Blog Post #8

Wuhan, Sunday, March 30, 2014

The sun has set on Wuhan, while it has recently risen in the US. We are 15 hours ahead of Oregon, and 13 hours ahead of Minnesota!  And now that our bodies have figured out that day in the US is night in China, we have only 5 more days until we have to confuse our systems again by reversing the time. We leave early Saturday morning and arrive home Saturday evening after flying 16 hours, with an 8-hour layover in Beijing. But for the International Date Line, that would not be possible.

It has been a great day. We began it with our Nescafe in our room, along with an orange and a banana, and xabee, the fresh baked savory bread rounds Jim went across the street to buy. He waits while a street vendor bakes them for us in charcoal inside an iron barrel.

Thanksgiving Church was a beehive of activity this morning. Jim preached at the second service, translated by Lydia into Chinese. The choir, including some of the students we have been teaching, sang a couple of songs. There was an altar call after Jim’s sermon (which he didn’t initiate—it seems to be the tradition here) and 18 people came forward, so he is pretty hard to live with. He pointed out that at the following service, in English, which we attended, only two joined, and one of those had already done it last week.

We were an international group for lunch: a couple from Hong Kong who are also teaching a short course at the seminary, a Swede teaching Greek at the seminary while learning Chinese (his English/Chinese dictionary was dog-eared and worn), Jim and me, an Englishman teaching English to engineering students at a local university, and Lydia. She said she felt like a foreigner, and was thrilled to be in such an international group. As usual, there were as many dishes as people on a lazy Susan in the middle of the table and we tasted all the dishes as they swirled past us. I have been meaning to say that it is almost impossible to get tea here. We have not yet had a meal where tea was served. We ask at every restaurant and they don’t have any. Only hot water, they say. Yet tea is grown within a couple of hours drive of here. We don’t know why, but speculate that this city is so hot and humid in the summer, 40 degrees C, or about 110 F, that tea is not appetizing to them.

But, on a walk with Lydia this afternoon we found a teashop. The delighted owner prepared several black teas for us and we bought half a pound of the one we liked best. When tea is prepared, water is poured through the tea quickly 4 times. The first time is a foot wash. Lydia has a friend who did a thesis on tea preparation who concluded that the first pour washes out 70% of the “poison” in tea. She said pollution has had a big impact on tea so that wash is necessary. By the time you get to the third pour, the tea is at its prime and has the most taste. We also bought one of the wonderful glass tea mugs with a sieve inside. You put in tea, pour in the water, rinse, pour water in again, let it steep, then drink it through the sieve so you drink no tea leaves, only the water.

We walked through the old part of town and saw buildings that had been built 120-140 years ago by English and Swedish missionaries. The buildings and property were taken over by the government years ago and have not been maintained. The Swedish mission compound is full of ramshackle housing and little shops selling noodles, sweets and drinks.  Apparently the government recently gave the buildings back to the church, but there are two dilemmas: first, there is no money to repair them, and second, where is housing for the people living there is the buildings are used for church purposes. We also saw a beautifully restored building called the “Pastor’s Building” and weren’t sure if it was from the Swedish mission or the neighboring Roman Catholic mission, but it is now a café and bar. Lydia thought that most ironic.

Wuhan is the 7^th biggest city in China with about 10 million people of which 1 million are university students. Apparently this city has more universities than any other city in the country. We walked through the University of Chinese Medicine and an attached hospital. Perhaps it began its existence through the Anglican school and hospital on campus that we saw now being used for other purposes.

Time for the Chinese TV news. We are hearing a lot about President Xi Jiping’s successful European tour, and of the search for Flight 370.