Last night we arrived back in Shanghai, tired, hot, and hungry. This morning we woke to a delicious breakfast at the Broadway Mansions Hotel (felt like being home again!), repacked our bags, yet again, and boarded the buses that would take us to Nanjing. For 8 days of touring it had been It was just the five of us - Linda, DeAnn, Lisa, Theresa, and Nancy - and now we would be joining up with the entire teaching group. On board were our program coordinators, Charles and Gloria, the 15 other American teachers that were part of our group, and the large contingency of teachers from Canada - seventy nine of them. The 4 hour ride to Nanjing and the Hua Dong Hotel was relatively uneventful. We arrived by late afternoon to our hotel where we officially checked in with our teacher training group. We were greeted with goodie bags, ham sandwiches, and hot Cokes. After settling in, we had a brief orientation meeting with our American group where we met the other two women whom we would be teaching with in Rugao, Kay and Diana, two lifelong friends from Kansas City. Given that our group of five had become so close, we were probably all harboring fears, thinking that there was no way we could luck out again with two more delightful, easy-to-be-with people who’d be equally happy to be with us. Lightening did strike twice, though. We have grown to love Kay and Diane, too.
We got some good advice during our little orientation. The general plan for the next few days was laid out for us, along with a suggestion to check out the Wal-Mart in Nanjing. Wal-Mart in China did seem like a fun destination, so after stopping in our rooms, we headed to the lobby to see what we needed to do to get a cab for our Wal-Mart excursion. Well, it had started to rain. This put a damper on going to Wal-Mart because with so many people who normally drive motorbikes and bicycles not wanting to get wet, taxis become rare as hens’ teeth. So, our Plan B was to borrow umbrellas from the hotel and head out to parts unknown in the rain. It felt good to be out and about, without a destination. It ended up that we were pretty lucky to have missed out on Wal-Mart, given the gem of a street we happened upon during our walk.
We (Linda, DeAnn, Lisa) started out by just crossing the street to see a park that we had spotted. Getting across the street was an interesting challenge in and of itself, as the hotel was nestled back in a complex of buildings (the hotel, mysteriously, was “Building D”). After a couple of false starts of exiting, we made it out and across to the park which proved to be a lovely spot, even in the rain. Maybe even more so in the rain, because we were completely alone…except for the mosquitoes So, after investigating a pretty gazebo, we were driven out of the park and back onto the sidewalk. We walked about a block, turned a corner, and kept going. It felt good to be on an unaccompanied unguided walk. We were a bit of a parade with our large and matching hotel umbrellas and still sporting our matching "We Teach In China" red t-shirts. Ultimately our destination turned out to be a small convenience store back up a little street that enticed us with its fruit stand at the corner. We had a hay day in that little store. We left our umbrellas at the entrance to the store, like the locals, and made our way in. It was a bevy of things to look at. From the dark boiled eggs soaked in tea(?) we’d become used to seeing, to the chicken feet sealed in plastic, ready for snacking. There was the exotic and there was the even more exotic, like Lay’s Potato Chips. Heaven sent! With soy milk, cucumber and lime potato chips, and bug repellent, we left the store quite pleased with ourselves. We pined after the lovely buns coming fresh from the steamer in the little shop next door, but we needed to get back to the hotel for dinner. It was no Wal-Mart, but instead one of the nicest little outings we’d had to date. Dinner was tasty, but we were definitely missing our little gang of five, doin’ our thing. Having to share and play nice with others was more tiring than we knew, and it was a relief to retire to our room, do a little writing, and go to bed at a reasonable hour for the first time in days. We were to have a tour of Nanjing tomorrow.
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| You just can't imagine how exciting it was to find potato chips! Seriously delicious! |
We woke the next morning excited to begin this second leg of our journey. Another hotel, another interesting breakfast... Some of the signs at the buffet were pretty amusing: “Organic” was what the little sign in front of the eggplant said. Just “organic.” The steamed buns with greens inside were labeled, “examination of buckwheat” (our favorite), and the Tang masquerading as orange juice was labeled “strange fruit,” which really was the closest to correct of all of them. Breakfast behind us, we loaded up the tour buses to get a taste of Nanjing.
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| Ready to tour Nanjing. Linda, Charles, DeAnn, Lisa, and Gloria. |
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| The 5 touring friends ready for one last day together. |
Our guide, Bill, introduced himself by saying, “It’s my job to make you like Nanjing.” Well, despite starting off the day at a most disturbing and depressing spot, the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, we did indeed end up liking Nanjing. The Memorial Hall is really a museum, much like the Holocaust Museum, dedicated to educating visitors about the Nanjing Massacre. Three hundred thousand Chinese were killed by the Imperial Japanese Army after Nanjing, then the capital city, fell to the Japanese 13 December 1937. The visit to the memorial was an educational, but sad and draining way to begin the day, but thankfully this was not to be our only stop in Nanjing. We left the museum wondering a lot about historical perspective and what Japanese children are taught about this horrible event in Chinese and Japanese history. It’s amazing how human atrocities seem to get equal billing no matter the hemisphere or continent. We can always find a way to do irreparable damage to one another.
Upon exiting the Memorial Hall, we dodged the rain and moved on across the street to a much more enjoyable venue, the Nanjing Brocade Museum, which houses a collection of, well, brocade items from the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties. Long, long pieces of fabric with intricate stitch-work; the colors were so vibrant, it was almost eerie. It seemed like they could have been created only yesterday. We got to see the enormous looms used in creating such work. So much is going on with these looms, so many threads and whatnot that it takes two people to operate each one, with one person, who seems to be keeping the whole lot of threads from getting tangled, sitting up at the top, and the other person sitting in what seems to be the more “normal” spot from which to be operating a loom.
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| DeAnn was not feeling her best and opted to enjoy the relatively fresh air outside of the Brocade Museum where she snapped these few photos in the rain. |
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| Looms!! |
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| Note the guy hidden at the top in what seems to be a tangle of thread. |
We next made our way in the drizzle to an enormous restaurant, which was frequented by Chinese and tourists alike. The huge restaurant scene seems to be a Chinese staple. We took an elevator up to the second floor entrance and made our way though what seemed to be a maze of rooms and a dizzying number of tables. The staples of the meal seemed to have changed to regional seafood, as we were served a large whole catfish, squid, and a few other dishes we weren’t able to identify beyond their ocean origins.
After lunch we took the stairs down rather than waiting in line for a packed elevator. We emerged into a sunnier day than we’d left, which was a nice turn of events, as we continued our tour of Nanjing by a visit to the Folk Museum. This museum was the former residence of Ganxi, a famous scholar of the Qing Dynasty (1636-1911), which is regarded as one of the there major sites of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasty in Nanjing. It was a museum with lots of quiet corners, a bit of a labyrinth of rooms and connecting walkways, offering exhibits ranging from a live opera demonstration, and a little garden sanctuary, to kites and lanterns. Though the museum was interesting, it was strange to be touring a venue along with so many people. After days of it being just the five of us, we were spoiled for being in such a large group – most of whom we didn’t know.
Busy Nanjing!
After we reconvened outside of the museum entrance, we waited for our two buses to take us to the next destination, Zhonghua Gate and the city’s ancient wall. We saw both of the buses approaching, coming up the “wrong” side of the street. One of the bus drivers motioned that he was going to make a turn around by going around the block, perhaps, so that he’d be on the right side of the street for loading. The other bus driver, in a much more bold (and typical Chinese) move, made a three-point turn in the middle of the busy intersection, blocking honking traffic coming and going. Grinning broadly at his bold bus maneuvering, our driver opened the door, and we loaded up to head to the city wall. Zhonghua Gate was interesting and offered a nice view of the city, but it was a bit anticlimactic after having so recently visited The Great Wall. Bill, our tour guide, was quite excited about it, though, which made the visit more entertaining, for sure. It was an obviously ancient and peaceful spot in the modern city that had grown up around the grassy creviced walls. There were deep caves, or maybe garrisons, in the mid-section of the wall. Some of them were just dark and empty, others held documents and artifacts (no time to really investigate), and one had a Buddhist shrine (or was it Taoist? All the signage was in Chinese) or temple with a huge golden pot in the middle, a Buddha, and a wall covered in a zillion red wish ribbons and little wooden red wish thingies. What an unexpected spot of spirituality tucked into the side of an ancient wall.
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Our last stop of the day, before dinner, was actually a Confucius Temple, Fu Zi Miao. This was another island of tranquility with a bustling marketplace and tourist area surrounding it. The old section of Nanjing has been restored and maintained, populated with restaurants and little shops, drawing Chinese (lots of young people) and tourists alike.
We made our way through the throngs, after self-guiding ourselves (our “original” group of five) though the temple, to the Jin Ling Chun Restaurant for a marathon welcome dinner for all the teachers. Our Nanjing host, Rob, narrated the meal, so to speak, offering a few toasts and announcing the dishes as they arrived. SO much food. The excess was becoming a norm and spoke to the hospitality of the Chinese people, while also the incongruity of the waste that was always at play, given how much of the food did not get eaten (nor did anyone have the means to take it home - - no doggie bags). It felt so much like American excess and was a bit disconcerting. At the same time, all of the Chinese meals that we ate were offered up with such gracious hospitality and desire to please and impress. It was hard to begrudge and not just be grateful for the over-the-top offerings.
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| The arrival of the plate of watermelon always marked the end of the meal. |
Stuffed with dinner, we headed back to the hotel, catching a glimpse of Wal-Mart along the way. We collected our passports from the front desk and began readying ourselves to leave for our designated teaching destinations the next day.
During the course of the day, Bill, our tour guide, true to his word, worked hard to make us “love Nanjing.” He did a good job. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Nanjing. Additionally, Bill left us with a number of thoughts to ponder and bits of information that he threw out during the course of the day. Below are just some of the notes we frantically jotted as we bumped about on our bus ride throughout Nanjing.
Bill's words of "wisdom":
"The Chinese see Taiwan and China as one country with two systems."
o Taiwan is China’s “last province.”
“If there is no construction going on, then you are not in China.”
o Workers work in three shifts, 24 hrs./day (not well paid; sleep on sight).
o The construction crane is the official bird of China.
o Nanjing completed five subway lines in one year. Five!
o Bill talked about how in the American system, if people want to build a road, the idea is submitted to officials, it is put up for debate, there is much discussion, and it may take a long time to make the decision, but that in China, their system is better, because there is not debate; the government decides there needs to be a road, and the road gets built. “It is much more efficient than American system.”
o If you stay away from a Chinese city for a year and come back, it will not look at all the same. You will not recognize it because of all of the construction taking place.
‧ In year 2020, Nanjing is looking to have 20 subway lines.
‧ Nanjing has a population of 10 million.
‧ Shanghai’s pop is 25 million, the entire population of Australia.
‧ Western China is sparsely populated.
‧ The East is dense due to the water, which facilitates trade and commerce.
‧ Ownership of property lasts for 70 years before property goes back to the government.
‧ Symbolism of some animals:
o Unicorn = minster
o Crane = scholars
o Phoenix = empress
o Dragon = emperor
‧ “Principle of driving a car in China is the fittest of survival.”
‧ “Because of problem with the baby milk powder, the food system has now become hot potatoes.” [There was a problem with powdered baby milk being tainted in some way, maybe some time earlier this year or last year, and it was making children sick and even killing them - - it was all over the news, even in the States.]
‧ “Japanese people on the outside, they are very amiable and kind appearing; but on the inside they are very arrogant and want to be boss of East Asia.” Bill said this after we left the Nanjing Memorial, as well as the bit about not invading another country.
‧ “Chinese will never invade and occupy a country because we abide by Confucius philosophy which is to solve problems peacefully not violently.
‧ “Chinese have dream like American dream, but Chinese dream is to realize dreams of majority people, benevolence and fraternity.”
As with every single day in China, today proved to be a day full of learning and new experiences. Tomorrow, on to Rugao!!!
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