Day 2 in Nanjing

I don’t wake up in the middle of the night like Jesse warned I might, but I do wake up pretty early on Sunday. 6 a.m. Gives me time to edit some videos. Then I head downstairs to level 9 to take advantage of his daily breakfast. The buffet is enormous and includes both Chinese and Western offerings. I find the rice gruel I ate the day before on the plane; this time it’s flavored with chicken and tastes much better. I grab a piece of the vegetable I saw so much of the day before in the market. It looks kinda like a cross between a melon, a coconut and a potato. The texture inside the rough outer layer is like a potato. The fried rice here is different, looking whiter than it does at home. I guess they don’t use as much soy sauce on it. The yoghurt is soupier, much more like a yoghurt drink. My morning tea hits the spot with a little cream and sugar. Ah, ready for a nap. Jesse wakes up at about 9 a.m., but nothing he can does rouses me until 11. You would have thought I’d have gotten enough sleep the night before, but I think my body is confused between what is day and night.

EXPLORING PURPLE MOUNTAIN

On our agenda today is the Purple Mountain, specifically Sun-Yet’s Mausoleum. He was instrumental in creating the communist party, which began ruling in Nanjing before transferring headquarters to Beijing. He’s known as the “Father of the People”. After he died in 1925, a contest was held to design his tomb. We show our conceriege the picture in my guidebook, and he writes down the word in Chinese for our taxi-cab driver.

The drive takes about 20 minutes and winds us through a wooded park. A two-foot-wide, 6-foot-deep ditch lines the road on each side. We pass a brand new Buick that must have tired to make a U-turn and got one wheel stuck in the ditch. I don’t know how they’ll get out.

Tickets into the Masoleum, Sun-Yet museum, and Linguu Pagoda cost 80 RNB each. It includes a shuttle ride, which we find very welcome. I hadn’t realized the distance between everything on this mountain was so far. There are numerous temples and museums scattered across this area. It’s the most popular tourist spot in Nanjing, and listed on the countries Top 40 Resorts, according to the sign. (Although I don’t see any hotels. I guess they mean ‘sightseeing attractions.’) We stop for ice cream — it’s the only dish Jesse doesn’t find suspect and will let us eat. I’m starving, of course, and will eat anything by this time.

Just outside the entrance we watch a 2-year-old boy standing in the middle of his parents squat down. His pants opened up (apparently there was just a slit where the crotch was). He peed right there. I had read in one guidebook that the Chinese let their babies pee on the street, but I didn’t think it could be true. Oh, it is. It wasn’t the first we saw that day, or the last. Why they don’t at least lead the kids into the woods or the side of the pathway I don’t know. I carefully stepped around any puddle we came to after that.

The masoleum was impressive, befitting a great leader. From the air, the buildings and steps leading up make the shape of a bell. There are 392 steps to climb to reach the height where Sun-Yet is buried in a copper coffin. I nearly didn’t make it. (I’m going to blame the lack of lunch, pregnancy and allergies - definitely not my own physical shape or lack of it.) The view from the top was beautiful, although obscured by smog and the impending rain. When I showed Jesse pictures of the place in my guidebook, he said they must have been Photoshopped. They all showed blue skies, and you just don’t have those in Nanjing. It’s always grey these days.

We were walking through the garden in the rear of the masoleum when we heard the first few peals of thunder. When the sky opened up we huddled under some trees for about 5 minutes until it ended. The temperature and humidity dropped after the rain, thankfully. I managed to walk down much easier.

Despite taking a shuttle to the start of the Linguu Pagoda, it was still a long, long walk from the entrance. Must have been more than a mile, in fact. We walked first on the Bridge That Greets the Emperor, and then checked out the Beamless Hall. Built in the 1300s, the structure is amazing. It is constructed all of brick and there are no beams keeping the ceiling in place. It was once a temple, but today is an ode to communism. I thought they wrecked the beauty of the arches by sticking boxes inside that told the story of communism’s rise in the early 1900s. The wax people and the stories that accompanied them were interesting to stroll through though. It was very dim inside; there were few lights and I wonder how many had fallen over the years on the uneven floors.

We had dinner plans at 5 p.m. and decided we had better start heading back at 3:30 as we didn’t know how long it would take. Jesse used the toilet at the entrance; he had to pay .5 RNB but it sounded cleaner than the free one I’d used earlier in the day. It reaked of urine - I think Chinese must forget to flush those weird little toilet things they have everywhere.

There’s so much on this mountain that we didn’t see. I wanted to take the cable car ride up to the top. And see the Xiao Ling Tombs with the sacred way, an avenue of stone statutes of animals and officials. I guess I’ll just have to go back.

DINNER PLANS
We couldn’t hail a taxi there, so we rode the shuttle back to the mausoleum and then walked to that entrance. There were hoards of taxis there. Jesse had been told by his coworker the name of the place we were heading, but our driver didn’t understand him. We had to hand over the cell phone and let Jim tell the driver himself. Turns out Jim and his wife Joann lived just 5 minutes away. They just moved into their house in a private neighborhood on Purple Mountain the day before. Jim is the Rosemount Ex-Pat here looking at the plant. He’s been here since last November, but his wife and four kids just joined him a month ago. They’ll stay another year.

Their house is gorgeous. It’s actually part of a hotel, so it is furnished for them and they get towel and laundry service. Nice, huh? The kids are going to a local English school that has about 400 kids from all across the globe. Joann, who just earned her RN degree, hopes to get some kind of job working in a local hospital while they’re here. She may also teach English.

They’ve got a booklet of cards that point the way to English-friendly shops and restaurants. The cards include directions in English and Chinese so that English speakers can hand them to their Chinese-speaking taxi-cab drivers. We were heading for the Gold and Silver Restaurant. As they live year full-time, Jim and Joann have a driver assigned to them. He took us into town, and paused near an alleyway. He took off, trying to locate the restaurant. Coming back, he hopped in and drove us down the alley. There it was. As we walked up, the owner began shutting the doors and windows. We wondered if he was closed. No, he was just turning on the air conditioning for us. The restaurant was foriegner-friendly with menus in both Chinese and English. So helpful. The four of us ordered 8 dishes - from pork to chicken to 5-fragrance beef. Isn’t that a great name? I didn’t like it thought as the thinnly sliced beef was served cold. For dessert, we were served a plate of watermelon - a very common way to end a meal here. Eating with chopsticks was challenging for me. And rather than nice big plates, we used tiny little round ones. It was hard to gauge how much a person had eaten, but I did leave full. There were no fortune cookies to end this meal. And I haven’t yet run into sweet and sour sauce.

The Chinese food here is definitely different than what they serve at the Q-Mandarin.

LIKE SHANGHAI
After supper, we went walking down an area that reminded Jim and Joann of Shangai. It’s full of neon lights and restaurants. It was the smelliest place we’d yet walked; I think the sewer gases were escaping up through the many vents in the walk. Ish. Nanjing is not the cleanest city in the world by any means. We watched another baby relieve himself - but this father held him over a planter. I’m not sure it will serve as a good fertilizer, but who knows?

We made it back to our hotel by about 8:30, and, once again, I was asleep by 9pm. But if this is the worst I have of jetlag, I’m fine with it.

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