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On Thursday I went to a Shanghai Jiao Tong University volunteer house to celebrate the traditional dragon boat festival. The festival commemerates the Chinese poet Qu Yuan who drowned himself. According to the story, all the villagers threw rice cakes into the river to keep the fish from eating the poet's body. Today the sticky rice cakes, wrapped in bamboo leaves and filled with pork or red beans, are served at the Dragon Boat Festival. We went to the apartment to talk, have traditional tea, and have snacks before leaving for a traditional Chinese restaurant. Traditional style means there is a spinning glass table in the middle of the table where all the dishes are placed. You then take the food off the dishes and put them on your own small plate or bowl to eat. I enjoyed participating in a part of traditional Chinese culture.
On Friday we left for Suzhou, famous for its network of canals and gardens. The Chinese have a saying that says "Above is the heavens, Below is Suzhou and Hangzhou". After picking up a map (in German since they were out of English) and orientating ourselves with the city, our first stop was the
Humble Administrator's Garden, the largest and most famous garden in Suzhou. Although crowded with lots of tourists, the landscape was very impressive. The scenery is a combination of interconnected islands spaced between marshland and small ponds. Bamboo and hanging moss add an especially Chinese flavor to the garden. After the gardens we made our way to the Beisi Ta Pagoda, which had a foundation dating back to 250A.D. and the main structure dated back to 1200A.D. The last sight in Suzhou was the Pan Men gate, which was about 700 years old. The Pagoda inside the gate offered great views of the garden within the gate as well as the city. After exploring Suzhou we headed back to the train station to catch a train to Nanjing. At the train station we met an interesting Chinese student majoring in English. He was very fond of American culture and talked about how he learned English by watching American TV shows and movies. He even told us that growing up he was taught British English and he purposefully watched American shows becuase he likes the American accent better. Once it was time to board we parted ways and took the 2hr train
to Nanjing.
Nanjing is one of China's larger cities and has been the capital of China several times throughout its history. We arrived in Nanjing late on Friday night and took the Subway to a stop close to our hotel. In a sharp contrast to Shanghai, all the the streets were dark and everything was closed. We still found our hotel and got 4 room for the eight of us at $12 a person. On Saturday morning we got up early to head to Purple Mountain by bus to see several historical sites, including Dr Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum (the founding member of the Chinese Republic), Ming Xiao Ling Tombs, and the Linggu Temple. The Mauseleoum was the most impressive. Designed by a Cornell graduate, the pathway to the Mauseloum contains 392 steps to the top which provided a great view of the wooded area and Nanjing. From there we took a trolley to the Linggu Scenic area where we climbed another Pagoda, this one actually built by an American in the early 1900s. The final stop was the Ming Tomb, which unfortunately was closed for renovation although the outside of the building was colorfully decorated and the area
was still fun to walk around. We left Purple Mountain late in the afternoon and went to a Confuscious Temple located in one of the main shopping streets in Nanjing. The area was filled with restaurants and street vendors and was filled with neon lights. We ate a Chinese restaurant which unfortunately had no pictures on the menu so the one Chinese speaker had to order for the group. Afterwards we spent the the rest of the night exploring the area and I even tried fried shark from one of the street stalls before heading back to our hotel.
On Sunday we slept in a little later and spent the morning at Zhonghua Gate. The gate served as as the Nanjing's southern point of defense for centuries and was the site of at least ten major battles in Chinese history. A massive stone wall connects to the stronghold and snakes around the onetime perimeter of the city. Today, the city has expanded outside of the gate, and tunnels have been carved through the wall to facilitate the flow of traffic. From the top of the barricade, we got a good view of Nanjing and the river that runs through
the city. We spent most of the day exploring the defense structure and taking some fun camera timer group portaits before getting lunch and heading to the train station to go back to Shanghai.
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