Nanjing Highlights:

1)      Temple of Confucius
The 夫子庙 (Temple of Confucius) in Nanjing was originally constructed in 1034, to commemorate the life of China’s greatest philosopher and moral thinker of ancient China.

While I was in Taiwan, I had the opportunity to visit many Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian temples. Though they have their differences, in many ways they are all the same. Ask almost any missionary from Taiwan, and they will tell you: “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.” (Don’t get me wrong, if you haven’t been to one before, they are definitely worth seeing.)

What made this experience different from all the others? As we entered the back section of the temple, we saw a huge set of ancient bells on display. It was nice looking at it for a couple minutes, but I probably wouldn’t have given it much more thought if it hadn’t been for the fact that everyone was tired of walking and insisted we sit for a while. It was rather boring just sitting there doing absolutely nothing. Staring up at those bells, I just got a sudden urge to play them. Walking up to a man who looked like he was in charge, I asked:

Me: Hey, can I just hit one of those bells? …Once?
Man: No.
Me: Please?
Man: No.
Me: ...what if I gave you an American dollar? You know, the ‘green’ ones.
Man: (A long pause) You know, why not?

Wow, I was totally kidding! Who would have thought that would have actually worked? If I had offered him the equivalent in Chinese yuan, he probably would have been offended. Josh pulled two one dollar bills from his wallet, and we spent the next 10-15 minutes banging out songs on these several hundred year old bells. What a day! 

2)      Zhongshan Mausoleum (中山陵)
The Zhongshan Mausoleum was built in 1926 to reverence the death of one of China’s greatest revolutionary and political leaders: Sun Yat-sen. I find this man particularly interesting not only because he is often referred to as the “Father of Modern China,” but also because he is widely revered amongst people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

It was unbelievable how many people visited this site during the holiday, especially individuals from the Xinjiang province. If you saw these individuals in the United States, you probably wouldn’t have guessed they were Chinese at all. (Most of them are of Arab decent; their ancestors coming from the Middle East to participate in the ancient Silk Road.) Many of these people had never seen foreigners before in their lives, and dozens of these northwestern Chinese people asked to take pictures with us. We probably took pictures with over a hundred random Chinese people that day. Seriously! 

3)      Nanjing City Wall
The city wall of Nanjing was designed by Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang after he established Nanjing as the capital 600 years ago. It is among the largest city walls ever constructed, taking 21 years to complete and 200,000 laborers moving 7 million cubic meters of earth.

  Visiting the ancient Nanjing city wall was a cool experience. The wall, was huge, and there were several cool statues soldiers lining the stairs. As we reached the top of the wall, we saw a booth that offered an opportunity to rent bikes to ride on top of the wall. It was an interesting idea, but several people in our group weren’t really up to it. There was also a tourist cart, but being bussed around the wall didn’t sound overly appealing either.

Me: I think we’ll just walk along the wall.
Lady: But its 7 km. How about you take our tourist ride?
Me: Nope.
Lady: Why? It’s only ¥20 a person. That’s really cheap!
Me: Not really interested… but if you let me drive the car, I might reconsider.
................(long pause)
Lady: Fine. But the driver still has to come along to supervise.

Once again I was shocked. I was totally kidding about the driving thing. After arguing with his supervisor for a few minutes, the driver got inside the passenger seat of the tourist cart. He wasn’t very happy about the whole situation. The first thing he said to me was: “Do you even have a drivers’ license?” I really don’t think he believed me when I told him I had been driving since I was 15 years old. (People begin driving much later here in China. My 汉语 teacher is in her late 20s, and she barely took her drivers’ test a couple of weeks ago. I probably offended her when I laughed… I thought she was kidding!) Driving that cart on top of the city wall was a definite highlight.

 4)      Room and Board
 Staying in our youth hostel was a really good experience. Our beds weren’t super comfortable (we were pretty much sleeping on a piece of plywood) and we shared our room with a random Chinese kid (the ‘Korean’ haha …don’t ask) but it was good. There was writing all over the walls, and we took the liberty of changing inappropriate words and phrases. (Later visitors might wonder about some artist’s obsession with hockey pucks. haha)

Our first night in Nanjing we all went to eat out at a restaurant. When we saw ‘wolf’ on the menu, we couldn’t help but give it a try. (Checked that off my list of ‘strange foods to eat in China’) It seemed to be mostly bones, with not a lot of meat on them. It wasn’t too bad though. Later I was talking to a Chinese man about the experience, and while laughing he voiced his opinion that it was more likely dog we were served that night. I guess we will never know.

 

 5)     Riding Trains:

Traveling to Shanghai was a twelve hour train ride, and coming back from Nanjing is about the same. Only having a week off from school, we wanted to make the most of our time, so we decided to take both of these trips during the night. Our sleeper train to Shanghai was so comfortable! There were individual compartments with bunk beds, and Josh and I got a great nights rest! Fell asleep leaving Beijing, and awoke just outside Shanghai. Our ride back from Nanjing wasn’t nearly so comfortable. Instead of a sleeper, we had hard seats in a train booked to twice its capacity with standing passengers. (No one can stand for twelve hours straight, especially not during the hours we traveled.) The restroom on this train was particularly entertaining, as it was a squatter toilet equipped with a metal water bucket and spiket to be used for flushing. I don’t believe any of us slept much, but we arrived back in Beijing early in the morning!