Today's plan for the day was 中山娱乐园 (Zhong Shan Amusement Park)! Wasn't planning on going originally, but got convinced (and guilt tripped) to go by Eliza, Yuchuan, Edward and Nichols. :/
Anyway, woke up early yet again to catch an early bus to the amusement park, along with the local students Shen Ping and Yang Tao, who didn't go back home for the week-long holidays.
The Bosslady and Bossman imitating the namesake of the amusement park.
The first ride they chose to take was the Challenger. No idea what it is? Look on:
Basically an evolution of the usual viking ship rides.
Bravehearts, all of them! No idea what they were in for, naturally.
Us two sad folks carrying all their bags for them.
Took a walk around the park after letting some of them recuperate after the ride. Apparently the amusement park doesn't serve the most variety of food, so all there was to offer were some cup noodles, bland popcorn, hotdogs and fried ice cream. Yuchuan and Nicholas chose the following:
With Yang Tao, the local student who very nicely brought us here.
We were all starving (some more than the others) after the rides, so we walked to the nearby (okay, not so near) shopping centre: Wuhan International Plaza.
This particular plaza was also home to a whole area serving Singaporean food. YESSSSSS. We were all obviously excited at the aspect of seeing char kway teow, Hokkien mee, rojak or even just some sticks of satay.
Was sadly underwhelmed, though, since they served lots of stuff that didn't exactly scream Singapore to us, other than Hainan Chicken rice, char siew rice, ice kachange and "Indian style milk tea". Now I know how a native Japanese feels everytime they walk into a local Japanese restaurant.
Never got so excited over char siew before, sigh. It tasted pretty decent though, so I was happy enough. :D
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Personal Reflections
In the amusement park today, I saw an quite an amount of beggars around. I wish I didn't have to use such a derogatory term such as "beggar", but I can't seem to find any other word for them. Singapore's government bans beggars from the streets, and I think the law is slightly bent for buskers.
It's different here and sometimes I find it really hard to turn down these beggars, especially when I see that some of them are about the age of my grandfather when he passed away. I kept thinking about how it would feel if this man was my grandfather, could I have turned him away so coldly?
Yet at the same time, I can't bring myself to give them money, because I know that once I help one of them, I have to help them all.
I've noticed that in China, there are two kinds of elderly. I saw both in the amusement park today, too. There's the first kind of elderly, in the pink of health, looking joyful and relaxed, playing Chinese chess with one another or taking care of their grandchildren. There was another kind of elderly; the beggars. They're all roughly the same age as the former, but a lot less healthy, probably, and sometimes handicapped.
It makes me think about how different lifestyles in China could be. Even from the houses itself, it was obvious that the rich were very rich, but the poor were very poor. In Yichang, we saw such extravagant houses and high-rise buildings along one street, and old, grimy dilapidated buildings right in the next street.
I suppose the rich may actually be the nouveau riche, rich from the globalisation and modernisation China has been going through in the recent years. The poor and handicapped, however, are forever trapped in their poverty cycle.The difference was jarring, and even after 20 days here, I still find it hard to accept this large gap in lifestyles.
