Car Accidents, Banana on a stick and flower girls

Sunday, June 24, 2007
Today we went on a tour of the city of Wuhan with AIESEC. We all met up at the university at 8am and took the bus over to our first stop, Wuhan University. Wuhan University is supposedly on of the most beautiful universities in the world, but we were not really interested in seeing another university so they took us to get breakfast. As we were leaving the campus this lady that was begging got hit by a car and it caused a big scene. My first thought was that she did it on purpose to sue, but then I thought I don’t think things work that way in China. I was going to film what was going on, but I decided against it. We went to get breakfast which is always interesting for me because I am so used to bacon, eggs and waffles or something. Breakfast in Wuhan is usually some sort of noodles. I didn’t want noodles so Nina (another intern from Ohio) and I went to find a place that sold bread. We didn’t find it so we settled for ice cream and I went to a shop and bought a fried banana on a stick (they put everything on a stick here). As soon as I went to pick the banana up the stick came right through it and I had to end up eating the banana by cutting it with the stick and putting the stick in the piece of banana that I was going to eat and then putting it in my mouth. After a couple of pieces, I was over it and threw it away. We then took the bus to Yellow Crane Tower, which is a really famous tourist attraction here in Wuhan. The original tower was built in 200 something AD. But over the years it has been rebuilt because the original structure was made of wood. After the tower they took us to a shady street to get a snack and they warned us that the food was very good but the street was not so clean, they were not lying. I had some fried dumplings which were delicious, but I prayed that I wouldn’t get sick after the snack. After our alley snack we walked to the Yangtze River, where we saw two men swimming in the river. If you could see this water, you would wonder how they survived the swim. The water looks like mud and lets just say it had a ‘special’ smell. We took a ferry to Hankou for 1 Yuan (about 0.13 cents). When we got off the ferry in Hankou, we were walking and we saw a commotion. It was a little girl holding flowers in her hand, wrapped around this woman’s leg and the woman was trying to get the little girl off of her. At first I thought it was a mother and daughter and the daughter was just having a temper tantrum. But, Nina explained to us that she heard about what was going on. She said that these kids will lock around someone’s leg until the person gives them money. My inquisitive self decided to start video taping what was going on and describing it while I was recording. After I turned off the video camera I looked at two people walking by and I said to them “isn’t that crazy?” So then I turned around and Nina said to me, “don’t look at her” and as soon as she said that I turned around and looked at the little girl and she appeared to be running towards me. I started running and screaming because I thought that she was going to wrap herself around my leg and not let go. When I realized that she was just running to her friend after I was half way down the block, I started laughing and everyone else was laughing. It was the highlight of the day and probably the funniest thing that has happened to me so far in China. I thought that New York City panhandlers were bad, they can learn a thing or two from the Chinese, their methods are crazy.