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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Two Sights in Wuhan

I'll use this down period (at least for some people) until Jan 1 for mostly "lighter" posts. Then, back to some topics I left hanging -- particularly, how observing shopping experiences in China could help lead to better designs for technology. Today, I'll share a few photos from two sights in Wuhan I visited during a break of sorts last Sunday (links provided if you wish to learn more about them).

The first few are from the Changchun Taoist Temple (长春观). The most memorable part of the experience was meeting these kids who lived nearby:

three children at Chang Chun Temple in Wuhan
Fortunately, the little girl doesn't need to worry about her balloons not being allowed on a subway.

After a brief chat they offered to show me around the temple. Although I had just finished my explorations, I decided to take them up on the offer. It proved to be more interesting than I expected since they immediately took me to sections that were marked off-limits due to construction.

three children running through a construction area
Running through the rubble

So yet again, by following young tour guides I saw something I likely would've otherwise missed.

However, our time wasn't only spent navigating through scaffolding. The two older girls also took some time to do their prayers:

child praying at Chang Chun Temple

After thanking the kids for kindly showing me around, I walked west to see the Yellow Crane Tower (黄鹤楼), seen in the background here:

Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan

The ticket for the tower was over US $12. Maybe another day I'll rant about the rather high prices (particularly in local terms) for some famous (and not so famous) sights in China. At least the ticket include the area around the tower, such as this pond:

pond on grounds near Yellow Crane Tower

While there was some enjoyable nature to experience in the park, when you reach the top of the tower and look around it's clear that you're in the middle of a (smoggy) city.  Here is the view facing east:

view of Wuhan from tower

And if you go to the other side you'll see this:


That's all. If you're ever in Wuhan these are two of the more touristy sights worth seeing. And if you're not, well, now you've seen some parts of them -- for free.

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