Inhabitants agree: Jining has no soul. Now let's you and I agree: Jining is a lot like Dubai: it's a center of shopping and various skyscrapers--minus the exhiliration, the nightlife, the beaches, the internationalism, the English, the spiffy cars, and the down-to-earth Sheikh. If anything, the city strongly resembles familiar American cities such as Cincinnati, Dayton, or Columbus--if these cities had a massive coal-fired power plant. I think Jining's claim to fame is that Chairman Mao once took refuge here, sometime, for something. It's other claim to fame is that it's located next to the city of Qufu--which is the birthplace of Confucius. You can take a bus out to Qufu--it only takes about 40 minutes, and costs about 15 RMB. This makes a nice daytrip, and this is what we decided to do on Monday.
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