July 19, 2013
Wuhan
My alarm buzzed at 6:30 reminding me that I wanted to go to Tai Chi in the club this morning, but that didn’t end up happening. I turned off my alarm and went back to sleep for another hour and a half. Like most mornings, me and Abby were the last to breakfast in our own little Clark dining room, but we didn’t care. There was no rush because we wouldn’t be docking in Wuhan until 5 that night. I spent the day doing a myriad of things. I played go fish with Merry, Annika and Leah until it was time for Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s last lecture about china.
Today she talked mainly about her visit to China in 1975 to visit Mao Zedong. She and her husband were staying in Beijing when Chairman Mao called them to visit his house in the middle of the night. There was a picture up on the screen behind her of her shaking Chairman Mao’s hand in the newspaper. One of the biggest things that struck me was not only how truly sick and weak Zedong was in his last couple years of life, but also how nice of a guy he seemed to be based on her description. He was the communist leader of china who was responsible for many bad things in the context of WWII. But at the same time, she also emphasized how China practically worshiped him: he increased education and women’s rights, as well as China’s population among other things. In this way, it was hard for me to fully understand what kind of man he was.
She said that he always talked about the struggle of the Chinese people and how struggle was necessary for progress and growth. He also famously asked President Nixon, “Is peace your only goal?” This question actually prompted Nixon to title his last book Beyond Peace. Another interesting thing is how little importance he placed on luxury. Julie said that the room he was seated in was bare and only had 6 big armchairs, simple side tables for tea with a spatoon underneath each. Besides that, there were hundreds and hundreds of worn books and scrolls on the shelves. It was a very interesting speech. I absolutely loved it and I regret not taking a picture with both of them. Perhaps there would have been a time for a photo later but they had to leave because their eldest daughter was giving birth.
The rest of the day consisted of scrabble games, tea time in the club, giant games of presidents with Bobby and Laura, coloring books, watching While you were Sleeping, eating lunch, and in general trying to tame my crazy hair in the humidity.
Finally 5 o’clock came around and it was time to gather in the lobby to get off the ship. Wuhan is a great little city that is actually the site of Mao Zedong’s summer villa. We were scheduled to go tour the villa, but it was closed for a government function, which I am very disappointed about by the way, so we visited a very interesting museum instead. It was called the Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan and it showcased the tomb where the Bianzhong of Marquis Yi of Zeng, or Zenghouyi Bells, were found. Before we got to view the museum we headed into a little theater to watch a concert of ancient instruments. They included an incredibly huge set of bells (an exact copy of the ones found in the tomb), chimes, a flute, two flat stringed instruments, and another unique wind instrument and a drum. We would find out later that all of these instruments were exact replicas of instruments found in the tomb.
The tomb of the Marquis of Yi of Zeng was excavated in the 1970s just a few miles outside of Wuhan and contained hundreds of artifacts including 20 some other tombs of his concubines and maid servants, armor, the set of bells and chimes, wine vases, weapons, jewelry, and many other things. The tomb was massive. It had four different chambers with all of the burial riches carefully laid out in each chamber. What’s even more amazing is the fact that he was buried over 2400 years ago, and all of these artifacts are still in such great condition. It truly was an amazing museum and as Julie Eisenhower foretold during her lecture, it truly did rival the contents of the King Tut museum. Lastly, one of my favorite parts was seeing the pictures of the men excavating the site. I could see myself doing something like that someday, but more on that later.
Unfortunately we only had about an hour at the museum since we had to be back to the ship at 8. We were met outside with a raging thunderstorm which actually made the weather quite cool and tolerable. We hurried to the buses after a few minutes and made our way back to the ship. Ill just say that I love thunderstorms so being able to drive through the city while it was raining was a treasure.
Back on the ship it was time for dinner and afterwords, and private dance party in the club with Abby, Leah, Merry, Jose, Anna, and Emma. Grandma, grandpa, and Heather were all cheering us on and taking pictures. We were teaching the little girls to do the monkey and cotton eyed Joe and rocking out to dancing queen and Michael Jackson. At one point we were doing a kick line. It was a good night.
Then it was back to the room and lights out.