A tale of two cities

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Since my last posting we have visited Xi'an, home of the terrocotta warriers where we spent four days and Nanjing where we stopped overnight to break up excessively long train journeys on very hard seats.

Xi'an is one of those places that seems to be on the must see list of every traveller to the region, if I had the time again I would not visit . To my mind the city lacked character and its famous terroccota occupants actually live about an hours bus journey away and maybe because of the hawkers that were ubiqutous trying to palm off reproductions the real thing lacked the impact I was hoping for.

Nanjing on the other hand is lesser known and for those that recognise the name it is as infamous in this region as Austwitz is in Europe. The city witnessed the Nanjing massacres in 1937. I remember reading about this place 5 or 6 years ago and the stories were so horrific that at the time I wasn't sure whether such a place really exisited - in 6 weeks of Japanese occupation more than 300,000 chinese civilians were killed. In the short time that we were here we visited the memorial hall of the Nanjing massacre and saw an unbelievably powerful tribute to the victims, one I will never forget.

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Photos

a man trying to escape with his elderly mother
The statues captured corresponding photographs

bodies were piled in the street
The statues captured corresponding photographs

a man carrying his dead 13 month old grandson
The statues captured corresponding photographs

the biggest marionette in china - what a claim to fame
this was designed to celebrate the olympics being held in Beijing

an umberella is particulalry useful
bronze horse and carriage unearthed from the tomb of Quin shi huang

Comments

[Mark Mears]

Terrocotta Army.....
Sooooooooooooooooo jealous! Missed their recent visit to London as well!!! :-(

[Brendan Hudson]

Enjoying the Blog
Dear Abigail and Tom, I am enjoying your great pictures and travelogue. We have just returned from 2 weeks in Florida and it seems evry tame compared to your sojourn. Best wishes Brendan Hudson

[alan]

Nice 1 Abs & Tom
great pics and vid, glad ur enjoying it. take care.......alan