Nanjing

Day 10 - Nanjing

Arrived to Nanjing at 1:30 AM. Nanjing has been called the "furnace of China". The heat and humidity was something of a slap in the face as soon as we stepped off the train. We went straight to the hotel, grabbed a shower, and hit the sack.

I got up early the following morning and went to a nearby internet cafe while Justin slept in. No group activities were scheduled for the tour this day, so Justin and I just wandered around. Nanjing had a nice lake partially ringed by the city wall. It provided some nice views. In one area, an elevated wooden walkway ran through a dense patch of pine trees. Nearby signage indicated that this area was deliberately built to be an oxygen rich environment.

While walking here, a Chinese gentleman approached us and asked where we were from. We told him and chatted for a while. He was very friendly, like so many of the Chinese that we interacted with on this tour.

Not many local people spoke English on our trip through the Chinese interior, even in the larger cities of Xi'an, Tai-an, and Nanjing (all of which had in excess of 5 million residents). Occasionally, someone would approach us and strike up a conversation in broken English. Often times, this seemed driven by a mixture of curiosity and desire to practice speaking a foreign language. Every once in a while, however, it seemed that the accented calls of "Hullo" were more pointed at our foreign nationality than a real desire to greet or meet us. Chinese claim to have no racism in their country, but foreigners living in China over extended periods of time have pointed out that any basis to this claim arises only because many of the minorities in China have been driven so far to the fringe of Chinese society. (An interesting book that raises this point is River Town by Peter Hessler).

After the lake, Justin and I taxied back to the Presidential Palace. While the compound is not terribly large, it has quite a bit of history. It was used by the local provincial governor under the Qing Dynasty and the Heavenly King on Earth . The latter was a Christian who had had a vision of himself as being chosen by God to rule on Earth. He then led a rebellion and succeeded in gaining control over a wide region on China in his day. Conveniently, his vision occurred only after having failed multiple times to pass an exam required to become an official under the then ruling dynasty.

More important to recent history, the palace compound served as the residence of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and site of the first national assembly after the fall of the last dynasty in 1912. The Kuomintang (the Chinese nationalists opposed to the communists) and Chiang Kai-Shek based their operations here as well. When the Japanese invaded in 1937, they used the compound as their local headquarters.

Afterwards, Justin and I returned to the hotel for dinner with the group.

Day 11 - Nanjing

Up at 7:00 AM. We took off with the group for a bicycle ride to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's Mausoleum. The ride was very nice - as flat as we could have hoped for. The mausoleum was quite impressive, and had well groomed grounds.

It was a bit comical when many of the locals began asking foreigners, including members of our group, to pose with them for pictures. This had occurred on other occasions during our trip. Often times it was blond haired, blue-eyed women who got this request. Here, however, even Justin and I were asked - talk about "feeling the love". Relatively speaking, very few Chinese are allowed to leave China. So, very few get the opportunity to interact with people who look different than themselves. I suppose for some, posing with foreigners may be the best alternative to traveling abroad.

This travel limitation reminds me a lot of what I had heard about life in Soviet Russia. To leave these communist countries, a resident needed two permissions. Of course, there needed to be permission of the destination country. However, the communist citizen also needed permission needed permission to leave their own country. It strikes me as telling when you have to lock the doors to keep people in some place. I personally prefer the notion of making a place as appealing as possible so that people will want to stay or at least return. I am not sure that Americans always give this aspect of US citizenship (the ability to come and go with relative ease) as much appreciation as it deserves.

We returned from the bike ride by 12:00. Justin and I went to Kentucky Fried Chicken with Stephen and Hannah for a little taste of home.

At 3:00, we joined the group for a tour of the memorial for the Nanjing Massacre. In 1937, the Japanese killed 300,000 Nanjing residents when they invaded and the defending Chinese army abandoned the city. It was a very somber place. Nevertheless, even here, one doesn't escape Communist propaganda trumpeting socialism as the only solution for preventing a repeat of China's past tragedies.

Go to Hangzhou for more