Wuhan travel series: Packing

This post is my guide to packing for travel to China, part of a 4 part series.
Links to the other three posts are at the end of this one.

We traveled for adoption from August 14-28th, 2014

China Packing Tips

Adult Meds- 

Yes, amen, bring all the meds. Get a z-Pack or two, some Cipro, Immodium, cold meds, favorite painkillers (OTC and otherwise), allergy meds (including topical if you’re prone to that), the works. Meds do not take up much room and being uncomfortable in a traveling situation is miserable. Take meds out of boxes/bulky bottles but keep instructions with them in snack-sized Ziplocs. Then put all the meds for you (or each member of your family) in a bigger Ziploc. I had a plastic shoebox from the dollar store sitting around so I put the whole shebang along with make-up in there, which made unpacking easy. If you don’t end up needing them, you can get rid of them at the end of your trip and use the space for souvenirs. We donated a bunch to the adoption agency.

Bar Soap- 

A bar of soap can be nice since the hotels generally only offer gels. Obviously this is personal preference, but I hate those smelly gels and it was nice to have a good old bar of Dial (which you might be able to find in country- I didn’t try). 

Clothes- 

For a two week trip, I would bring five or six days worth of clothing. You can wash things in the sink and let them dry a couple of days or use one of the cheap laundry services ubiquitous in China. There is also a third option for summer: come back to your room every few hours strip down and hang up your clothes so they can air out. If you're diligent and generous with deodorant, you can totally stretch the clothes to work for two weeks without washing. Bring some workout type clothes, but otherwise bring whatever you are most comfortable in. Also, bring enough skivvies for every day traveling plus three or four.

One additional clothing note: do not I repeat do NOT use a ziploc or similar non-breathing bag for dirty clothes in summer. We had a tee shirt grow MOLD in a matter of days. The heat and particular soup of dampness became a disgusting, staining collection of green spots. It was weird and sad and felt like we were being punished for trying to keep things clean. The horror. 

Shoes-

Comfortable is paramount. If it's summer, you can wear sandals all over so ignore people who were worried about dirty streets unless you are going way out in the boonies. Maybe bring one closed-toe option in case it ends up raining. One thing I wish I had brought was a thin pair of cheap flip-flops. It would have been nice in the hotel with icky carpet, and if the shower had been gross I would have worn them in there, in addition to the pool areas. The nicer hotel ironically gave out slippers. 

Adoption Specific China Packing Tips

Kid Meds- 

In addition to the adult meds above get a lice kit, scabies cream, pinkeye stuff, painkiller, benedryl, anti-fungal cream, nice thick hypoallergenic diaper cream, gentle baby wash/shampoo. Put anything that needs a prescription but isn’t pediatric dose-specific (scabies, pinkeye, etc) in your name if you can. Not only might you need it for yourself in the end (who knows?) but your insurance should cover it, which is not going to happen for your kid until they are in your custody. 

Diapers-

If you’re adopting a young one and are not going somewhere extraordinarily rural, bring only a few diapers from home. We brought a few (like 6- enough for an afternoon after meeting our 18 month old girl) and we paid anywhere from US $10 to US $25 for a big pack of Pampers Sensitive. I saw Huggies as well as Chinese brands. Wipes are also everywhere, and I found the sensitive ones in larger more Western style shops. Diapers are $25 at our Target, so I didn’t think they were that much more expensive at all, something I had been warned about in people’s blogs. Maybe they fluctuate, but to me they were too big a gamble in terms of sizing and luggage space to bother bringing from home.

Diaper Bag-

I was really glad we brought backpacks instead of diaper bags. The kind we brought had several huge pockets and an interior sleeve for laptops in addition to side pockets for bottles of water. Backpacks expand more than diaper bags, are easier to carry, can be hung on the back of a stroller more easily, and go through airport scanners and such without as much worry about the straps getting caught on stuff. They also look nicer and don't make your shoulders/neck hurt from a lopsided load. I would also recommend a safety pouch for your passport, cash & credit cards. I never hid it under my shirt, but it was nice to have in the outside pocket to keep everything tidy.  

Cameras-

If you regularly use an SLR or fancy camera, by all means bring it. Otherwise, clear off your camera and just use the heck out of that. iPhones and similar do a great job. The focus (hahaha- FOCUS!!) will be on helping that new little one. You will be both busier and more helpless than you've been, maybe ever. Take more pictures than you think you'll need. I'm really glad we did.

The rest of my Wuhan travel series:
Packing 

From Hong Kong to Wuhan

The Wuhan Poly Hotel and Getting to Carrefour

Food and Shopping Near Hongshan Square

Wuhan travel series: Food and Shopping near Hongshan Square

This post is my guide to Food and Shopping near Hongshan Square, Wuhan, Hubei, China, part of a 4 part series.
Links to the other three posts are at the end of this one.

We traveled for adoption from August 14-28th, 2014

Shopping in the Hongshan Square Carrefour building

Carrefour is a slightly scruffy department store. People say it's a French Walmart, but this one is much smaller and dirtier than any Walmart I've seen. The Carrefour building has a KFC and a very nice Japanese noodle chain called AjiSen, in addition to a roasted duck shop that is a Wuhan specialty. There is also a local version of a fast food joint (burgers and fried junk) which wasn't at all appealing and who knows why a person would eat there. Be further warned we noticed a poster announcing a C- health rating. As you might guess, Jonathan ate there immediately. He did not die, but it may have been a fluke. So to speak.

The Ajisen restaurant is fine. I was just suuuuper tired.

The building also has a couple of cute kids’ clothes shops and various little vendors. Almost nobody here speaks fluent English, but they are willing to try to help you anyway, so be prepared to point and mime. A nice clear “How much?,” and remembering good manners both work wonders when you are at a linguistic disadvantage. It’s probably possible to bargain with the little vendors, but stuff is pretty cheap anyway and I’m never clear which shops allow it. Google can help you find out more about that if it’s your thing. 

The Carrefour itself starts on the second floor, and there is a sliding sloped walkway to carry you up. The second floor has clothing, strollers, and household stuff. In the back of the second floor, there is another sliding walkway to the third floor. The third floor has some personal care items and a grocery store. You’ll need to go up through there to pay and exit. You will need cash, our credit cards wouldn't work here. 

Food advice in Wuhan

Grocery Stores

When shopping for groceries in China, note that you’ll need to have any fruit weighed and tagged in the fruit department before going to the register. “Meiyo” means “out of” something (sounds like Mayonnaise “Mayo”). Nowhere will your Visa or Mastercards or any other card work, except at some ATMs. Even if a shop has the sticker for your kind of card, the ones they have seem to be part of a different network and must have a code to enter like a debit card. 

Some families use their in-room electric teapot to boil water for instant Ramen just like back in college. If you do this, my layman’s recommendation would be to either use some cheap bottled water or boil the water twice before using it. The problem with water in China is that it is often contaminated by insufficient infrastructure. In plain English, there is animal and human waste cross-contamination because the pipes are messed up on a massive level. This is a separate issue entirely from the infamous massive water pollution, which is another good reason to spend a few cents on the water you ingest in country. This is true even if you’re pouring it into some cheap freeze-dried noodles in a Styrofoam bowl. 

Remember to skip anything with ice (especially smoothies or shakes made with it) as that is often made with tap water and freezing it is not going to protect you. Several of the parents in our travel group (myself included) got drinks with ice, sipped them down quickly and escaped illness. I believe "No Ice" is something like "Bu yao bing". It would be worth learning or writing down before travel. The best option for a lot of the essential language stuff would be to print out the Mandarin. There is just about no good way to write out Mandarin pronunciation in Roman letters and the translation apps all seem to suck, so if I could go back and do it again I would bring a printed translated list with me. I'd probably still try to say the phrases, but it would be helpful to show people the written part, after they stopped laughing, wiped their eyes and recovered from whatever nonsense I just said.

Before we travelled, I read the blogs of some families who recommended bringing snacks from the US to China, which seems completely mad to me. The stores we saw were packed with snacks! Packaged nuts, dried fruit, fresh fruit, chips, cookies, cheese sticks, breads, Gatorade, sodas, ten flavors of Oreos (really!) and every kind of treat were everywhere. Even 7-Elevens on the street corner and inside the subway station have all that stuff. Our own new daughter loved these tiny oyster cracker balls (I call them chalk balls because that is totally what they taste like) packaged in single serving bags, which made them handy for stroller days. We even found some with characters from Madagascar on them, and have continued to seek them out in our local Asian Grocers. All this is to say I would say leave the snacks at home.

My essential grocery list for your first day in Province:
Water- a big multi pack of not-too-huge bottles (makes them simple to carry around)

Electrolyte drinks- Gatorade or similar, this is on my essentials list because I visited in the summer. They have super yummy versions here, with mandarin, blueberry, pineapple, etc. that have much less sugar than Gatorade. 

Fruit- Bananas come in their own germ-free wrappers, great even if your stomach feels lousy, only buy enough for a couple of days. Apples are pretty handy, too, and more portable but should be washed with your bottled water.

Tissue packets- Don’t bring more than one or two of these from home, they are way too bulky and readily available to bother. Get a cheap multi-pack or two when you arrive. You’ll need them at restaurants and after washing up in restrooms and in the restroom in general, if you know what I mean. I used them to dab the sweat and make-up off my face in a vain attempt to not feel gross and drippy all the time. Again, it was summer. But trust me, whatever time of year, you’ll want a lot of the tissues.

Other Grocery Items

Single serve milks for kids- There are shelf-stable adorable single serving (3 to 6 ounces) milks for kids available in both China and Japan. They are often slightly sweetened. Most of the kids in our group seemed to be used to them, and they’re handy to have on hand. Even the young kids did not seem into formula no matter what it said on their discharge sheets from foster care. Kids will be upset on those first couple of days and may not be interested in food but might take milk or drinking yogurt.

About getting snacks for soon-to-be-adopted kids; if you don’t want to buy stuff until later, don’t worry. Your kid is likely to come with a bag of junk food and drinks anyway. Our daughter had Pringles, Chips, Custard buns, chocolate wafers, rice crackers and tons of other crap. We threw most of it out because she didn’t seem interested and because to be honest it was all salty sugary terrible junk anyway. A scared, freaked out kid under age two was not going to be comforted by this and it truly did not seem familiar to her anyway. We did keep her “chalk ball” baby crackers and some of the Japanese-style crackers called “Sembei” that she liked. If she had seemed into them, maybe I would have kept more. I was glad she didn’t seem to mind we ditched 95% of it.

Restaurants in the Hongshan Square Area

The hotel staff can direct you to the nearby “Western” options (KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, etc). They’re all within about a quarter mile of the hotel. Our guide took us to an awesome local restaurant as well. You cross the first road and turn left, going down about a tenth of a mile. The restaurant is on the right and has a big cooler right inside offering fresh fish. The part we ate in was a big private room with a lazy susan table upstairs, but there were lots of long tables downstairs as well. I bet the hotel staff could give you recommendations for good authentic local places. 

I would like to plug the department store restaurant options in Wuhan. At the JieDaoKou station (three stops away on line 2 on the Metro) there is a great food court. Almost everything is set out either in pictures or pre-made dishes showing what’s available, which makes it very easy to point and say please. You have to put money on a card to buy the food, but whatever you don't use you can get back after you’re done. There is also a large Starbucks at this stop with excellent air conditioning and the usual sandwiches and Starbucks Wuhan cups. (Though there is a closer S’bucks to the Poly if you’d rather walk.)

The department store food court made our girl SO
happy on her second day with us!

In general, from my short time in China I can recommend looking for shopping areas and then following your instincts to find the always-nearby restaurants. Wuhan in particular is pretty friendly that way, as a huge urban city with a totally workable Metro.

The rest of my Wuhan travel series:
Packing 

From Hong Kong to Wuhan

The Wuhan Poly Hotel and Getting to Carrefour

Food and Shopping Near Hongshan Square

Wuhan travel series: The Wuhan Poly and getting to Carrefour

This post is my guide to the Wuhan Poly Hotel in Wuhan, and how to get to the Carrefour, part of a 4 part series.
Links to the other three posts are at the end of this one.

We traveled for adoption from August 14-28th, 2014

The Wuhan Poly Hotel

We felt very comfortable at this hotel. The staff is outstanding. They are friendly and patient with all the non-Chinese speaking guests they see daily, going out of their way to be kind and helpful to us. We also met our guide from Lotus travel hired by Holt International. He was fantastic and always willing to go above and beyond, as were all the hired guides we dealt with in country.

Ask the desk for directions and they will likely provide you a map. It is easier to understand a person who can point and draw lines for you than somebody rambling on the internet. Says the person about to ramble on the internet.

The hotel itself is fine. There are three things you may notice and not like, if you haven’t traveled in developing countries.

1.     The carpets are not great, or at least they were not in our room. I am kind of a freak about that, and planned to keep my shoes on but after a day or two decided to chill out and go with “when in Rome”.

2.     It can be a bit noisy at night. I was joking with my husband that maybe there was a city-wide tailgater or perhaps a minor revolution going on at street level. Turns out there is a very popular karaoke bar on the 4th floor, and we were on the 6th. I don’t know if it would be worth asking to change rooms, honestly. For me almost all hotels are noisier than home and I always bring earplugs.

3.     People smoke everywhere. Seriously, just imagine it’s 1940’s America, or a bad noir film. We were on a non-smoking floor and inside the room was all right, but there was a constant stream of businessmen smoking and talking on their phones outside our door, near the elevators. This isn’t really a hotel problem, it’s a cultural difference so I think it falls in the “suck it up, buttercup” category.

The room was all right for what we needed, and we didn't upgrade from just a basic King room. The linens and surfaces were clean and it smelled fresh. If you have more than two people you might request extra towels and TP right off the bat. The wall between the room and the bathroom was glass with a curtain, meaning that anybody getting up in the middle of the night flooded the room with light. It turned out to be helpful to us in the first few days after meeting our daughter because she wanted to always be in line of sight with me.

We didn't try the Poly pool but it sounded pretty lame. You have to wear a swim cap, so if you plan to go then bring your own because who wants to wear a communal swim cap? Ew. 

Our kiddo was small enough that the lack of big floor spaces didn't matter.

The tubs are like 17 feet deep. 

Food inside the Wuhan Poly

The room service is pretty reasonable, though they may need to come to your room so you can point to what you want on the menu. I loved the Bibimbap (Korean hot bowl rice dish) there, and Jonathan liked the Cantonese noodle soup. We found that going in person to the hotel’s restaurants was both expensive and disappointing, but other families seemed to like them. When I say expensive, I mean like $50 instead of $10 for a dinner for two, not like US expensive. So you might going to the restaurants in the hotel for some variety if you’re stuck eating in every meal for some reason.

Your room rental probably comes with the breakfast buffet. It was huge and quite good. Be informed that there is a guy in the back right area who will cook you eggs. In fact, if you see anybody behind the buffet near the stovetops you could ask them for one and they’ll get you hooked up. If you want coffee, order one (or maybe two!) when you are being seated. Otherwise it can take a while to order since just about everything else is buffet style. Some days the coffee we got was a nice thick espresso-style, and sometimes it was a larger watery cup like you get in the states.

Poly buffet YUM!

If you’re here for adoption, the kids all seemed to enjoy the drinking yogurt in the mini-fridge by the tea station. You just stab the straw right through the lid- don’t remove the lid and that way it usually won’t spill even if they tip it up. Straws were in a little cup on top of the fridge. We often took an extra one for later in the day, which may or may not be allowed. If you are prone to stomach problems while traveling, you might try a drinking yogurt or two per day yourself. We also took bananas and sometimes a little dry breakfast cereal for her snack cup. Again, YMMV in terms of rule-following…

Getting to the famous Carrefour department store:

Path # 1 Above Ground

If you have a stroller, we recommend staying at street level because there are no escalators back up on the Carrefour side of the busy traffic square. When we were in Wuhan it was full on furnace-hot summer, though, and our kid was too little to do the stairs herself. We came to prefer this path because it avoided most of the stairs.

So for an above-ground path, go straight out the hotel doors the way you came, across the parking lot and straight down the connector street to the area where Subway Exit 2A sits. Do not go down into the subway, but turn 90 degrees left and you’ll see the cross walk on the street.  

Wait for the light to cross the street here- this is Minzhu Road. BE CAREFUL and go quickly, even if you have a green walk light. Try to be subtle, but I recommend using local people as human shields if there are some waiting with you. It seems turning cars will NOT wait for pedestrians, and mopeds, motorcycles and bikes are on their own rules, or lack thereof. I consider the communication between walkers and drivers part of a larger language barrier. We crossed many times, but you do have to keep your wits about you, imagine it’s a game of dodge-car and be cautious. Cars do NOT defer much to pedestrians in China. Did I mention that already? Can you tell what kind of mom I am?

When you cross this street, you can continue counterclockwise around the square in front of the stadium. You’ll go past another subway entrance or two. If it’s evening, you might catch a glimpse of a large group of older ladies doing outdoor Chinese Zumba with their grandkids underfoot. Awesome!

At the next corner, cross again. You are now almost directly across from a long alley-street that continues the direction you were headed but slightly to the right. Take that street for a block- it borders the left side of the Hongshan Hotel. When it comes to a tee at the KTV building, turn right and walk another length of the block. As always, stay on the sides of these streets as even the small side-streets do not belong to pedestrians. Watch the locals and walk where they walk.

As you end this block, you will come to a T with a very big busy street called Zhongbei Road. To your left is the Carrefour building. You may have to lift the stroller over a car barrier or curb or two to get to the entrances. Imagine trying to get around in a wheelchair in China!

Path #2 Underground

To get past Hongshan Square, you can just take the subway. Not subway like a train, but subway as in pedestrian underpass.

Head out from the front of the hotel, across the parking lot and up that same alley/street. When you get to the big busy street (Minzhu Road) don’t cross- just look to the right and you’ll see the entrance to the subway. Go down here (remember this is Exit A2). Follow the signs for Exit D2, and when you emerge from the stairwell keep going in the same direction to the corner, then follow the sidewalk up some stairs as you follow around the corner to the left. You’ll pass a group of cell phone stores and a bank. (Side note- none of these cell phone places can get you the SIM card you need if you have an iPhone.)

At the end of the block, you’ll go down some stairs and across a small street/alleyway. You are now standing in front of the Carrefour building!

The rest of my Wuhan travel series:
Packing 

From Hong Kong to Wuhan

The Wuhan Poly Hotel and Getting to Carrefour

Food and Shopping Near Hongshan Square

Wuhan travel series: From Hong Kong to Wuhan

This post is my guide to traveling to Wuhan, China from Hong Kong
Links to the other three posts are at the end of this one.

We traveled for adoption from August 14-28th, 2014

I have only been to China once, and on this trip we were given a choice between Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong as an entry point. I highly recommend Hong Kong, but keep in mind this is the advice of a one-trip novice. Hong Kong is a nice soft entry into China and it’s relatively close to Wuhan. We liked the Hotel Icon (actually in Kowloon, across the bay from downtown Hong Kong) and found the location perfect. It’s right by the train/metro station and sits in an interesting, walkable neighborhood with plenty of restaurants, people-watching and shopping.

Here’s a couple of posts about our stay in Hong Kong.

A Morning in Hong Kong

An Afternoon in Hong Kong

As we debated which city to see on our way into mainland, the pollution and extreme crowds we heard about in Beijing were deal breakers for us, as were the extra hours of travel to Wuhan. Plus, our plane tickets from the Seattle were thousands cheaper to Hong Kong than the other options. I’ve heard, however, that some of the historical sites in Beijing are second to none (Great Wall, etc.) and they are working to remedy some of the pollution woes. It also probably depends a lot on the time of year you travel. We were there in the heat of summer, mid-August.

Hong Kong (Kowloon) Neighborhood

I heartily recommend the bullet trains in China. We took the train from Hong Kong, connecting through Guangzhou to Wuhan. It was about $260 for two first class tickets in August 2014.  You must use a ticket broker to get you the tickets. There are lots of them, but we used www.travelchinaguide.com to send somebody in person to the station with a copy of our passports. Tickets are available to purchase 18 days before your travel date. Once in China, you do need to leave extra time to pick up the actual tickets at the station.

The train from Hong Kong to Guagnzhou. 

If you are used to traveling and have some experience with crowded cities and busy stations in developing countries, you will have no trouble doing the same. If you’re nervous about traveling, but want the experience of the train, you may want to look into getting a shuttle or taxi once in Guangzhou from the Metro to the main train station. The Metro-to-Railway transfer point is extremely crowded and a bit of a hike. The station for the Wuhan-bound bullet trains in Guangzhou is Guangzhou Nan (Guangzhou South).

Snack box on the train from Guangzhou to Wuhan

At Guangzhou Nan Station, the ticketing lines are actually outside the ground-level floor. I’m sorry I don’t remember which exit, but there is an “Inquiries” booth to help you. You can just show them the receipt from the ticket broker and they’ll point you in the direction for the ticket lines. The day we went, we picked the one ticket line out of 30 that was MUCH shorter than all the others and they did help us. Whether it was technically the correct line or not I’ll never know.

As a side note, we found over and over that people in China were keen to help us find things. If you look confused and friendly, you can usually approach any shop keeper or non-busy person on the street with your questions. Keep your English simple and enunciate clearly. Avoid contractions if you can (Can you please help me? Instead of “Couldja point me the direction of..”), and always use “Please” and “Thank You” in addition to learning those words in Chinese. If you run into a rude person or somebody too busy to help, please don’t add them to some running list in your head knocking the “way people are” in China. Imagine how a non-English speaking confused person would be treated in any of your own country’s largest cities. Would every person take the time to help them? Unlikely. Also, crazy people and jerks seem to be sprinkled evenly over the face of the earth. Try not to use run-ins with them to color your perception of a place or its culture.

This kind of running around and finding stuff while rolling suitcases and looking foreign can stress some people out. Be honest about your comfort level, and go with what you can handle. We don’t mind a bit of standing out while wandering around, and find that avoiding the touristy things gives us a more interesting experience. You may not like that, and that’s cool, too. Especially if you’re traveling for adoption, do not feel pressure to make this a challenging trip on more levels than you can handle.  It’s totally okay to skip some of the “real” experiences and focus on keeping things simple if you need that, no matter how many blogs you have found recommending this or that. I would say if you’re traveling for adoption with a spouse, the comfort level of the more conservative one sets the bar. If you’re traveling for fun or adventure, you can aim for more of a compromise.

We really enjoyed the train ride and I highly recommend taking it. (Post with pictures here.) If you are on an adoption trip, you should probably only take this train before you pick up your child. You can also take it back to Guangzhou, but once you have a kid with you the shorter travel time of plane travel may make it a better choice. We were annoyed that our agency really discouraged us returning by train but it turns out they knew what they were talking about. Our agency also booked us with a group of families and fantastic guide so traveling together was both fun and bonding. 

I'll tell you a secret: I am not so much a group person or even maybe a people person (it's a flaw and I own it), especially when it comes to travel. However! Traveling with a toddler/preschooler who is losing their mind, afraid, over stimulated, screaming, or possibly puking is hard. Doing it with a group that truly understands and sympathizes it can be slightly less difficult, and having a guide who can speak to your child in their mother tongue can be priceless. Camaraderie does count under that kind of stress. I loved our group and once we joined them I realized I didn’t want to separate from them on the way back to Guangzhou after all.

When you arrive in Wuhan, you can just take the metro to the Wuhan Poly (this is the hotel we were in with Holt International- more on that in the next post). Only one metro line goes to the rail station, and the rail station is the final stop there anyway, so you don’t have to worry which metro to board. For the Wuhan Poly Hotel, you want the stop for Hongshan Square.

Find a metro ticket machine and you can just press the stop you want (Hongshan Square is near the middle of the tangle of lines). All the machines we saw all over China were touch screens and often had English directions, making them easy to use. Then touch the number of tickets (on the right side of the screen, watch for the amount owed to multiply an you’ll know you found the right button), and when you have it right, enter payment. Keep in mind most of the machines only take 5 or 10 Yuan bills or coins. If you need to break a bill or combine a pile of 1 Yuan bills, you can wordlessly hand it to the yellow Customer Service kiosk person and they will give you back what you need. That confused us for a few minutes- we thought our machine must be broken!

Exit the train at Hongshan Square, getting ready near the door to get all your luggage off in time before the doors try to close on you. A friend of ours had his arm pinched- these doors WILL shut on you. Announcements are in English and Mandarin, and some trains have a lighted real-time location display, and all maps have Roman letters in addition to Chinese so it’s pretty easy to get where you’re going. For the Poly Hotel, after getting out at Hongshan Square follow the exit signs for Exit A2.

When you emerge at street level at Exit A2, walk straight about 20 feet and you’ll see a little security kiosk box. Just a few feet past it on the left is an alley street heading in to the middle of the block. This street leads directly into the Wuhan Poly parking lot. Note: even if it seems deserted, DO NOT WALK DOWN THE MIDDLE OF IT. Pedestrians NEVER have the right-of-way in China, even in parking lots. Stay well to the side and keep your eyes peeled for cars.

You have arrived at your air-conditioned destination! Welcome to the Wuhan Poly. The staff was very kind to us.

The rest of my Wuhan travel series:
Packing 

From Hong Kong to Wuhan

The Wuhan Poly Hotel and Getting to Carrefour

Food and Shopping Near Hongshan Square