Hubei Province

April 15, Thursday

Today, we continued sailing thru the agricultural area with a wide, brown river that had banks that were lined with rows and rows of poplar trees. These were planted to help provide soil stabilization of the river bank so floods and boat waves would not damage the river edge. This is the area of the river that has been most prone to deadly and damaging floods before the Three Gorges Dam Project.

Today we awoke to actual sunshine in the morning with fleeting blue sky and orange reflections on the river as the sun rose in the sky.

We sailed down to the city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, which has a population of 8 million people.

The cruise ship is managed very well. We have about 75 passengers on board now for the full trip down river to Shanghai. A group of about 25 departed earlier after we got thru the Three Gorges Dam (Full capacity is about 200). The staff is first class, a combination of experienced western and Chinese individuals in the senior and supervisory positions. There are also a group of young Chinese who are the servers, photographers and housekeeping staff. They are all friendly and efficient and seem to be having a goodtime. They also put on costumes for a couple of after dinner shows:

We stopped in Wuhan for 2 hours and I liked this city as it made a very positive impression. It has wide streets with modern buildings and has an energy about it that is controlled and the people seemed pleasant. It is split into 3 sections by the Han River flowing into the Yangtze from the north: the education section; the industrial section; and the business/financial section. There are 52 universities in the city! The business section has a wide riverside boulevard and park which is lined by trees and European design buildings; this was mainly part of the French and German Concessions of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries similar to the famous Bund in Shanghai.

We spent some time at the Hubei Provincial Museum which houses the artifacts of the tomb of Marquis Yi who was buried 2400 years ago. The tomb was found in 1978. He apparently had everything and everybody he owned buried with him including some huge, heavy iron bells.