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Sweet memories of Wuhan trip
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Back in 1980, the most populous city in central China looked like any 1960s Malaysian town </td></tr><tr><td><!-- Author -->
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By Lee Wei Ling </td></tr><tr><td><!-- show image if available -->
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Wuhan is now known as the 'thoroughfare of nine provinces' and the political, economic, financial, cultural, educational and transportation centre of central China. But when the writer took a walk in the city with Mr Devan Nair and Dr Albert Winsemius in 1980, they were greeted with curious looks by the residents. -- PHOTO: AP
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In November 1980, my father made his second official visit to the People's Republic of China. My mother and I accompanied him, as we had on his first visit in 1976, when Mao Zedong was still alive. Included in the 1980 delegation were, among others, then Second Deputy Prime Minister S. Rajaratnam, Finance Minister Hon Sui Sen, NTUC secretary-general Devan Nair and Singapore's economic adviser Albert Winsemius. They have all died since. We planned to sail down the Three Gorges of the Yangtze during the 1980 trip. And my father requested that we stop in Wuhan after that, as he remembered listening to the 'Wuhan Songsters' in his youth. The Wuhan Songsters was organised by Chen Renbing, a native of Hubei who had grown up in Wuhan. In the 1930s, the song and dance troupe travelled to South-east Asia, including Singapore, to conduct anti-Japanese performances for overseas Chinese and to raise funds for China's war against Japan.
Before Japan conquered Singapore in February 1942, my father had heard the famous Wuhan Songsters on the radio. This piqued his interest in Wuhan and he requested that after we had sailed past the Three Gorges, we fly from Dang- yang Airport to Wuhan. The day after we arrived, we visited the Wuhan iron and steel company and then Wuhan University. Wuhan University is one of China's key universities, coming directly under the supervision of the central government's ministry of education. It is regarded as one of the best and most selective universities in the country, and its history dates back to 1893, making it one of China's oldest institutions of higher learning.
We received a rousing welcome when we arrived, typical of the receptions we had received at almost every one of our stops. Masses of students chanted
'huan ying, huan ying, re lia huan ying!', which means 'welcome, welcome, a very warm welcome!', and clapped their hands. We toured the library, and I stopped to look at some medical textbooks. They were written in English and published in 1950. Wuhan University's medical education was at that time 30 years behind that in the rest of the world. That evening, we were hosted to a banquet by the People's Government of Hubei province. There were many toasts of
maotai, an extremely potent alcoholic drink created by fermenting sorghum and then distilling the alcohol. I made a pretence of drinking it, by lifting the cup to my lips, but I did not even touch the
maotai. The Chinese officials took every opportunity to do a
'kan pei' which literally means 'dry (or completely finish) your cup'.
The next day, we visited a Zen temple after which we were scheduled to depart by plane to Hangzhou. But we were told the plane would have been unable to land in Hangzhou because of fog, so we had a half-day free in Wuhan. Devan wrote a poem for his friend Winsemius, entitled The Yangtze's Voyage Through History. A framed copy of the poem hung in Winsemius' study in his home in The Netherlands till his dying day.
Streaming through the centuries,
The long river flowed.
Sheer heights of rock
Upon the noble river bowed.
Laden with legends
Of gods, demons and warrior kings,
And of battles fought long ago:
The storied hills cradle the graves
Of a thousand heroes and ten thousand knaves.
The deep-throated memoried gorges echoed
A whole nation's bygone joys and woes.
And dreaming on the deck sat Winsemius
Seeing in vision the long river
Flowing endlessly into the future.
Later in the day, Devan, Winsemius and I went for a walk in the city. It looked like any small town in peninsular Malaysia in the 1960s. Soon, we were followed by an ever-growing crowd, consisting mainly of children but also some adults. We felt like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. This was probably the first time the residents of Wuhan had seen an Indian or a Caucasian. But I suspect the young Chinese woman too aroused as much curiosity as did the Caucasian or Indian. I looked Chinese, but neither my attire nor my behaviour resembled that of a PRC Chinese. In 1980, most people in China still wore Mao jackets. This trio of brown, yellow and white, each of whom qualified as a curiosity, but when combined, must have struck the Residents of Wuhan as quite extraordinary.
We came to a gambling stall where for a few coins you could try your luck. Devan had some coins on him and he handed them to the man behind the stall. He won a prize, a big ball of sticky caramel stuck on a stick. By now, the crowd that had gathered around us was many layers deep, a significant proportion of them adults. Devan wisely handed the candy to one of the children and we quickly headed back to the guest house. I have never been back to Wuhan since. According to information I gleaned from the Internet, it is now the most populous city in central China. Known as the 'thoroughfare of nine provinces', it is the political, economic, financial, cultural, educational and transportation centre of central China. I have no doubt Wuhan University's medical school today uses up-to-date English textbooks. And I have no doubt also that if Devan, Winsemius and I were to go for a walk in Wuhan today, no one would bat an eyelid.
The long river does indeed flow endlessly into the future.
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute. In her next column, she will describe her 1980 trip sailing down the Three Gorges of the Yangtze.
[email protected]
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