Oh the Things That You See

My husband and I drove over to the other side of the city to buy some tickets for a performance.  Wuhan is a very big city.  It used to be three separate cities; Wu Chang, Han Kou, and Han Yang.  But then they combined the three, and now it is too big.  So it takes about an hour to drive to the other side.  We drove to one of the closer places, but it still took us forever because of the traffic. 

In China, the traffic is really crazy.  For one, they make 4 lanes out of two.  See?

 

Actually, in this case I can see 5....  lol  Anyway, this particular day, when we got to this street, traffic was completely stopped.  We couldn't figure out why.  Some cars actually drove over in to the opposing traffic lanes to go around all of the traffic.  There were policemen on the corners, so I'm not sure how that turned out for the drivers.  Actually, you rarely see police here.  But we were stuck, and it took over an hour just to get up to the next set of buildings you can see ahead on the right.  yuck

 

While I was sitting in the car, I started taking pictures.  I've been thinking lately that I need to take more pictures to document our time here.  So I started taking pictures of normal things so that I would have a record.  This picture is of a normal chinese neighborhood.  There are nicer ones than this, but this one is pretty average.  You will notice that they hang their clothes out on the balcony to dry.  Often they use a long bamboo pole to thread them on to.  Also, see the sausages drying there?

 

I was too chicken to take a picture of this, but eventually a man got out of his car and tried to move the white barrier in the middle of the road.  Some policemen came up and told him to leave it alone and moved it back.  The guy argued with them, but they didn't budge.  It was nice to see that chinese can argue with a policeman though. 

So we were sitting there waiting when all of the sudden we saw a building up ahead simply fall to the ground!  In shock, I turned to my husband and said, "What did we just see?"  I was remembering 9/11, and I kept thinking about how many bodies might be inside.  He said, "Oh!  This is why traffic was blocked off!  They were imploding an old building!"  I was relieved to see that it wasn't an inhabited building.  It was actually cool to be able to see that.  As we drove along, we saw other buildings which were obviously empty that we could tell were being prepared for implosion.  Here is a picture I took right after it fell:

 

Here is a picture of the aftermath:

 

There was a water truck spraying water on the rubble in an effort to keep the dust down. 

 

We finally got through the traffic jam and were able to go buy our tickets.  Throughout the day I continued to take pictures of things that I saw.  I had to wonder about this sign.  Falling rubble, and falling people?  ;)

Here are a couple of pictures of truck loads on the freeway:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And last of all, here is a man selling live ducks on the side of the road.  I wasn't happy to see that he had them tied by their beaks.  He swings them up in to the air so that they will flap their wings so that people can see they are still alive and fresh.

 

 

 I'm going to try to do better at documenting my life here, and things that I see.  Much of it you wouldn't believe if you didn't see it for yourself!