I will be going to Wuhan tonight via a domestic flight. I will reach Wuhan at around 11.30pm after three hours leaving Haikou as it is a stop over flight. Normal flight time is around two hours.
It rained again today and almost daily once I arrived in this island paradise. The floor was wet and flooded with rain water that it made walking on foot a nuisance. Vehicles crossing over puddles of water on the road often flashed by at speed drenching pedestrians with unwelcome shower of blessing.
Hainan also has a high rate of unemployment as the global economic crisis bites equally hard here a it has back home. Many new graduates could not find employment and some end up in menial work manning clothing stores or working behind registration counters in hotel industry.
One has to admire the survival quotient of the Chinese people. They do not like to sit around waiting for the government to provide them with any assistance. They simply network or move to other bigger provinces where there are more work available. The Chinese government does not really pamper it’s people with too much welfare or retraining courses. They could not also possibly take care of a million new graduates that flood the job market per year.
Thus, many families pool resources to start their own businesses for their children to run. Many now are in the internet cafe business whereby investors pool their money to buy cheap PCs and rent a large place 24/7 for people to use the internet resources.
Many young people still could not buy their own PC or laptop unlike ours and they run to such internet cafes to play their games or watch free online movies. The Chinese people grow up in such cafes sometimes over spending time and money in these places. Many go there daily to play online games for at least 5-6 hours a day and often immediately after work. Many also tragically end up getting addicted to such games messing up their social lives in the end.
Internet cafes are nevertheless a thriving business here even though the rates per PC can be as low as RMB2 an hour. One can also get back their start up cost after operating for a year or two. Some set up has well over two hundred PCs in one venue and I have seen one operating from a three storey building!
Many friends also see it as a social past time with friends as they gather to meet at their favourite internet cafe. It has become a haunt to them and one that they could do without with. Some even journey to internet cafe even if they have their own PC and internet service as nothing beats gathering with your friends to shoot down monsters online!
I will be in Wuhan for two days before taking a three hour train to Jingmen where I taught business English for a year. Wuhan is a bigger city than Haikuo with ten million in population and a much larger land size. Wuhan is very warm now and can be unbearable due to it’s land-locked geographical location. There is no sea breeze to cool off the city unlike that of Haikou. It can reach 40 deg C at it’s hottest.
Jingmen is much smaller in size and it only has less than half a million people. It is simply a county and people like the environment there as it is much slower in pace and many people also like to retire there.
I am glad that I am going to Wuhan today as I am getting bored with Haikou already. It is good that I brought a book along and I read a good quarter part of the book in KFC sipping coffee and getting shelter from the rain.
That is all for now and I will update readers more when I reach Wuhan.
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