Yellow Crane Tower

On Tuesday, Chelsie and I went to the Yellow Crane Tower. Being myself, I was a little pessimistic about going to see some silly tower and I was simply going to humor my dear roommate. Fortunately, and much to my happy surprise, it turned out to be beautiful; it wasn't just a stupid giant tower like I had expected. I obviously had not done my research, but now that I have, I can tell you that there are 2 legends associated with the Yellow Crane Tower. 1: An Immortal named Wang Zi'an rode off on a yellow crane from Snake Mountain and a tower was later built in commemoration. 2: After becoming an Immortal, Fei Wenyi would ride a yellow crane and often stop on Snake Hill for a rest. Because we were pretty high up, it was breezy and beautiful and we could look down on the city as well as the Yangtze River. It is considered one of the 4 great towers of China. There were several beautiful areas to be seen and Chelsie and I were in awe at all the beauty surrounding us. It is, by far, the most beautiful place I have seen in China.

At the Goose Pond

Entering the most beautiful place I have seen in China

Those stairs got harder to climb the higher up you got

Stairs of mystery....Chelsie took a video of us going up them haha

This statue was really cool. I guess the cute Chinese couple kinda adds to the picture too :)

In the Falling Plum Blossoms Pavilion

Chelsie kept talking about how so many of the plants looked like Dr. Seuss creations. Upon spotting these, she said "I'm telling you, soon we are going to start seeing truffula trees" haha

The pine needles smelled like home :)

Here it is: the Yellow Crane Tower

The statue of the cranes

The Street in Ancient Style

There is a famous poem about the Yellow Crane Tower by Li Bai called "Seeing off Meng Haoran for Guangling at Yellow Crane Tower", and in Chinese it looks like this:
故人西辞黄鹤楼，
烟花三月下扬州。
孤帆远影碧空尽，
唯见长江天际流
A modern English translation goes something like this:
My old friends said goodbye to the west, here at Yellow Crane Tower,
In the third month's cloud of willow blossoms, he's going down to Yangzhou.
The lonely sail is a distant shadow, on the edge of a blue emptiness,
All I see is the Yangtze River flow to the far horizon.

Those of you who are coming to visit me here in China are going to be well supplied with my knowledge of basic survival Chinese. I now know my numbers 1-100. I can also say things like: too expensive, no good, I don't like, I DO like, fried dumplings, you're welcome, American, hello - how are you, excuse me/I'm sorry, puppy/dog, fruit, I'm coming (I learned this from doing a puppet show where I was a dog and I was being called to help my friends pull a giant carrot out of the ground haha) and I like fruit (my first complete sentence! - Thank you Bella!) I don't know yet if I am going to do a language exchange or take classes to learn Chinese, but I am encouraged by how quickly I am learning little things!

Since we do not have classes on Wednesday, Chelsie helped me get acquainted with the Wuhan center and we occupied ourselves by doing things like this:

It is, after all, pirate week at Romp n' Roll.