镇江 Zhenjiang Day Trip

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It’s been quite a while since our last blog… there’s a few things we’ll post in the coming days, but first a recap of the weekend before last.



Along with or two friends Nate and David (a few newcomers to Changzhou!), we headed to our neighboring city to the West, Zhenjiang镇江 as we’ve been here for over eight months and never managed to get over there. All I knew about it was that it was about half the size of Changzhou and situated right on the Yangtze and was the former home of American writer Pearl Buck. I didn’t have terribly high expectations of our short day trip, but it was actually pretty cool!



The first thing we did was leave catch the bullet train to the city. The ride took about 30 minutes. Once we were at the train station, we headed out on foot to check out the Pearl Buck Museum and Former Residence. This area was much less developed than the part of Changzhou we live in, and it had a bit of charm to it. Unfortunately when we arrived at Buck’s home, it was closed to visitors for about 3 hours around lunch time. We needed to find something else to do to fill our time before we were allowed in.



I read about a place called 竹林寺 Zhulin Si (Bamboo Sea Temple) located south of the city where supposedly they had some hiking trails and some decent natural scenery. We grabbed a cab and zipped on over. It was fairly unimpressive to begin with. A 40元 ticket price seemed a little ridiculous given the fact that for the first twenty minutes of the hike, you see nothing but a peacock pen and a bunch of construction and closed trails. Once further into the park though, we began to really enjoy it. Much like other places in China, much of the hike was long sets of stairs climbing the mountainside. We got a decent leg work-out before reaching the top. Poor air quality made visibility a little less than adequate, but it was very peaceful to be at the top. We took another dip down and then back up another peak where we found a lookout pagoda. This was actually really cool. We climbed the staircase inside and walked around the deck. The views were much better from here. After a romp through the woods to get down, we hopped in another cab and went back to the Museum.



The old house was very interesting. It was built and furnished in Western Style. It was originally built in I believe 1914. Next to the house was the museum, and we enjoyed taking a look at the relics, awards, quotes, and photos. For those of you who don’t know, Pearl Buck was born in West Viriginia but moved with her missionary parents to China when she was just 3 months old. She spent the first 20 years of her life there and was raised bilingual. All in all, she spent a total of 34 years in the country, mostly in Zhenjiang and Nanjing. For expats like us, her story is fascinating.



After the museum, we decided to go take a look at the Yangtze riverside. It was a wonderful time of day to be down there as the sun was just setting. The weather was beautiful and we had awesome views of the river and the cityscape. I was taken aback by how wide the river was. I’d never seen anything quite like it. Lauren and I had been to the upper reaches of the river, but never down in the valley.



After the river, the four of us got a nice dinner at a rice porridge restaurant and then made the trip back to good ol’ Changzhou. We did quite a bit in such a short amount of time. Perfect day trip: Accomplished.

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Photos

Rural Zhenjiang
Lauren and I atop a pagoda in Nanshan Park... you can see the Zhenjiang countryside behind us.

Zhenjiang Sunset
The sunset was beautidul over the Yangtze river and the city skyline.