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Ron and Amy Go To China	Day 11 Wuhan
Wooooooooooooooooooooohan!!!! Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Some of these Chinese names are just so much fun to say. I'm sure they will never let me back in the country. The bus ride to Wuhan was uneventful - no brushes with imminent death - or maybe I was no longer conscious of the danger - like a shell-shocked combat veteran. When we got off the bus, the first thing we saw the Sell the Ticket Hall. I knew I was going to like Wuhan. There would be no confusion as to where they sold the tickets here. Finding the cheap hotel we were looking for was another issue. We walked past it twice before the proprietor of a mid-range hotel down the street was kind enough to explain exactly where it was. Sure, the room had a few holes in the wall, a few bugs crawling around, but to us it was home. The staff at the hotel didn't seem like they would physically assault us - that was the main thing.	SELL THE TICKET HALL Wuhan photos
The next morning, I woke up early. We didn't need to leave for the airport till around noon. I went to the window of our ninth floor hotel room and looked out over the city. It was a busy modern city - there was nothing that really grabbed my attention. The book mentioned a few points of interest that didn't incite any interest in me. Still, I have this insatiable desire to explore new places. Amy did not share my enthusiasm so I told her I would be back in an hour or so. It was only about 9am - morning rush hour. There was a lot of traffic and a lot of people on the sidewalks as I walked down Jiefang Dadao.	Musicians more musicians
I figured I would walk past the park and then head for the river which was only about a half a mile away according to the Wuhan map. Wuhan is actually 3 towns which eventually incorporated into one metropolis - Wuchang, Hankow, and Hanyang. This caused a bit of confusion at the bus station the night before but at this point in the trip confusion was my normal state of mind and I didn't fly into a rage like I usually do. The park was very pleasant and well-tended as all the Chinese parks visited had been, but I was looking for something that was special about this park, this city. Then I heard started hearing this strange music. It was stranger still because it didn't sound like recorded music. I thought to myself what kind of musician would be out of bed at 9:30 in the morning on a Friday? But here they were, and they weren't some snot-nosed teenagers trying to piss off their parents. They were old, older anyway, at least 30, some 40, 50 and some could easily be 80. It struck me as funny because it seems like so many Americans are obsessed with music as teenagers and twenty-year-olds, but if they haven't "made it" by the time they're twenty-five they get a "real job" and their guitars just gather dust until they sell them at a garage sale five years later. If you are eccentric enough to play your guitar in public after you're thirty, you're an obvious target for ridicule and scorn. This is clearly not the case in Wuhan. Everywhere I turned there were groups of musicians jamming away and singing without remorse. And many of the groups had small but appreciative audiences. It was quite refreshing to a jaded old musician like myself. I wandered on to find a strange little amusement park and before I knew it, it was 11:15 and I had to get back to the hotel. Amy wanted to take a cab instead of the bus to the airport because she thought we would get there faster. Maybe I'm just paranoid but it sure seemed to me that the driver drove around in circles for a half hour to run up the meter before he took us to the airport. The book said the taxi ride to the airport should only take a half hour and this was every bit of an hour. I'm sure if Dante's Inferno had been written in modern times there would be a special level of Hell devoted to cab drivers. Oh well, we did get there eventually, which is better than some cab rides. We flew China East Airlines to Shanghai for about $100 each. It took about an hour, as opposed to another 15 hours on another bus. Even a diehard cheapskate can appreciate that.	Zhongshan Park More park!

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