Once Covid’s ground zero, Wuhan now in full bloom

It was the epicentre of Covid-19, but Wuhan has reinvented itself as a vibrant, modern city. From lakeside tea rooms to bustling Han Street and the Wuhan Open tennis arena, the city exudes new energy, finds Prajwal HegdeThe pink muhly grass fields in Wuhan make for a fairytale setting.

Droves of Wuhanese, a large number of them women — from influencers and aspiring models to friends in their 40s and 50s — strike poses, holding dainty oil-paper umbrellas against a picturesque backdrop.That is not the image that comes to mind when one talks of Wuhan, a onetime industrial city, now known the world over as the birthplace of the novel coronavirus — Sars-CoV-2 — the deadliest virus in over a century that brought the world to a halt for nearly two years.

Almost six years on, the world is still curious about the city for that very reason, except that Wuhan has moved on.Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, in Central China, is divided by the Yangtze and the Han rivers.The muhly fields are among several spots in the city where Wuhanese like to disappear for the day.There’s also the botanical gardens, and museums like Hubei’s Provincial, with its long queues of people waiting to see the 140,000 artefacts housed inside.

Han Street, which runs along the south bank of the Chu River, has a number of nooks, between rows of retail therapy. China’s own Luckin Coffee, which serves an innovative coconut water Americano, is starting to make its presence felt, lodged beside tea shops that are the order here.

The Chinese love their milk tea.Across the city, which is an hour-long drive, the spectacular East Lake — from where the iconic Yellow Crane Tower, a symbol of Wuhan, is visible — features tea rooms, bakeries, running tracks and biking paths.This is where one can see the evenings play out. While the young, or those who share that vibe, are seen running and cycling, older residents from neighbouring localities come together for the square dance, an hour-long, after-dinner tradition.A City Full Of StudentsWuhan, home to 82 higher educational institutions and 1.3 million students, has a large youth population, who had to scale back during the pandemic, when they spent nearly three years in lockdown.

After a while, they shifted to online classes, not unlike the rest of the world.Interestingly, despite the big presence of students, the city doesn’t have much of a drinking or pub culture. People come together over food instead, a range of hot pots and hot dry noodles, the specialty of the region. The popular hangout spaces are the karaoke rooms, also known as K-TV. Friends rent these soundproof rooms that are located in malls.

Room rates start at $15 (for an hour), depending on the size of the room and the number of people.

It’s no surprise that the most popular artiste in this circle is Taylor Swift, and her ‘Love Story’ remains a favourite.Tennis In WuhanThe city is now also known for the Wuhan Open, a week-long tennis tournament for women players. Jorge Salked, senior vice-president at Octagon, a global agency specialising in sports, recalled how the city was 13 years ago when they brought the WTA Tour event to Wuhan.Salked referred to a meeting with town authorities back in 2012, which was held in the impressive downtown area, along the Chu river. Afterwards, they drove for almost an hour, across the city to Optics Valley —– a hi-tech zone — which at the time was green fields with cows grazing everywhere. “The flyovers were being built; some were already completed, but there was nothing here, while they already had a great sporting complex on the other side.

We were wondering, ‘why not also have tennis there?’” Salked said.Some 24 months later, Wuhan was ready with a 14,000-seater centre court and a number one court that could accommodate around 5,000 spectators. “They had a 30-year plan and they were almost done in 15,” Salked said.Noticeable ChangeFor one visiting Wuhan for the second time, on either side of the pandemic, in 2017 and then this year, the difference is as stark as day and night.

The smooth grid-like layout of roads, punctuated by a combination of towering building blocks and snazzy architecture, does not perhaps evoke a “wow” factor for aesthetics, but it is a dazzling sight all the same.Optics Valley, with its street lights shaped like tube-rose bulbs, great green spaces, and water bodies, anchors one end of the city. The tennis circus camped there for a week.That was also China’s Golden Week, when the Chinese stay home to celebrate two major holidays: National Day on Oct 1 and the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar.Warm, Welcoming PeopleIn Wuhan, ultimately, it’s the people who win your heart.It’s easy to get lost on these streets, where there’s not much that separates one block from another. One night I kept walking around the same block for about 20 minutes, unable to locate a building. I hailed a man riding a bicycle for help. After a couple of minutes of studying the map on my phone, which was in English, he exclaimed, “I know!” He then proceeded to give me directions that were completely opposite to what Google Maps suggested.

I took his cue and started walking. Some 15 minutes later, when I stopped, wondering whether to turn right or left, I heard him in the distance. “My friend, my friend,” he called out, desperately pointing at the building in front of me. The building I was looking for.Seafood market remains closedThe novel coronavirus, which hobbled the world for two long years, and killed millions (one estimate by Our World In Data puts the toll at 27 million), likely originated in a seafood market in Wuhan.

But if you go to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, you will find it closed (photo left). Once a bustling 50,000sqm complex selling seafood, poultry, and live wild animals, it became the focus of early investigations when several of the first coronavirus cases were traced to it in late 2019.

The market was shut down and disinfected on Jan 1, 2020, and has since stayed sealed off at ground level, with only a few unrelated upstairs optical stalls operating. Environmental swabs taken there tested positive for Sars-CoV-2, but no infected animals were ever found, leaving scientists divided over whether the market was indeed where the pandemic originated or simply an early amplifier