Fuzhou: Final thoughts

This morning was fairly straightforward: breakfast, check-out, taxi to the Apollo hotel, then shuttle bus to the airport. (Note: Our hotel staff said there was no shuttle service from the Min Jiang hotel, so don’t believe any website that tells you otherwise.) We had to check our suitcases because they were deemed too large for carry-on luggage, but good thing I kept everything important in my backpack anyway.

One rather disgusting-but-typical-of-China experience this morning: Dad went to the bathroom and I was waiting to check in for our flight. Ahead of me was a family with a young boy, perhaps 2-3 years old. He apparently reeeeally needed to go to the bathroom, so his mother took him a few feet away from the check-in line, pulled down his pants, and there he went, right on the tiled floor. I’m used to seeing families do that with toddlers outdoors, but at least they usually go over a drainage area, on grass, etc. This was just there! In a puddle! In a heavily trafficked area!

What bothered me (besides the public health issue of public urination/defecation) was that there was probably a bathroom less than 50 feet away, and there were a bunch of potted plants less than 10 feet away for sure, so it’s not as if there weren’t other options. The unfortunate cleaning lady came by a few minutes later holding a roll of toilet paper and shaking her head – she clearly knew what happened – she had to first dry the puddle, then sweep the wet paper into her handheld dustbin.

Other passengers seemed pretty nonchalant about the thing – one man wearing business casual stepped away from the first-class check in counter, then paused to recheck his boarding pass literally 2 inches away from the puddle. I’m sure others who saw this were thinking something about the crassness/provincial-ness of this mother, but as Dad said when he came back, it’s not my place to say anything, and it seems no one wants to take responsibility for anything in this country unless someone higher up complains first (e.g. trying to prevent people from wearing pajamas outside in Shanghai)

Anyway, Fuzhou has more or less met my (admittedly low) expectations: a business-focused city undergoing massive renovations with a few pockets of historical charm. The highways and roads are wide, well-paved, and tree-lined, but the architecture is dominated by indifferent business hotels and corporate buildings. It might be interesting to come as a jump-off point to Mawei or Wuyi Mountain, but the city itself is not worth staying in for more than two days, and even then only if you’re a serious scholar of Chinese history.