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Published: July 23rd 2008
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City Wall Bricks
If it ain't up to par, I will cut you I got a good amount of sleep last night, but the night before I only slept 2 hours and then some 1.5 hours of interrupted sleep on the train. I felt fine yesterday, but it's really slugged me today!
Yesterday we went to our office to get picked up and meet our charges. The CFO of GreenTree, Angel, left her two kids in our hands for traveling around these 10 days. Their names are Lewis and Carol (or Mickey and Minnie, as their mom calls them sometimes) and they are 12 and 10 years old. At first, the idea of a family vacation and bringing 2 kids along was daunting. But we soon found that their English was very good, and the boy loves history, making his enthusiasm for cultural sights infectious. So maybe this whole travel-parent thing isn't so bad.
At the Nanjing Station, we were picked up by the general manager of a GreenTree Inn here in a Nanjing. This one actually has excellent placement right by the river and Nanjing's TV Tower. I got to occupy the single...and this little fleck of privacy has meant everything to me. I haven't gotten my own space for the
Children!
I guess I do like them! past two months, and as much as I love my roomie, it gets to be like dorm life. Except I work and live and play with the same people for 7 weeks.
The first day, we opted to use the tour guide they offered us (at a fairly high price, might I add) and traveled to the City Wall and Palace. Nanjing was chosen by six dyansties as the capital city, meaning it's got a huge amount of history despite its relatively unknown status in comparison to Beijing and Shanghai. The Summer Palace was nice and green. That's something we've been missing in Shanghai: some luscious greenery. One of the cool things about the City Wall was the fact that every brick had raised Chinese lettering to indicate the brickmaker. It the brick cracked more than once, the maker would be found and executed (and you thought we had strict building codes?)!
After scurrying around a temple, we found ourselves in an outdoor market area with a wee river. When there are rivers, we find the urge to cruise them. So we rented a little boat and driver and took a tour of the river, at the speed
of melting ice. Nonetheless is was relaxing, and followed up by a black glutinous rice sweet treat with corn. There's something about Chinese people and corn desserts. Fried corn with mayo and corn ice cream somehow qualify as desserts. Ok, I can't lie...I ate them both willingly and enjoyed them.
The kids have actually been a joy to have around. They freshen up us old geezers and add energy to the group. The little boy is friggin adorable and happy--plus, he's an excellent tour guide when there's no English to be found in museum exhibits hehe. This came in handy the next morning when we went to the Nanjing Museum. We went in this exhibit based around a Golden Tomb, and all these beautiful trinkets were on display. I wouldn't have understood any of it had it not been for Lewis' translation skillz that killz.
After that, we went on an arduous journey that I insisted on to Sun Yat-Sen's Tomb. Sun Yat-Sen is the founder of modern China, the guy who took the country out of the dynasties and into a democracy (or so he intended). He is beloved by Commie and Non-Commie Chinese alike. His status
reaches into the heavens. Accordingly, we had to scale a friggin mountain to see his tomb. I mean, really. It's all about how much pain you are willing to bring upon yourself to be a true history buff. I was already dead tired when we started, and seeing the stairs sucked out the remainder of my life force. BUT when we got to the top, we had an amazing view of the green hills of Nanjing. Plus we got to see the tomb of a near-godlike figure in history. Call me nerdy, but it was well worth the pain that remains in my glutimus maximus.
Even though we had to leave the next afternoon, there was one more place that we HAD to hit while still in Nanjing. So we got up bright and early to head out to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial and Museum. The story behind it is a devastating one, and I could spend a whole blog discussing it. Right before World War II hit the World, it hit China in the form of the Japanese army invading China. After they took Shanghai, they marched on the capital, which was then Nanjing. After breaking down the
defenses, they had a "mopping-up" program that entailed mass "liquidation" of the population--civilian or not. The looting, murder, and rape of the city cost 300,000 live in an atrocity that was never really forgotten by the Chinese. It's just so scary to think that a human can be trained to become a killing machine, and this obviously doesn't begin or end with the Japanese. But the accounts of slashing down children and raping elderly women seem unreal and the photos and exhibits were gruesome. The museum has done a thorough job of cataloging the individual stories of survivors who pretended to fall under gunfire, were stabbed with bayonets to ensure death, but somehow escaped the flames of the burning corpses. Lordy it was difficult to watch some of those stories. Its an important reminder of the true nature of the sadistic outcomes of war on a population's psyche.
On that note, I must depart. We just got off the train here in Hangzhou, one of the safest, richest, and most scenic areas of China. Until next time
lovelove
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