Friday pictures - Wuhan

These are the pictures that went with the post about our last day in Wuhan and our trip to the Hubei provincial museum.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/cohnfamily/sets/72157623242712479

 

The blue Gumby-ish character is Hai Bao (sp?).  He is the mascot for the upcoming World Expo in Shanghai, and he can be seen all over China.  Maya gets excited when she sees him. :o)

 

The rooms we visited were the artifacts from a tomb that was a huge archeological find, discovered in 1978 when constructing a dormitory for the army.  Ben photographed every artifact from the tomb, so I will upload those later – I just chose a few for now. :o)  Everything was submersed in water and perfectly preserved.  The bells were incredible – I believe there are 64, but each one plays 2 different tones, so 128 notes, played by 5 people.  Even the wooden mallets survived. There is one really cool display of arrowheads that they suspended from fishing line as if they were flying through the air – not sure if it shows well in the photo.  We bought a coffee table photo book of treasures of Hubei, a CD of the bells being played, and a DVD with English subtitles, and also some post cards from the museum gift shop.

 

I think I also forgot to mention in our Thursday post the fantastic hot pot restaurant we went to in Wuhan.  Definitely a local place!  There should be an exterior shot of it as the last photo in the  Thursday pictures – red lanterns hanging outside. We were the only ‘big-nosed ghosts’ (what foreigners are called in Chinese) there! We had a party of 10 including the 6 of us, our guide Shirley and her daughter Mia, a guide-in-training named Emily and our driver, Mr. Wang.  .  We invited our guide(s) and driver to share meals with us whenever we were out.  They were very surprised the first time we asked, and we told them not to feel obligated, but it would be our pleasure if they would join us.  I don’t think they usually do that.  I think it really touched Mr. Wang – he shook Adam’s hand and gave him a big hug when we left Wuhan!

 

We couldn’t fit at one of the hot pot tables, so we had a large table with a lazy susan.  The hot pot tables had a pit where they burned coals and you cooked your meal in a pot suspended over the hot coals.  Probably  best we didn’t have that type of table because of the children.  The food was delicious, we had a duck soup with pear in it, beef and mushrooms, a wonderful cauliflower dish, a chicken dish that was much too bony for us, but Maya enjoyed very much.  It had a chicken foot in it and I offered it to her and she was very happy to munch on it.  Those are special in China  -  after all, there are only 2 per chicken! :o) You can buy vacuumed sealed chicken feet at the 7-11! 

 

I will try to post about our first day in Guangzhou and add more pictures soon!  We must be in the lobby in one hour to head out to the Guanghzou Safari Park!

 

Hugs, Laura Beth