on a modern single-decker train, still at first with every seat and corridor space occupied, but it was an express train that took only two hours. This is the pace of progress in today’s China.
Yichang may be much smaller than Wuhan but it still has a population of 1.4 million. It is close to the Three Gorges Dam, which I visited in 2010, and the population of the wider prefecture was swollen substantially by the relocation of some of the 1.3 million people who were displaced by the dam. We spent the late afternoon and early event in the 22nd floor flat of a family member and 10 of us sat down at a circular table to eat a dinner with an amazing 14 dishes.
Since we left Beijing, I have not seen another foreigner anywhere.
March 5th, 2018 at 5:29 am
In fact, Wuhan has many foreigners.
March 5th, 2018 at 10:36 am
Perhaps they were all indoors celebrating the new year.