Some time ago, my friends were visiting from England. One thing they had in mind to do was to go out in the sticks and visit some strange, non-mega city spot in China. But China is a big place and it would take half their vacation time just to get to and from any place substantially far out west.
So we decided to go to my friend's girlfriend's hometown, Wuhu in Anhui province. This is a poor city and a poor province, and shows an incredible economic divide between the Eastern coastal provinces and basically the rest of china, where a trickle-down effect clearly isn't happening. Anhui here is the province compared to Pakistan:
Immediately to the right is Shanghai, a singular city with the GDP of Finland. Far out east, the GDP is even smaller, but the populations are far smaller too, with vast areas of 1 or less person per square kilometer:
The City of Wuhu alone on the other hand is about 4 million. This is a relatively unknown, obscure city, yet it is half the population of London, and bigger than any other city in the UK - or about 14 times the population of my own home city, Leicester, UK.
So what is it like? Well that's what this post is all about:
Arrival
The trip from Shanghai only took about 5 hours, although on the map it looks like we've barely moved. The first thing I noticed was that the taxis were cheaper, at only 7RMB starting price instead of Shanghai's 14. This is a good sign. I largely judge a place by how cheap it is because that's just who I am. Vietnam? Amazing. New York? F*** New York.
The next good sign was the sizeable, 60RMB hotel ($9). I had no complaints here. After staying in hotels in Hong Kong paying $70 for what was essentially a large box with water leaking through the floor and construction at the window, a $9 clean space with more room than I knew what to do with was beyond perfect. I'd even say it was a room with a view... kind of:
We headed out more or less immediately to see the market and well, this is the beginning of where things got weird.
After trying some unfathomably spicy bread snack, we found the aborted chicken foetus store:
Watching my boyfriends' girlfriend (Let's just call her 'smile' for ease) casually gobble these down like Oreos was somethind to admire, so one of our visiting friends gave it a shot and he could 'feel every detail of the bony feathey mass of death slowly dissolving in his saliva.' I figured I'd pass on that.
First night
After having dinner with some local friends of Smile, we went to a pretty nice, huge bar overlooking a lake and played some drinking games that would also teach our guests how to count to ten. Yi, Er, San, Si, Wu, Liu, Qi, Ba, Jiu, Shi!
Job done. Much to my delight, one of them actually still remembers them to this day, proving it when visiting England just a few months ago.
So after day one, things were pretty good! A poor, grim city but a good time could easily be had!
Day 2
After getting something to eat and being stared at a lot as possibly the only foreigners in the entire city, we ventured into some creepy park with creepy rides and such. We attempted to get a good view of the city by climbing a mountain the park was built around, and reached a lovely shrine. Climbing that, we got the view we wanted... kinda. Remember, this is China.
A puppy in the shrine desperately fighting to untie my shoelaces was possibly the highlight of the entire trip, but the park had its qualities too, including its own mini terracotta army, and a horribly desolate, concrete zoo/prison.
In the early evening I wanted to set up the Chinese wallet service I was relatively new to. This would allow me to pay for basically anything by just scanning Wechat, a chat app with so much more involved. Unfortunately, in my attempts to assign my bank card to it, the bank decided to shut down my card entirely. Argh!
I was now out of money, unable to use my bank and with a little less than $30 to my name. After calling them up, they said it would take a week or so to get it unlocked again due to everything being closed for Chinese New Year. This was not the efficient China I knew! My friends would have to sort me out for the remainder of the trip, I supposed.
Our next dinner was with some other friends and the food was... questionable. I barely ate anything, let's put it that way:
This was just some weird nowhere restaurant with bones all over the place, whole legs of goats, snails, tongues, entire rib cages and, in particular, testicles of said goat.
Our visiting friends were something to be proud of that night. They were here to be adventurous, far more than I ever intend to be, and together shoved a testicle into their mouths, bit through and experienced the 'burst' of... 'flavour' as the... contents filled their mouths.
It turns out that you were supposed to cook them first, so they outdid themselves having raw sheep bollock. Who knows what viruses live within them now!
The toilet (part 1)
The night continued and we went to a really obscure, side-alley bar which was apparently the go-to place. There were about 10 people there, 3 of which appeared to be German Engineers of some sort. They looked jaded and experienced in this land, keeping themselves to themselves as we got ourselves drunk on cheap spirits and plates of fruit.
at this point, one of our friends went to take a dump. He went for a long time. You see, in these parts, toilets are almost exclusively squatters, and apparently he was having some trouble. 20 minutes later, a power cut occurred and the bar decided to shut down. He was still in there.
This was not a private room for the toilet, but more just a kind of door blocking off some space. We could talk to him from where we were. He told us to leave him alone. We couldn't leave him alone, the bar was closing!
Eventually he came out and uh... Let's just say he needed to wash his hands.
Day 3
One of the friends and I got up bright and early to simply look around and see what we could find. Oddly, we found a small, American-built cathedral from shortly after the opium wars. We took some time trying to get in with the help of a gardener and, though it was a plain and boring place, we stumbled across an.. altarcation. Yes, at the altar, we saw evidence of something awful that had clearly quite recently gone down:
'It looks like there was a struggle' - Me
Yes, a broken plant pot, a screw driver and a lot of blood, uncleaned, perhaps from the night before? A blood sacrifice?
We decided not to ask questions and make a quick leave.
The toilet, Part 2
When it came to leaving time, we went to the bus station and... it was my turn. My stomach twisted and I was very suddenly desperate to relieve myself. The bus wasn't due for enough time I guess, but this was a dank, dingy station filled with a lot of people, and I had no idea where to go or what to do. I told my friends to look after my stuff and I'll just have to try and find them later, and went searching. desperately
I found a public bathroom. When I say public, I mean public. It was a row of about 15 toilets, each with no more than 3 feet of door separating us from the station itself. Squatters galore, I wasn't about to argue, but as I walked to the end in attempts to get the least exposure, I found a western toilet in the last space. Perfect.
I went in, and the door was broken, unable to lock or even close fully. Whatever. Too late now. I went in and sat down, looked at the guy's head popping out the top of the stall next to me, and did my business (thankfully with tissue I brought with me).
I felt much better and spent a minute enjoying the public passer-by's go about their business. At this point, humiliation wasn't an issue, as it seems everybody there was doing the kind of desperate bowel movement I was enduring as a part of daily routine. The only question in their minds was 'why is a foreigner here?'.
End
Well, that was the end of the trip. The place itself, as you can tell, was by no means special. It had nothing in the way of tourism, it was polluted and weird. But the memories are strong. From strange, crazy old people following us for 10 minutes, shouting over and over again about how the government is destroying their freedom and way of life, to plant stores selling cages filled with dogs unable to move a muscle, and everything in between, this was an experience.
One I would probably recommend, but never repeat.
It's truly amazing how much of a world apart a 5 hour train ride can take you.