I had to wake up early today as it was a day of outing. I went to the apartment that Alicia and Baohui was staying, and ate my breakfast which was rice dumpling, bread and drank Milo.
The tour guide for the day was Miss Wang which was called “Xiao” Wang or tour guide Wang. She started off by giving us a brief introduction of Wuhan to us as we were still unfamiliar about Wuhan knowing a place which was most known to us was a nearby place, Carrefour.
While the bus First stop for the day was Wuhan University to see cherry blossom.
Upon reaching the place
The signboards
Actually the reason for cherry blossom being in this university was that when the Japanese took over china, they stayed at the Wuhan University. And Japanese being well known for their cherry blossoms in their country nowadays, brought the cherry blossom in thus there was a wide range of cherry blossoms now in Wuhan University. The tour guide says that the cherry blossoms was already the 2nd or 3rd generation as the 1st generation were already long gone which was 5o years ago if I am not wrong.
The Cherry Blossom Garden, especially, is mainly Japanese cherry blossom flowers, as well as various other kinds of flowers which are extremely colorful. Every year after winter, when the plum flower fade, early cherry blossom flower blooms, after that Japanese cherry blossoms, strait cherry blossoms, late cherry blossoms each blooms
http://w3.whu.edu.cn/en/campus/index.html
This was the first time I have seen cherry blossom. The whole place was filled with sweet colours of flowers such as white, pink and red. It just looked like scenery that you could only see in television program. We walked around separately in different groups and met back at the drop off point area.
While walking to the place where the cherry blossoms are
While at there admiring the cherry blossoms and some other flowers
Saying bye to the leaves
While walking back to the bus
While everyone was back in the bus, we found out that the only person not in the bus was Li Zhen. Li Zhen went missing, without a watch and a mobile phone with her. Mr. Wee then went in search for her. Mr. Wee found her at the end.
While in the bus
I saw people by the roadside mending shoes
The sports complex if i am wrong
The second stop was Shi Men Kou’s food street area which was further down.
While on the way walking there
The front
We had some really amazing food such as what food item that the tour guide introduced as a must try such as Dou Pi, Siew Mai and some really spicy chicken wing. And I also ate oyster, scallop, sausage, smelly tofu, fried banana, fish like snack and dessert.
The FOOD!!
For the food part, the Dou Pi was nice, with a layer of wrapping of rice and it was really fragrant.
The Siew Mai was like normal, nothing really special about it.
The spicy chicken wing called "bian tai chi" was really flaming hot and spicy, with layers and layers of pepper-ish liquid apply to it while the lady was barbequing it. It was really spicy that after eating it for awhile, my lips seems to have swell up a bit.
The oyster and scallop was damn marvelous with garlic on it as a topping and when biting into it, it was soft and springy. It just tasted prefect.
The sausage which I had a try from Alicia’s buy was that it the meat was nicer than the others that we usually could get with stores on the streets except that it was kind of oily.
For smelly tofu was something that I really wanted to try for quite a long time since I got to China, wanted to have a go at it, to me, the smelly tofu seems to smell normal just that upon biting into it, there was a weird smell and it was chocking maybe due to the chili sauce I dripped.
For the fried banana, it was like “goreng piseng”, a Malay dish in Singapore. For the fish like snack, that flour had a taste that was nice.
Ate something which looks like fish cake, if i am not wrong it is nan gao. It had a nice taste to it.
There was another "fishy" snack but it was like a snack shaped in a fish shape and made of flour with a filling in it.
Also had a dessert that was shared called mango pudding. It was normal just that it had a sweet taste. However, the mango dessert we had in the city area which 10 times nicer compared to this.
And Another dessert called mi tang hu lu. It is like fruits with a sweet coating.
The third stop for the day was to 磨山.
Located in the south-east side of East Lake surrounded by the lake from the east, west and north with fragments of the old Chu Castle at the shore is 118 metres high Moshan Hill that has six peaks and is a landmark for the Chu culture. Here you find the Chu Castle, Chu Bazaar, Chu Heaven Platform, Chu Talents Park which represents the flavour and classic beauty of the this culture.
The imposing Chutian Tower at the hill side symbolizes the power and prosperity of the ancient State of Chu. You also find an altar where the Chu´s worshiped heaven according to the legend of Zhaolie, King of the Chu State
http://www.wuhan.com/cmarter.asp?doc=325&node=333
The gate
The map
while walking towards
The gate
The tour guide touched on a thing that looks like a gong and a gate like thing that we saw while walking in.
The gong had to have 2 sticks by the side.
For the gate, there was a main door and two side doors. The gates were opened under different conditions to allow the different countries which were through the side gates to enter until one day that they open up the main gate. The three gates were built as to confuse people.
The color red for the walls was that Chu people liked the color of red so they used red instead of green bricks. For the name of the place, there was a gold (”Jin”) word in it instead of Chu as it was not allowed. So the word Chu could not be used. So Qing Shi Wang agreed to change it to Jin.
There were also weapons by the side
The area
Group photo
After that, we were allowed to roam around freely and meet back at the point of drop off. While Alicia, Baohui and I went taking photos of the scenery, my camera battery went dead all of a sudden and Baohui camera landed in the same state as mine. Thus, I started to use my mobile phone’s camera.
After all the things we wanted to take, we sat around and chatted, until a point where we wanted to take a ride on a boat. A group of us went renting a boat to ride in. We split into two boats; in one of it were Xiu Jin, Yan Khee, Teck Cheong, Jian Wen and Kia Fu. And in another, there was Alicia, Baohui, Kuan Wee, Weiyang and me.
During the ride
Other boat
While moving around the lake area, we thought we saw a man drowning in the middle of the lake. After a closer look some then thought the man was taking a bath but actually he was swimming. Then someone commented that he was naked but in actual fact, he was in trunks. I laughed till my tummy ached.
The man
We played with water; having a water war and some of us got wet. After the water war, the boat seems to be in the state of breaking down as it did not seem to want to move. Actually it was moving but at a very slow speed. We reached back after lots of time spent slowing moving back.
The fourth stop was going to Carrefour for dinner.
Alicia, Baohui and I had a buffet dinner at 48 RMB.
entrance
The variety of food was limited however there was food that was nice to eat such as steak, salmon, clams and egg with bacon. It had a really classy feeling when inside and the ambiance were really quiet and peaceful. We ate till our stomachs were bloated.
Dinner TIME
Table area
Surrounding
Our last stop for the day was back to our apartment. Alicia, Baohui and I headed back to our apartments in a taxi and through that we noticed that taxis did not like driving into our school. They would then give a rude tone to us. But after all I still think that we did pay him money so he should not even show that attitude to his customers. If it was a tourist, I would have had left a bad impression on the taxi in Wuhan already.
After that, washed up, do assignments, study and headed to bed.
