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Published: June 29th 2012
For the long weekend, Humphrey, Dave and I decided to make a trip to the ancient Chinese capital of Nanjing for a weekend trip. The motto of the trip was definitely “bad luck, good times”. It seemed like bad luck just kept following us. But somehow it didn’t deter from how much fun Nanjing is. So that’s a good sign! But ya, baaad luck. Read on!
We headed to the train station the morning of Saturday, June 23 to get our tickets for the little-more-than-an-hour-long trip. First, there weren’t trains for about an hour. Boo waiting! Second, executive class was all booked up so we “slummed” it in first class. Dave didn’t understand why we complained so much about the wide, plush seats and slew of European cabin-mates. It just wasn’t as nice as executive class! The plush seats were kinda dirty! And they don’t recline all the way back! And they’re not even leather! It is true that once you get bumped up a class, it’s hard to go back (there’s a Corner Gas reference in there than probably 1 Canadian reading this will get).
When we got to Nanjing, we checked into our
Boo First Class
the seats aren't even leather!dirt cheap hotel and hit the town. First we had some traditional Nanjing food for lunch. Then we headed off to find a place called the Drum Tower. Our maps (which we got from the not dirt cheap Intercontinental Hotel) were not totally accurate so we asked around and were lied to several times about the location before finally actually finding it. It was pretty cool – a highlight was the drum which had a sign saying “I am very old and tired, please don’t hit me” (or something like that – it’s in Chinese so Humphrey translated for us). We then went to the memorial for the Rape of Nanjing which unfortunately had just closed – holiday hours boo! So we went to visit a temple. Which was also closed. And only just closed too.
But as luck would have it, we found an entrance to the old city wall right next to the temple. It was something on our “maybe” list for tourism and it was awesome! You could walk around on the top and get great views of the city. Plus they accepted foreign student cards – yay saving money!
After
the wall, we walked around Nanjing’s big central lake. The drinking game of last week’s top 10 was invented crossing the causeway through the middle of the lake actually. Though also funny is that we never actually PLAYED the game on the causeway. Why you ask? Because every convenience store had only 2 beers. In hindsight we could have bought 2 and then gotten another at the next convenience store but we kept thinking we’d find somewhere with 3. But it never happened. Bad luck!
We decided to escape from the staring crowds by renting a boat. Of course, since we’re foreigners, they gave us the only boat that was insanely loud when it was turned on. Like seriously every other boat was completely silent and ours was deafeningly loud. And the guy specifically directed us to that specific boat. Oh, China. Anyways, we just drove to the middle and turned the motor off. It was really nice to be away from the crowds and just out on the water.
After the boat ride, we headed to the Confucius Temple which Dave had read was best at night. It was really pretty, all lit
Bustling downtown Nanjing
the light tunnel I kept calling Fremont street because it reminds me of downtown Vegas..someone knows what I'm talking about up. We decided to do hot pot for dinner which was really delicious and cheap. We also befriended some shirtless guys in the next stall and the boys made me take a picture with them. Why would you want to be shirtless while doing hotpot? It seems dangerous. But anyways…
The bad luck continued because the temple was closed by the time we were done dinner. Boo! So we headed back to the hotel. But we thought to ourselves – it’s Saturday night and we’ll probably never be in Nanjing again. We need to get back out there. So we researched bars and learned about a bar street in town. We hopped in a cab and found ourselves on a pretty exciting street. Now the thing about China is you HAVE to look closely before going into a bar. We actually called a bar when we were deciding where to go and Humphrey was asked on the phone if he wanted girls there for him when he arrived. Sketchy! At least half the bars on this street were full-on brothels. If the bar is full of attractive, scantily-clad girls – DON’T GO IN. But we found a
real bar and had a great night – we made friends with some Chinese kids at the next table and we played the Chinese dice drinking game with them. I like it because I get to practice my Chinese numbers. There was also a dance floor though the place was full of Europeans and they kept playing Euro music.
Despite a late night, we were up early Sunday to hit up all the sites we’d missed. We headed back out to the Rape of Nanjing memorial since that as a must-see. It was very interesting and powerful. I don’t want to get too much into details since you can always google it to learn more but basically the Japanese invaded China in the 1930s. When they reached the then-capital of the country, Nanjing, they took the city by storm killing over 300,000 people in six weeks. They also brutally tortured people and burned a lot of bodies to hide the evidence. Really sad stuff. How can humans do this to eachother? The tragedy today is that Japan still won’t apologize for it (there is a lot of evidence that this actually happened) and they don’t teach the
full story in school in Japan.
Anyways, since we have bad luck on this trip, I had left my phone at the hotel and I managed to lose Humphrey and Dave. I looked around for them but when I couldn’t find them I knew my only option was to get to my phone (the memorial was huge). I didn’t know the name or address of our hotel but I did remember the subway station we’d gotten off at so I took the subway (taxi would have been much faster) all the way back. Fortunately my great sense of direction led me back to the hotel and I called the boys. They grabbed a cab, came to get me, and we headed to Purple Mountain. All’s well that ends well! But it certainly ate up a lot of time.
Purple mountain is really, really cool. A definite must-see in Nanjing. We weren’t sure if it would be good because the weather was so hazy but it was. We took the cable car up the mountain which afforded great views. It also wasn’t very busy so we had…actual silence. Not for the whole trip up. But
for parts it was just silent. It was so nice. Of course it wasn't to last. One thing that seems to be popular amongst the people of Nanjing is playing music out of your phone. Up until now this was something I’d only ever seen done by gangsta people on LA city buses. But apparently old men in Nanjing also like to do this. Humphrey actually told a guy to turn the music off when we were on the wall. It totally ruins a place to have someone’s random music playing!
Anyways, we had some fun people passing us on the cable car. Not just people playing music but we got MANY head-turn stares. Humphrey and I would turn our heads and stare right back at them. I find it’s one of the most effective ways to get them to stop staring. We also saw some people napping. It was the afternoon, that’s nap time in China. My photo was taken twice (that I could tell). Also a girl opened an umbrella because I guess the canopy isn’t enough sun protection for her.
We reached the top and decided to hike to
Intercontinental Hotel
one of the most interesting skyscrapers in this historical city the peak which was really cool. Then we went in search of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's mausoleum. We hiked down through some really awesome-smelling forests. I do love the smell of trees. The mausoleum was really, really cool – and completely packed. Dr. Sun is recognized as the father of modern China. Apparently he was set to be the next emperor but he decided to bring democracy to China instead. Of course since he was soon thereafter overtaken by the communists he’s of course not as important in Chinese history as Mao. But he paved the way for the communists to take over so he’s now being acknowledged as important (I guess he was ignored for a while but now the party is recognizing him. Though they are not at all mentioning that he moved to Taiwan at the end of his life. Can’t have the story ruined by Taiwan!)
At this point it was getting a bit late so we realized we needed to get to the train station. We tried to find a bus or cab or something down the mountain. When we finally found a taxi it was a sketchy lady who was kinda
trying to scam people. Basically taxis issue these things called fapians (may not be spelling that correctly) which people can claim on their taxes. She was driving around and running up a big fare waiting for someone to want to pay her the big fare in exchange for the big fapian. We weren’t interested so she only drove us to a major street where we could get another cab and we paid for the 11 RMB that you pay for the first 2 kms of any cab fare. We then hailed another cab, got our stuff from the hotel, and headed to the train station.
There were still several trains back to Beijing but when we got to the ticket counter we learned every single one was totally booked up. My only option really was an overnight train – which wasn’t even from that station and would involve going across town. Humphrey looked up flights and they were also all booked up. Sunday on a long weekend – everyone’s traveling. Any other week it would have been fine but long weekend brought more bad luck. After exploring every option, I decided to just go to Shanghai and
head to Beijing in the morning. It’s not like I have a very important job. I could have flown in the early morning but my flying experience was significantly worse than all my train experiences so I decided to catch a morning train.
In the early morning, I headed back to the train station and successfully got myself a first-class ticket to Beijing. I wrote this (and the previous) blog entry while sitting in my plush (but not fully reclining and not leather) seat. The train is cool because you get views of the countryside. Plus it’s way more comfortable and way less stressful than a plane. I can bring all the liquids I want! And cruising along at 300 km/h it’s still only 5 hours from Shanghai to Beijing. I’m in the very front car and there are only 6 chairs in my cabin. Though we share bathrooms with second class and they aren’t as nice as the bathrooms in executive class. Damn being bumped up a train class!!! (Again with the Corner Gas reference that no one gets…)
At any rate, as I write this, I’m on my way to Beijing. And
I’m posting this from Beijing. After the stress of having no way to get home yesterday it feels good to be on my way back to BJ. I was gone for a LONG time but now it’s back to the real world (so to speak).
-Dafne
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anonymous
non-member comment
nice picture, somehow a little bit like Chicago