China’s Covid lockdown was longer and harder than almost anywhere else, which was difficult for us as we had a son and, more recently, a grandson, living there. China’s refusal to issue tourist visas meant that it was impossible to visit, and contact during this period was largely by Zoom and WhatsApp. In mid-March, however, the Chinese government announced that it was opening the doors to tourists again and, a week later, we had flights booked and were presenting ourselves at the China Visa Centre in Edinburgh to complete the paperwork. A month after that, we were checking in our bags for our trip to Wuhan, arriving early on the morning of Casper’s first birthday.
Wuhan is a city that everyone has now heard of but hardly anyone from the West has visited. It is a huge city – over 11 million people – but not somewhere that features on most tourist itineraries. I am guessing that we are amongst the first Western tourists to visit since the pandemic. We have passed very few Western faces in the street, and have attracted plenty of curious stares and audible comments featuring the word wàirén(“foreigner”).
If Europeans are scarce in Wuhan, European architecture is quite prominent, particularly in the city centre. Wuhan represents the most upstream point on the Yangtze that was accessible by ocean-going ships and, as a result, was an important trading port. There was a British Concession in Wuhan, dating from the period after the Second Opium War in which France and Britain defeated the Qing Dynasty in 1860, overran the Forbidden City in Beijing and forced legalisation of the opium trade on the Chinese. Establishment of a trading post in Wuhan was one of the consequences of the very unequal treaty that was the result of this. These quaint streets with their colonial architecture, therefore, represent one of the less glorious episodes of British history.
The British Concession in Wuhan: clockwise from top left: a crowded street during the May Day holiday, the YMCA building; Customs House; Jianghan Road near the Yangtze River. The photograph at the top of the post shows a view across the Yangtze River.
It was not just the British who arrived during this period. A separate treaty was signed with Russia and, as a result, Russian tea merchants arrived in the 1860s and also settled in the city, setting up factories to produce brick tea. The ”Russian Caravan” tea that I buy when my favourite Lapsang Souchong is not available is a living memory of this trade, which took tea back to Europe overland rather than via the fast sailing ships such as the Cutty Sark. The tea merchants also built an Orthodox Church inside the British Concession, although this has now been deconsecrated. None of the fittings or icons remain, with the building now housing the “Wuhan Sino-Russian Cultural Exchange Centre”.
Saint Alexander Orthodox Cathedral, Wuhan, May 2023.
Our next destination was the Baotong Temple, a Zen Buddhist monastery built on a wooded hillside on the far side of the river. Wuhan, like many Chinese cities, is frantic and crowded, with buildings jammed up against one another, and constant noise of traffic. This is still a working temple and monastery, and weekend visitors shared the space with worshippers and monks. Temples are often islands of tranquillity amidst all the bustle of a Chinese city and we spent an hour wandering through the grounds and climbing the hillside, relishing the quiet as well as absorbing the atmosphere. Looking back down, we could see the buildings of the temple set against a huge shopping mall, capturing some of the contradictions that I wrote about during my last visit to China (see “The limits of science …”). We were to see the same paradoxical juxtaposition later in our trip when visited Jiang’an Temple in Shanghai.
Four views of the Baotong Temple, Wuhan, May 2023.
Our final stop on this brief tour was Tanhualin Street in the historic district of Wushengmen. Much of old Wuhan has been bulldozed to make way for skyscrapers and tower blocks but this area still contains old hutong-style one or two storey buildings set around courtyards. We sipped Oolong tea overlooking Tanhualin Street crowded with weekend visitors but, later, explored the narrow streets where we got a sense of what Wuhan must have looked like before redevelopment. The Tsung Tsin Church which faces onto Tanhualin Street dates from 1864 and is one of the oldest churches in China, established by the London Missionary Society and, as such, another by-product of the European expansion in China following the Second Opium War. We could hear a service going on inside, but could not find an entrance to find out more.
Three scenes from the Wushengen area of Wuhan, May 2023.
Mention Wuhan to anyone in the West and they think of the destructive pandemic that originated here. Visiting the city, for me, turned this around, especially as I read more about the Opium Wars and their consequences for China. In this period, the destruction went in the opposite direction: it originated in Western ideas of colonialism and capitalism and had devastating effects on Chinese cities including Wuhan. The First and Second Opium Wars could be recast as legitimate attempts by the Chinese governments of the day cracking down on the drugs trade, but were portrayed at the time as the British government defending free trade. It is an era of history that is not widely-known in modern Britain. Walking along streets shaded by genteel colonial architecture spurred me to read more about this shameful period, a task made more difficult, ironically, by the Great Firewall of China.
Throughout our visit, the pandemic seemed like a distant memory, with people mingling freely, crowded shopping streets and busy restaurants. I had some flu-like symptoms towards the end of our stay but tested negative for covid on the day before we travelled home. Heather, by contrast, now has a lateral flow test that confirms her membership of that most exclusive of groups: those whose infection derives from “ground zero” itself. Not the greatest of souvenirs, we admit, but a fine tale to recount over the coming years.
Wrote this whilst listening to: Chinese music constantly in the background, but I don’t know enough to be more specific than that.
Currently reading: City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir by Paul French, a racy non-fiction account of the demi-monde in Shanghai between the wars.
Cultural highlight: Wuhan Art Gallery, which may be the subject of a separate post. Otherwise, our movements were mostly dictated by the need to amuse a one-year old.
Culinary highlight: Too many to mention. A spicy clam soup from a street market just off Jiangan Road in Wuhan and Jiang Ban (a crêpe typically eaten for breakfast) in Shanghai deserve special mention. There are lots of good restaurants all over both cities, but the street food in China is something else.
microscopesandmonsters 