Trip to Nanjing

Lyrics: Sometimes all it takes is a leap of faith – Etta James

After two weeks of SATP, we had a week off before HSYLC started, so John and I headed over to Nanjing.

Nanjing was the capital of several regional kingdoms many centuries ago, as well as during the 19th Century Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the first Chinese Republic under Dr. Sun Yat Sen. It is also an incredibly modernized and developing city, though, like all big cities in China, poverty lives next door to skyscrapers. In any case, Nanjing is also of China’s “Oven Cities,” and on the morning of our arrival it greeted us with 42 degrees Celsius (107 Fahrenheit). The polluted, humid, and dense air was a slap in the face even after dealing with Shanghai for two weeks. Note: According to the World Bank, 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities are located in China. Having previously decided to be spontaneous and adventurous, we had not booked a hotel, so when I sat in the front seat of our cab and pointed to the Chinese characters for “hostel” in my guidebook, I knew we were in for a treat. Our cabbie – surprisingly, a woman – at first thought we were crazy, but later drove us around until we found a hotel that was reasonably priced. I paid and snuck John in behind me so that we could have the cheaper, smaller room. Our hotel room left a lot to be desired, as you will notice from my pictures: the ceiling was leaking, the lamps were burned, the carpet was questionable, the toilet was not flushing. However, the staff did provide us with thin terrycloth-ish slippers, which was enough for me!

Of the two days we spent in Nanjing, the first was definitely the worse of the two. Stifled by the heat, we managed to drive across the entire city to see Zhonghua Gate. This is part of the wall structure that used to surround the capital and was built under the first Ming emperor in the 1380s. The remains are rather impressive in that they are so ancient and well preserved, but I was not impressed by the now-electric lanterns that had replaced the traditional, cloth ones. In addition, the view from the top was severely limited by the smog in the distance, the museum did not have English translations, and there was little to admire other than the structure itself. The rest of the day was spent trying to find our way to different temples, unsuccessfully because streets in Nanjing do not have Pinyin transliteration and people do not speak English. The heat was oppressive, the city was not particularly clean, and we did not see most of what we had intended to. Devastated, both by the first day and the last two weeks of round-the-clock teaching, we went back to our hotel room and slept for 12 hours.

In the morning, however, we emerged victorious, after a rather long taxi ride, on Purple Mountain! Zijin Shan, as it is called in Chinese, overlooks the city and is a picturesque area of green hills, bamboo groves, and little villas. The main point of interest on the entire mountain is Dr. Sun Yat Sen’s Mausoleum, which both John and I had been excited about seeing.

The Dr. is an incredibly well known Chinese revolutionary and political leader. He is referred to as the "father of modern China" because he guided the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and led the founding of the first Republic of China. He united post-imperial China as best as he could and, surprisingly is respected not only in mainland China, but also in Taiwan. After he died in 1925, a competition was held to design his tomb. Interesting enough, Y.C. Lu, a graduate from Cornell’s School of Architecture, won the contest. The entire structure is magnificent! Ascending a hill with 392 steps is a long marble stairway, intersected at times with beautiful buildings crowned with blue-tile roofs. At the top, sits the mausoleum and, inside, lies the sarcophagus, inset in the floor. John and I made our way to the top, stopping to take a couple of pictures along the way, and were disappointed to see the attitude people took at the Mausoleum. Surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of the tourists were Chinese; I’m not sure if we even saw another white person on the way up, though we saw a couple on the way down. In any case, inside the room where the sarcophagus lay, people were chatting, laughing, talking, which struck me as a drastic contrast to my experience in Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow, where no pictures are allowed and total silence is enforced. You can almost hear his nails still growing (On a side note, I hope someone has clipped them since I last was there). It was strange to me that for a nation that is so proud of its history, these people would so blatantly disrespect the tomb of such an important figure.

After our descent, John and I walked around other areas of the mountain for a bit, exploring, among other things, the Linggu Pagoda. It was designed, strangely enough by an American, in memory of the soldiers killed in the 1911 revolution. The view from the top was incredible: just green mountains rolling as far as I could see.

After our exploration of Purple Mountain, John and I headed back to the train station. Despite my genuine enjoyment of Purple Mountain, the trip had been somewhat anticlimactic for me, less because of the heat and the dingy hotel room, and more because the city seemed like a lesser version of Shanghai: a polluted, bustling metropolis, but without the striking architecture or interesting sights. And so we headed home. Home to Shanghai. It was strange to use the words “home” and “Shanghai” together, but it worked. When we got off the platform, I felt good, ready to tackle the large taxi line, ready to return to whatever semblance of routine I had established during the past two weeks. For now at least, Shanghai really was home.