China in the New Year (11): Yichang to Wuhan to Xiamen to Longyan
After five days in Yichang celebrating the Chinese New Year with Hua’s relatives on her mother’s side, the last two days have been largely taken up with travelling.
First, we took the train from Yichang back to Wuhan. Here we were joined by six relatives of Hua’s father who had driven over from his home town a couple of hours away. That evening, the 12 of us had dinner in a private room of a restaurant called “Lotus Flower And Fragment Water”.
It was so cold – in spite the presence of a heater – that everyone kept on their coats. Indeed it has been bizarre in the past week seeing people wearing coat, scarf and even hat in the private room of a restaurant, the public areas of a hotel, and even in people’s flats because the ambient temperature was so low.
Next – together with Hua’s father – we flew from Wuhan south to Xiamen, the south eastern port city across the strait from Taiwan. This meant a welcome increase in temperature from a freezing -6C in Beijing and only 5C in Yichang to 21C. We were met at Xiamen airport by an SUV sent by a professional colleague of Hua’s father and driven inland – at some speed – to the city of Longyan almost two hours away. The final half of the journey was in hilly terrain with around 20 tunnels, an illustration of the huge number of construction projects that are transforming China.
Our first night in Longyan is in a luxury hotel where accommodation and dinner have been provided by the previously mentioned professional colleague of Hua’s father. This guy owns a huge pig farm with 2,500 sows and the production of some 50,000-60,000 pigs a year. I would have entertained him with my specialist knowledge of pigs but sadly my Mandarin was not up to it.
February 25th, 2018 at 11:24 pm
Haha, I like the professional confidence…