Chinese Winter Wonderland

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Nanjing - 01.02.06

We arrived in Nanjing, a city 3 hours west of Shanghai, in style by travelling on our first double decker train! Choo Choo!!

One of the first things we did was visit the PSB to extend our visas, unfortunately we discovered that it would take them almost a week to do this here (think there was a delay due to holidays for the Chinese New Year) so we found ourselves wth some time relax and get to know Nanjing a little better.

We wandered for a few days, saw the city wall and visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall which is a monument to the invasion from the Japanese during the second world war. The city lost 300,000 civilians during months of brutal fighting and the photos and displays in the hall are choking to say the least.

Then we had a surprise, overnight we had a downfall of snow!! This was brilliant and we went out to the mountain area of Zijin Shan (just to the west of the city) and walked around the botanic gardens, which looked particularly beautiful in the snow - hence why I went a bit photo crazy! We also visited the Sun Yatsen Mausoleum to see the impressive building dedicated to the "founding father of modern China."

The city is pretty typical of the Chinese cities we've seen, but the mountain area was really worth visiting and we're glad we stopped long enough to take a proper look around and have a few snowball fights!

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Photos

Part of the city wall
This gate is 4 layers thick and could house over 30,000 soldiers!