Shanghaied in Nanjing, or should that be Nanjinged?
If you are reading this without having read the first half tut tut! In a nut shell, Shanghai, great but I am now very curious about Nanjing, of which I have only heard good/interesting things.
The bullet train was remarkably cheap at £8 each way, booked with a days notice. All I had to do was go and pick them up from office 18p in the train station. The high numbers should have been a clue as to the sheer size of this train station. I remember being amazing at Beijing West but Shanghai West makes it look a little pathetic in comparison! I have seem smaller airports (although I admit, Southampton airport was a long time ago). I spent quite a long time in awe, staring at the rows and rows of ticket windows, each of which seemed to have a hundred people waiting at it. I eventually found the one I was looking for and settled down for a lengthy wait. 20 minutes later and armed with tickets, I began my search for the right gate. It truly is an unbelievable size, there are 15 security scanners before you can even get into the departure waiting area, or rather one of the departure lounges/waiting areas, I think there are 6, each one containing 50+gates and platforms. Makes Bristol Temple Meads weep!
Anyway, the train was very exciting. I got lots of funny looks when I took a photo of the speed display, I was impressed and felt it had to be immortalised onto my camera's SD card (I much prefer says film but it doesn't really exist any more), and three hours flew by. I arrived into Nanjing, without having booked a hostel so I was a little nervous wit it still being Spring festival and all, I showed a taxi driver a small leaflet I had been given and he seemed to understand. First impressions of Nanjing were not great, on the outskirts of the city is the factory belt which the taxi driver raced through, however closer to the center of the city things changed completely. buildings are built in the more traditional style so are very pretty and well kept and the roads are lined with trees not painted (as they are in Kunming) and flowers. The hostel itself is right on the river by a huge holiday market selling all kinds of sparkly and flashing stuff. It's not really my thing but the Chinese go nuts for it. I managed to get a bed and set off on another mini adventure. I had no map, no Lonely Planet and no clue where I was going but that made it that little more interesting. I found that Nanjing has the remnants of an old city wall and in front of the wall is a street build to look like it is about 500+ years old. It failed slightly with the TV screens everywhere and the KTV (karaoke for those who are not familiar with this method of inflicting pain on foreigners) but the over effect was interesting. again lots of photo opportunities for the Chinese (who will take pictures of anything if it stays in the same place long enough) and some great people watching for me.
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| Massacre Memorial |
On day 2, I set off to find the Massacre Memorial. It is the free museum/memorial for the Japanese Massacre of the People of Nanjing in 1945. 300,000 local people were killed in less than a week and the memorial really hammers that home. It is a creepy place that is packed with survivors memories and hundreds of grisly photos, the whole thing is built on tne site of one of the mass graves so at random intervals there would be a glass panel in the floor to a few uncovered bodies. Nanjing has held on to it's history better than Shanghai, the difference in the two places could not be more obvious. Huge sections of Nanjing are built in the traditional style with lots of very strong historical importance, on the other hand Shanghai regularly knocks down old buildings in favour of the next tallest skyscraper. Two very different cities and I loved both.
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| View from my bed, overlooking the square |
A few days in Nanjing was enough, I loved it and I would quite happily go back but it felt like a small town after the previous 4 days in China's biggest city. On my last day I stocked up on yet more souvenirs and presents for various people back in Kunming and decided on a whim to go and see the view from the city wall/gate. Many cities in China still have city walls as almost all of them would have had them centuries ago, few however have been preserved and looked after in a way that doesn't make them look like they were built last year, Nanjing in no exception. I have been to the wall of every city I have been to that had one, Xi'an being the only one I can remember that was complete. Nanjing has only the southern part in tack and unfortunately due to the bad weather I was only able to go to one small section and have a look. On the top of the wall I could see nothing what so ever, the pollution on my last day was so bad that I could barely see the end of the wall a hundred meters away. It made for some atmospheric pictures I suppose.
Nanjing felt like a mini holiday inside of a holiday, and i thoroughly enjoyed my flying visit to this incredible city. Back to Shanghai for a few more days of sightseeing and maybe a little more shopping?
Then it is back to Kunming and straight into work on Wednesday, I still haven't worked out when exactly it is OK to start planning my next adventure but I hope it is soon.
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