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Published: March 16th 2010
The city of Nanjing is an ancient walled-city (at over 33km in length, are the longest the world has ever seen) containing old universities and rests on the banks of the Yangtze.
It has been the capital of China several times in the last 2000 years from the early Ming dynasty (the name literally means “south capital”, to Beijing’s “north capital”) to the most recent during the rule of Republican China under the leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen of the Nationalist Party between 1911 and 1949.
Of course, like any other Chinese city, it is also a roaring industrial monster, but that’s not to say it doesn’t have considerable charisma. I had heard a lot of people talking of this city - how great it was, the history, better for shopping and so on, I had been putting it off for a few weeks with hopes of meeting Richard there, but due to his lack of interest, I had finally decided to visit it alone, again with the hope of finding some people to share the memories with.
When registering in the hostel, I scanned through the book, through name after name of Chinese residents until I finally
came across a western one - Nick from Canada...24 years old...travelled here from Xi’an...It sounded familiar to me so I asked after his room number and knocked! It was indeed a friend I had made back in Xi’an and we were very pleased to see each other. We spent the evening listening to music, chatting through several common interests, Nicks incredible previous travelling experiences and planning the next day’s sight-seeing together before an extremely cold nights sleep.
The first morning I awoke to a blazing sun, and things were looking very much on-the-up. Nick and I had decided to visit Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s grand mausoleum (founder of Nationalist Party) which was built on the famous Purple-gold mountain (Zijin Shan), overlooking the city. On the way we stopped for a wonderful meal and ate far too much for a very cheap price. I began to wonder if I would ever lose weight before hitting the beach during the long, standing bus ride. Following a short hike we arrived at the foot of the cable car ride, feeling it was too hot to trek it. We paid 35 RMB to ride it one-way up to a few meters below the summit.
It was a bit hairy to say the least - a long way up in the strong winds, on a rusty, creaky wire, but the hazy, though atmospheric views of the city view were great and I kept the long walk in the front of my mind!
When we reached the end, knuckles as white as could be, we climbed the final few meters to the top. It is fair to say my first glimpse of the Yangtze, did not quite meet the exotic images the name has always conjured in my imagination. I couldn’t see it at first through the haze, as it was behind the plume from a coal power station. We turned and headed for the long walk down. Unable to find Dr. Suns tomb after a long search, and tired from the walk, we headed for the bus stop at the foot of the mountain and went to find the Ming Palace Ruins.
We weren’t too sure if we found it when we disembarked from the heaving and sizzling bus. We wandered about the area for a while, walking through a few parks scattered with glimpses of rock, wondering if they were the ‘ruins’.
The Bus
I have snapped hundreds of photos to try to give the right picture of how overcrowded the cities are, but none of them give the right impression. This is the closest I have come so far...Unwilling to be defeated again, we doubled back on ourselves unconvinced and eventually found what we were looking for; several marble bridge ruins stretching out across the park.
Perhaps it was just the nice weather, but the city certainly had an upbeat feeling to it, It is markedly more colourful, in both general fixtures and fittings and with greenery, than Beijing’s and Xi’an’s extensive browns. I wondered as well whether the atmosphere is due to having far fewer immigrants than Beijing, where a vast number of the population come from over China. There seemed to be that extra sense of pride and ownership in the city. I also love city walls, they always capture my imagination as I tend to think they give a city a real feeling of place and continuity.
On the wait for the bus ‘home’, I watched a man pick up rubbish with what can only be described as a long and large set of bamboo chopsticks. I always find myself smiling when I watch the locals clean the streets and began to feel my love for the country flooding back; People tend to throw a lot of rubbish into the roads but there
wft?
Is it a lunchmeat lifestyle musuem? Sadly I will never know... is always someone along shortly to pick it up again!
We took a little detour on the way back to the hostel and picked up a bottle of much desired gin from an ‘exotic foods store’, lemons and cans of tonic from a supermarket. We cracked open the booze and settled into watch a few films. I ended up totally wrecked by the end of the night and staggered to bed around 4am.
The next day of course I was very hungover.I felt extremely shit and troubled by the thought of an Asian breakfast during this time, so I spent 45 RMB on a take away pizza, delivered to the hostel.
I decided to book my train tickets for the next stop. I had decided to head to Nanchang, a random city half way to Guangzhou. It’s a similar plan to the one I made for Beijing/Datong/Xi’an at the start of my trip. The trains are a lot more manageable travelling over night twice rather than for 28 hours straight, as I get to keep the day to do stuff. For some reason, it also works out cheaper. It is however, a big gamble on ticket availability
(for some arsing reason, in China you can only book tickets from the station you are currently in) as Nanchang, much like Datong, has no accommodation for travellers and is very tourist un-friendly. I was also little worried and oddly intrigued as to what to do when I got there as the ‘Lonely Planet’ says, and I quote: ‘Nanchang is a very old-style, grey-bricked communist city of 8 million people and unless unfortunately detailed here, get out’! I would also have all my bags with me and be meeting Duncan (my British man from Xi’an) at an undetermined location with no phone or internet! I smelt another mini-adventure!
It was blazing hot 20 degrees today, not a cloud in the sky. It was amazing what effect the weather has on my mood. I felt 100% again after the lovely pizza, and after an hour or so’s chilling, listening to Toto and trying to psych-up my mountain-aching calves for another 10 hour walk, we headed out to start the day.
We took a bus to the Nanjing Massacre museum. Nick started to take the piss out of my map and street sign obsession so I left it up to
Mass Grave Section
I am surprised that remains are on display here. him to get us there. Shockingly we missed the stop, in fact, we missed all the stops and we were kicked off the bus in an industrial estate (a very posh industrial estate) and lay on the side of the road in the warm sun and waited.
Eventually we found it, after walking through 7 roads, and asking 5 people, we arrived! Whilst we had gone astray, we passed a ‘Boloni lifestyle museum’; very intrigued as to what a lunchmeat lifestyle would be like I wanted to go in, but we were running out of time.
The museum was laid out in a very Feng Shui style; big open spaces and sculptures of victims scattered about. We queued in the shade for a few minutes; people were being let into the building in groups.
The museum tells the story (the Chinese perspective) of what happened to the people of Nanjing during a six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city, on December 9, 1937. During this time, 300,000 innocent civilians were murdered and it is claimed that 20,000-80,000 women were raped by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. It is also built on the site of the
place where thousands of bodies have been excavated from mass graves.
We entered down some stairs to a mock war-scene; flashing lights and the sound of burning. The displays were so vast we would never have been able to read them all. The first set of halls set the scene as China being quite poor a defenceless, it then depicted the start of the Japanese invasion during 1937, the reasons why and the logistics. Eventually the corridors led us to the partially excavated mass graves. When the story turned towards the victims, eye-witness testimonies and photos my eyes actually welled up with tears; the most overwhelming sections were the stories and even photos of the hundred of raped women per day and, towards the end, a survivor’s wall. It was very moving, more real for me than the memorabilia in the cabinets. Photos of young children forced to kneel before execution at gun or knife-point, of people being set on fire, of experimentation with germ-warfare and the horrid atrocities committed in a few short weeks of mass-murder will forever stay imprinted in my memory. The stories of how the Japanese committed such infringements of war rules and human rights
Hazy Nanjing
Believe it or not, it was actually sunny and clear at the foot of the mountain; once you rise above you can plainly see the layer of polution surrounding the city. here are akin to Nazi Germany concentration camps.
After an extremely depressing few hours, I was about ready to kill myself, so we headed back to the hostel, hassle free this time. We walked around to pick up some snacks and then chilled for a few hours, waiting for the time to pass before I said my goodbye to Nick and left for my train at 10pm.
The ride to the train station was the most simple, comfortable and hassle free trip of the journey so far! A taxi just happened to be dropping someone off at the hostel as soon as I stepped onto the pavement, so I jumped in at 10:10pm. I arrived at Nanjing station, the first time I had seen a seemingly empty station here at 10:20, sat down (yes - sat down for the first time!!) near the front of the queue for the first time, in 5 minutes the train arrived (EARLY!), embarked onto the train carriage, which pulled up nicely at the bottom of the platform stairs involving no running, and sat on my bed, the first one on the carriage! Brilliant. Now to negotiate the mysterious Nanchang and the journey to the long awaited south coast of China; Guangzhou ...
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Mark
non-member comment
I shall never complain about transport again! Your photos keep on making me jealous tho!! Missing you!