It was the first hostel I ever stayed in, the 2013 Wuhan Crab Point International Youth Hostel, which is now closed.

Message wall taken during my stay

I had just started college and learned that there are cheaper ways to stay in hotels besides traveling. After looking up some information, I booked a four-bed room for a girl in this hostel on YHA's official website.

It was the first time that I traveled alone, and I started my career as a solo traveler.

This hostel is located next to the Tanhualin, and the public transportation is well developed, and the subway has not been repaired to this point, so you can take a few steps off the bus to get there. The first floor has a courtyard and a dining bar, which turns into a small bar at night, and there are live performances on weekends.

I took the train Friday afternoon after class and arrived at the hostel in the evening to check in.

Wooden bunk beds, but also lived two girls, chatting, are from my city to play, added WeChat. Heart envy Miss pretty and will make money, looks like life is so free. Bedside there are a lot of people with markers to write messages, some are their nicknames, some are some sentences.

Going out to the yard to see, are full, only the bar stool only sat a person, middle-aged brother. I asked: Is there anyone here?

Big brother:?I?can't?speak?Chinese,sorry.

Me: Can I sit here? (English)

Big brother: OKOK

Then the middle-aged big brother asked me a bunch of questions, which I couldn't understand. He went in and got a helper to translate for him. I learned that the middle-aged brother is a professor of the University of South Korea, over to the meeting, there are two days off, specially by train to visit the WU College of Philosophy. The helper went back to talk to someone else after a while, and then came a helper number two, who could converse fluently in English.

Helper No. 1 also added WeChat, WU's lagging students, back to clear the examination, the painstaking efforts to get into WU, passive-aggressive do not want to study properly, took seven years to graduate. The second helper is living in the neighborhood, come over to take a walk and was pulled over as a translator, is also a graduate student of Wudan University.

Opening the door to a new world. I feel like I have a lot of work to do.

Professor Brother can not participate in the conversation, asked me where to play tomorrow. I said I planned to see Huanghe Tower, Yangtze River Bridge, and WU. He asked if he could join us, and I said Ok, we'll meet here at 8:30am.

The next two days, I took Prof. Wuhan to all the famous sights in Wuhan, and tasted Wuhan University cafeteria (spicy hot pot), and Zhenkongfu beef rice.

Saturday night the hostel's dining bar was turned into a live bar, with a local band playing.

And I wasn't paired up with anyone else, so both days were purely English for me. I also learned a few words of Korean. I realized that it's not so hard to communicate in other languages, and that traveling alonedoesn't require so much courage or a high level of proficiency.

So in the following vacations, I tried to volunteer as a hostel worker to receive foreign guests, traveled abroad alone, and then I felt the need to improve my English-speaking skills and insisted on taking speaking lessons for three years.

This hostel is not the best I've ever stayed in, but it has had the greatest impact on me. The helper two also have contact so far. But because the gmail mailbox is walled off, I lost contact with the professor's elder brother.

Attached a picture of the hostel where cyclists are piling up