Some thoughts on Fuzhou

So, I've spent the last couple of days relaxing in Fuzhou. It has been nice to be stared at less than I was in other places - for example, in the morning in Songshi when I went for breakfast, a boy was sitting literally only a foot away with me staring intently at me with his mouth half open in shock/horror while I ate - it is a disturbing feeling. However, Fuzhou has failed to enchant me the way that Xiamen did when I visited there in 2004. Admittedly, part of it could be the weather - it has been somewhat rainy. However, the location of Xiamen is absolutely gorgeous, and the city just seemed cleaner to me. Xiamen had long beautiful beaches, a very laid back feel, great colonial architecture on Gulangyu, and a great appreciation of music (Gulangyu had the only piano museum I've ever gone to...it was really cool). However, Fuzhou feels more industrial to me, it is also not right on the coast as I had originally thought, and while it is still a fairly clean city by Chinese standards, it just doesn't seem to have the gleam that Xiamen does. Anyways - probably my favorite place to visit here was the provincial museum - located in what is essentialy a lame amusement park. Interestingly, the museum, which was built in 2002, had zero visitors, while hordes of Chinese were paying exorbitant sums of money for their kids to take a two minute ride on some lame ride. The museum cost 10 yuan, while it cost 45 yuan to chuck your kid in a gigantic plastic bubble that floats on the water for 10 minutes.

A look at the Fujian Provincial Museum in Fuzhou - large museum, great displays, just nobody visiting.

Anyways, as I mentioned before, the museum was completely devoid of people - almost all of the people working there were asleep in their chairs because nobody was there. It was somewhat eerie being the only visitor in such a big museum, but the exhibits were extremely well done, and the ratio of strange English translations was lower than average for China. It had a good range of Fujian's history - stressing of course, the strong historical and cultural ties between Fujian and Taiwan (I suppose that makes sense as Taiwan was part of Fujian Province from the 1600s when the Qing took it over until the late 1800s). There was also a very impressive art gallery as well, with lots of great pieces of pottery, paintings, and sculptures from the past 5000 years. Pretty cool.

Anyways, Fuzhou was a nice place for me to relax and plan, but I'm ready to move on. I'm taking the night train to Longyan tonight and get there at 7am tomorrow.