Wuhan on the Yangtze

After leaving Seoul just over a week ago, we're now in Wuhan on the
Yangtze in Hubei Province in the PRC.

On our second last day in Seoul, we ate dinner in a Chinese restaurant
near the apartment where we were staying. Shortly after sitting down
and ordering, two policemen walked in and sat at a nearby table near
ours. Soon, I saw Chris's eyes widen and turning around, observed
that one of the policemen had removed his pistol from its holster and
appeared to be attempting to reattach the trigger guard. The gun lay
flat on the table and he apparently found it necessary to apply
significant force. He was not successful, as he soon picked up a
chopstick and attempted to use this to pry the guard into place. The
pistol was now pointing at the table next to ours. He finally managed
to fix his gun, but not before a crowd of restaurant employees had
surrounded the table offering various advice and seemingly entirely
unconcerned that the policeman was trying to jimmy his loaded weapon
with a chopstick.

From Seoul, we flew to Shanghai, taking the new MagLev train (reaching
a maximum speed of 431 km/hr) from the airport. We spent 6 nights in
Shanghai near the Bund and the lively Nanjing Road. We were able to
catch up with Chengcheng, my former English student, visiting her at
the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, where she studies.

An overnight train took us from Shanghai to Wuhan. The ride in our
"hard sleeper" carriage was remarkably comfortable, although
incredibly loud Chinese music blared through hallway speakers until
10pm; come 7am it was straight back on. Many of our Chinese
companions on the train seemed to know the words to most songs.

We're now in Wuhan, staying with some English teachers who we met in
Shanghai. On Thursday we take a bus to Yichan, where we board a boat
which will take us on a several day journey upstream on the Yangtze as
far as Chongqin.

It seems that, while we are able to update this blog, we cannot
actually view it ourselves as the host site, blogspot.com, appears to
be blocked by a Chinese firewall.