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Published: September 28th 2009
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Whey Shen Ma Bo?!
Why not?! That’s the trick with China. Why not?! The attitude is to not have any shame. Ever.
Last weekend we traveled outside of our safety zone…
Every Friday afternoon a whole fleet of busses arrive to the school and park on the school grounds, lined up like
bicycles in a bike shop - 2,500 kids leave campus all at once and are shipped back to their respective homes, most of which are within an hour or two drive. Every now and again there is extra room on the busses and, well, teachers ride free. Almost too easy for a pair of teachers not entirely adept at navigating a Chinese bus or train station, but quite eager to go check out our local scenery… That said, armed with little more than a map and a phrase book, we hopped on a bus to Nanjing.
Nanjing, for multiple Dynasties and then up until 1937, was the capitol of China. All of China. The name Nan Jing, 南京, literally means Southern Capitol. Just like Beijing, or Bei Jing 北京, meaning Northern Capitol. Nanjing most definitely still feels like a capitol - many of the streets
are lined with mature Walnut trees, continuously shading the boulevards with a beautiful green canopy. While our little town of Yangzhou, with 4.5 million people, at first seemed like a city, our visit to Nanjing, with the proper city limits containing 7.5 million made us redefine our expectations of a real Chinese city.
The ready availability of any kind of food, from pretty much any corner of the world was great. There is, of course, always a twist; nothing in China tastes exactly like you expect or want it to. We found a Mexican Restaurant just down the way from our hostile called Behind the Wall. “South of the Border” for Americans…. Apparently its “Behind the Wall” for the Chinese. I ordered a burrito and liz a platter of tacos. Everything tasted great. Especially the part with French fries perfectly lined up inside our wrapped tortillas.
The first place we visited was the Zhonghua Gate House. During the Ming Dynasty, a huge wall was built around the city. The wall was pretty amazing to see and the Gate House super impressive. The gate consisted of four chambers, each with a massive stone passageway. The idea was that if
one gate was broken through, another chamber awaited; all while a walkway above allowed room for wicked-mean archers / stone-droppers to keep order. The construction of the wall used special bricks held together with mortar made from the starches of boiled rice. The Romans had their volcanic ash and the Ming Dynasty had their rice… Each one of the bricks used in the building of the city wall held the brick-makers entirely accountable - each and every brick had to be stamped with the name, date, and location of the bricks creation. The whole wall system was so well built that it slowed modern day military efforts during the Japanese Invasion in which over 300,000 Chinese were ruthlessly massacred during the city’s occupation in 1937.
The massacre was extensively documented in an ultra modern museum that we visited later in the afternoon. The museum was free to visit and was created with a similar level of quality as that of the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. It was an interesting study in what the Government can do when they have a point they want to make. About halfway through the exhibit we stumbled across a front page newspaper clipping
recording the incident - a clipping from the Montana Standard of Butte, Montana!
We spent some time walking around the Fuzimiao Market - a market located right next to a Confucius temple built in 1034. The temple housed one of the largest bronze statues of the man in all of China. While walking through the market we found a few shops packed with Chinese scrolls. Here’s how you roll if you want to buy something in a market. You ask the price. They tell you. You counter offer at ¼ their offer. They double that, and if you feel sassy, you offer half way, or you just take the price. The final price usually lands to between 3/8 and ½ of the original price. Sounds reasonable, right? We purchased a set of four scrolls that depict the same river town scene from one season to the next. They are now hanging in our apartment alongside two antique scroll paintings of plum trees blossoming.
The following day we visited 紫金山 or Zĭ jīn Shān - Purple-Gold Mountain. The Mountain climbs 1467 ft. above Nanjing, just outside of the city limits, and is jam-packed with historical sites to visit. We
rode an Eastern Block-style chair lift to the top of the mountain and then spent our morning walking down. We past a huge Mausoleum built for Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a man considered the “Father of Modern China” and founded the Republic of China. Both this site and the Ming Mausoleum cost 70 元, pronounced “yuan” and exchanges at about 6:1 US Dollar (about $12 to get in). We chose the Ming Mausoleum and were blown away by the size and caliber of grounds. Everything was completely micro-managed -- like the front yards of old Marine Corps Veterans back in the States, only on a scale of 1800 meters x 1800 meters - nearly 1 ½ square miles. Legend has it that the construction required the use of over 100,000 laborers and the original wall was 22.5 km long. Apparently, in order to prevent robbery of the tomb, 13 identical processions of funeral troops started from 13 city gates to obscure the real burying site (thanks Wikipedia).
After a full day on Saturday and a full day on Sunday, we walked back to the same spot in town where the school bus had dropped us off, looked for a bunch
of kids wearing matching jumper suits in orange and blue, and rode back to Yangzhou, ready for a good night’s sleep before we took on our respective 3rd and 6th graders for the week.
More photos of the excursion are posted on our Flickr site at www.flickr.com/kellyandlizadventures
In the end, its all about being a weekend warrior -
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