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Published: November 25th 2012
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Silk Factory
A factory worker sorts out silk worm cocoons. Happy Thanksgiving! Although this was the first Thanksgiving I can remember where I haven't awoken to the Macy's parade on the television or the smell of turkey wafting up to my bedroom, this Thanksgiving was a good one. Since Thanksgiving is not a Chinese holiday, we were supposed to have a speech competition in the morning and then our English Economics class in the afternoon for three and a half hours, but thankfully enough of us protested and the afternoon class was cancelled. Not wanting to miss the football that usually airs in the states for Thanksgiving, I watched
The Blind Side to get my football fill in, before a group of us went out to McDonald's for a classy Thanksgiving feast. We had chicken and beef (McNuggets and cheeseburgers), and ice cream and pie (McFlurry's and pineapple pie--no famous Mickey D's apple pie in China). When we came back, about 15 of us piled into the make shift lounge complete with random bed mattresses and a newly purchased projector to watch
Zoolander, one of my favorite movies of all time. Oddly enough, I think I have spent a Thanksgiving or two in the past watching
Zoolander,so all in all the
Nanjing
I'm honestly not sure what we were visiting here but it looked important so I took a picture in front of it. day felt just like a normal Thanksgiving. There were only two things missing--my family's tradition of having a gingerbread house competition that transpires every Thanksgiving morning, and ironically the fact that I didn't eat any Chinese food the entire day (we usually have a couple Chinese dishes for Thanksgiving).
Friday morning we awoke bright and early to head off to Nanjing. It was a long bus ride, so we stopped first in Suzhou. Suzhou is most famous for its gardens, but we unfortunately did not get to see any of those. We were taken to the silk factory and then a museum that was designed by the same architect that designed the pyramids in front of the Lourve. The silk factory was nice but overall I was very disappointed that we were not taken to the gardens.
After leaving Suzhou, we continued on to Nanjing, where we eventually arrived 12 hours after departing from Shanghai. It was a pretty uneventful bus ride except for the fact that we saw a sign explode and catch on fire on the street, and then 3 fire trucks came through to put it out. An interesting end to the night.
Saturday
Nanjing Again
Again, not sure what this was, but what I can tell you is that it had a great view and there was something about a famous guy that started the Republic of China. was our cultural day in Nanjing. Nanjing was the capital of China throughout various points of time in China's history, including during World War 2, when it was captured by the Japanese. Nanjing literally means "South Capital" (Nan = South, Jing = the capital of a country), whereas Beijing means "North Capital" (Bei = north, Jing = capital). There are rare times when Chinese makes a lot of sense, and this is one of those times. Anyways, Nanjing was the Beijing back then, and it was brutally taken over by the Japanese in 1937. We spent the morning going to some of the famous historic sites, although sadly most of the Nanjing historic sites have been destroyed on multiple occassions. In the afternoon, we went to the Nanjing Massacre memorial, built on one of the mass graves. In the course of a month, the Japanese brutally murdered over 300,000 Nanjing residents, destroying most of the city as well.
I was expecting more of a memorial, but in fact we found that the memorial was more of a nationalist propoganda site than it was for remembering all of the lives lost. The memorial did do a good job of explaining
Birds!
Feeding some birds in the bamboo forest. what happened during the hostile take over, and had a surprising amount of pictures and newspaper clippings, both Chinese and Japanese, of what transpired. However, the majority of the memorial was more designed to build hatred for the Japanese and in the end China (with the help of a few other countries) managed to defeat Japan because China was the good guys. I found a few discrepancies from my high school history books and Wiki versus the readings at the memorial, but for the most part it was very educational.
Saturday night we went into the city center and to the night market. The heart of Nanjing looks an awful lot like Chengdu and Ghuangzhou, in that the very center is very modern, even more so than American cities, but then if you take the subway out about 5 stops, you remember that you're in China. But even the shopping malls look identical in some of China's largest cities.
Afterwards, we went back to the hotel room where we played a form of pictionary, and about halfway into the game we got a written complaint from the hotel, saying that too many guests were complaining of hearing laughter
Bamboo Forest
With two Chinese teachers in the bamboo forest--bet you can't tell which one is the hapa! from our room. I guess that's not the worst complaint in the world to get.
Today we made our way back to Shanghai. We stopped at a national bamboo forest, where we hiked in the pouring rain. Still, it was a nice hike. I spent the time talking with one of the Chinese teachers, and I asked her if she had an English name since we all have Chinese names. When she said no, she said that I ought to give her one, so I of course suggested the best English name I know, "Chelsea". The only problem is that now any time someone says "Chelsea", we both look. Guess I didn't think that one through all the way. The bright side is that most people here call both of us by our Chinese names--Zhang Lao Shi (Teacher Zhang) and Xin Yi (me), so crisis averted.
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Sun yan-Sen
That famous guy is Sun Yan-sen, (孙逸仙or孙中山if you can read chinese). He was from Guangdong and lived in Hawaii for a long time. He even fabricated a birth certificate which stated he was born in Hawaii. In short, a fake American found the republic of China.