Wuhu

Wuhu is a small city according to most Chinese. Outside of China almost nobody has ever heard of it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot of Chinese who have never heard of it either. After one week in Wuhu I’m quite sure this city isn’t small, it’s only relatively small if you compare it to Beijing. One of my colleagues said that there lived only 600 000 people in Wuhu, Amsterdam has around 750 000 citizens and is the biggest city of the Netherlands. Just checked Wikipedia however and there they counted over 2 million citizens of Wuhu, I assume my colleague talked about the central area of Wuhu only.

Wuhu is only briefly mentioned in the rough guide and in most tourist guides this place is not even mentioned. It’s about the only city located at the Yangtze river which is not mentioned. The first hour I was guided through the big shopping mall I noticed that a lot more people looked my way when they saw me, than it was the case in Beijing, and I was a bit relieved to see another foreigner (Laowai) walking when we got outside.

Wuhu is located in Anhui province, which is known as an underdeveloped piece of land just next to the “rich” eastern provinces of China. Its only 4 hours by train to Shanghai from here. People from Anhui are known for their migration to the real (even for China) big cities, to work there as cleaners, construction workers, restaurant staff and in all kinds of other unwanted jobs. Although Wuhu is located in the poorest province of Eastern China, it does have a strategic position at the Yangtze river and with a some imagination it could have a bright future ahead of itself. I’m not completely sarcastic about this, because it might be a poor city at the moment (it does have its rich parts of course), but it’s developing like crazy.

From what I've heard and seen Wuhu should be a typical Chinese city. It’s a lot more chaotic than Beijing, traffic seems most of the time without any rules, they haven’t put stopping lights on half of the crossroads. So far I’ve seen three traffic accidents and it’s only my first week here. Half of the buildings here are going to be knocked down next year, and the other half is not even a year old or not even finished. There are young people addicted to online gaming in internet bars, (which are opened 24 hours a day, which was perfect cause here I could watch Ajax since I didn’t had internet at home yesterday) and there are old people who still go shopping in their pyjamas. There are big shopping centers including all the big western fast food restaurants like MacDonald’s, KFC and Pizza hut, the only thing missing is a Starbucks, and in the alley behind the shopping center is a cheap traditional but dirty market.

At this moment I met only three other foreigners, a Japanese a Cuban and a guy from Ghana. These were the other foreign teachers at my school, however one of them is also studying Chinese at the University of Anhui. So I plan on visiting his university today, because I’m thinking of following a Chinese class and because it would be nice to meet some other foreigners. Most people in Wuhu (except those at my school) don’t speak a word of English so it’s kind of essential to improve my Chinese. With that said and with Wuhu being said to be a “typical” Chinese city, Wuhu might be a perfect city to learn Chinese?