October marks the
beginning of one of China's many holidays, 黄金周, or Golden Week. It was
created by the Chinese government back in 2000 for the purpose of stimulating
the tourism industry and giving people a chance to visit their families. I
can't help but wish that the American government would take up the "let's
just make up a holiday so we can hang out for a week" stance of which the
communists are so fond. Regardless, for me and my classmates it means we had seven days to do whatever our minds can imagine and our incredibly small
budgets can afford.
We quickly struck upon
the idea that we would visit our friend Bobby's hometown, 黄石. Huangshi, about an
hour and half outside of Wuhan, is a "small city" by Chinese
standards, with only about 2.6 million people. That's twice the population of
New Hampshire. Small city. Right. Anyways, Bobby was born and raised in
Australia, but his parents are from Huangshi and they often visit family there.
It just so happened that they were there for the holiday so they invited us to
come spend it with them in the city. We all jumped at the chance to get out of the city for a bit.
We intended to take the
high speed train to Huangshi on Wednesday, but as you would expect, things didn't
go as planned. For starters, we couldn't get a taxi to stop and pick us up.
This is partially our own faults as it was around 4:00, the time when taxi
drivers change shifts and then get dinner. Therefore we walked about a mile
down the road with our thumbs out before we finally got a ride. Once we got to
the station we found out there were no more tickets available. Also we were at the wrong station. So much for that
plan.
Just when we thought all
was lost, Bobby's dad, Michael, volunteered to come pick us up from the
station. Now I mentioned before that Huangshi is about an hour and a half from
Wuhan, which makes it very interesting that Bobby's dad arrived about 45 minutes
later. Turns out he is my kind of guy, the kind of guy that drives his Mercedes
SUV about 110 MPH down the highway. We hopped in and I got to see that driving style
firsthand. It was awesome. The man threaded that 6,000 lbs SUV like a needle
between ancient trucks and tiny hatchbacks, with me giggling in the back seat.
Soon we were arrived at Michael’s restaurant in Huangshi. At this point I should mention that Bobby’s
dad is a man of means. When I say means, I mean millions. Here’s an example;
Bobby works at a country house-style hotel in Sydney called Milton Park. One
day his dad visited and fell in love with the place, so he bought it. Then he
returned to Huangshi where he built another restaurant/hotel and named it Milton Park in homage to the original. This would become a running joke on the
trip. When we walked into a building one of us would always say, “I like this
place. I think I’ll buy it.”
It is also worth
mentioning that you would never know that Bobby came from this kind of wealth
if you met him. He doesn't dress in Louis Vuitton or wear gold chains, in fact he
worked at McDonalds in Australia and he’s about as down to earth as a guy can
be. He’s also incredibly generous and he’s the reason I am staring at a
bookshelf in my room and why I never have to pay for laundry (his uncle bought
him a washing machine, which I refer to as “my” washing machine all the time. I
am only half joking.)
Dinner that night was
with Bobby’s family including his mother, two brothers and his cousin,
TonyNickDanny. TonyNickDanny earned this title because he simply couldn’t decide
on an English name, leading Bobby and his brothers to combine all his ideas
into one.
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| From the left: TonyNickDanny, Natalia (Poland), Robyn (England), Virag (Hungary), Bobby (Australia), Aino (Finland), Ned (USA), Bobby's dad |
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