The Wuhanecdotes: Part 1 武汉封城一周年之际，回顾我们的武汉记忆 （一）
Eduardo Baptista, former intern
Wuhan, my girlfriend’s hometown, was where I first properly celebrated Chinese New Year. The fact that it was just a year before the coronavirus outbreak makes the memories from those seven days all the more vivid.
“Portuguese eh? You should talk to my people in Macau,” a cousin of my girlfriend greeted me as he sucked on a Huanghelou (“Yellow Crane Tower”), a brand of cigarettes named after one of the most famous landmarks in the city.
Once a well-connected member of the city’s criminal underworld, this cousin now spent his days smoking expensive cigarettes with his former partners-in-crime, reminiscing of the days when crackdowns on crime happened once in a blue moon.
Convinced I understood his hometown’s feisty dialect, Wuhanese, he began to up the ante, narrating his numerous exploits. The other relatives at the table stared in silence as he slammed his fist in outrage at suitable moments in his narrative (“I was never indebted to her!”) and cajoled me into downing more of the local baijiu—not as pleasant as a Huanghelou cigarette, I must admit.
Although no one else I met on this trip was quite as dramatic, his short temper and sharp tongue were qualities I saw in many other Wuhanese. Nobody was trying to appease me. It was quite a contrast to the uptight ethos of Peking University, where I was studying at the time.
Thanks to these personalities and their enthralling tales of yesteryear, the coronavirus will never define Wuhan in my mind, and I look forward to buying 1,000 packs of Huanghelou for my wedding.
And you can bet our crazy cousin will get an invite, plated in gold like the filters of his cigarettes.
Ebba Isaksson, former intern
In my memories, Wuhan is a bowl of noodles that, to my unsophisticated palate, tastes like it was slathered in a peanut butter-like sauce. What’s not to love about that?
On my first evening in Wuhan, I wandered around the campus looking for a place to eat. My expectations were not in any way low, but I thought I would feel some culture shock in the process of moving from a metropolis with 20 subway lines to a city with just three. However, I was fascinated to walk past a restaurant serving Middle Eastern food, and peeked in through the windows to see young students feasting on big bowls of hummus and what looked like freshly baked bread. I eventually chose the most popular-looking food stall, not realizing that I was standing in line for Wuhan’s famous noodle dish, reganmian (热干面), dry noodles in a sesame paste.
The noodles did not disappoint, and were surprisingly cheap: The vendor pulled a 5 yuan bill directly from my hand and handed me a 1 yuan back out of the 10 RMB I tried to pay him, confused between the local pronunciation of “four” and “ten.” I recently talked to a friend from Wuhan, who said that Wuhan must have been an interesting place to live in at that time. He told me that the city is constantly expanding, and seems to be a different place every time you come back to visit. A transport hub, a culinary metropolis, and a place that can comfortably combine cosmopolitan tastes and local authenticity: Wuhan is a lot of things to a lot of people, and this excellent first meal set the tone for an entire year’s discovery of what the city had to offer.
Emily Conrad, marketing manager
When my then-fiancé first tried to sell me on the benefits of having our wedding ceremony at Wuhan’s East Lake State Guesthouse, he listed a tour of Chairman Mao’s private villa as a plus. (Indeed, outside of Beijing’s Zhongnanhai, Chairman Mao spent more time in Wuhan after 1949 than any other city, with over 40 visits.) I was skeptical that my overseas guests would be much interested, but since I had planned the US edition of the wedding without much interference, I decided to let his creative juices flow.