The next stop on our epic journey was Nanjing - yet another minor Chinese city with a humble population of 8.25 million people, Nanjing is one of the centres in China for education & culture (something that's quite obvious, as it seemed that about every second person in town is a student). Nanjing also has a very prominent place in Chinese history, as it was the Chinese capital during several dynasties (in fact, Nanjing means Southern Capital).
So far, our travels in China have been surprisingly trouble-free. We've never really gotten lost (or when we did get lost, we never lost too much time) - so I suppose it was about time for a bit of drama. We really struggled to find our hotel - we must've spent 2 hours walking up and down one of the main drags of Nanjing, trying to find the damn place (we even had the address, shouldn't be difficult right?). At one point, we ended up in some dodgy massage parlour - fearing for a minute that was our hotel. Anyway, we eventually found the place. Not that the place was really worth all the hassle - the hotel was definitely the worst place we'd stayed at so far...
Anyway, after checking in, we decided to hit the road, and decided to head to Fuzimiao, an area located around a Confucian temple. The temple itself is a truly venerable institution, dating back to the 4th century. It was actually a very interesting place to explore - there are paintings describing the life of the old sage. It's also interesting to note that a Confucian temple is more like a learning institution than a place of worship (after all, Confucianism is more a life philosophy than a religion).
Interestingly enough, the area around the temple is actually the nightlife & entertainment district of Nanjing, and boy was it busy tonight! They put up some pretty nice dance/theatre performances (it's worth noting that Nanjing is one of the best places in China to experience Chinese theatre/opera) on the river, it all looked very spectacular, lit up at night time.
The next day, we got up bright 'n early, and headed off to explore Nanjing's historical heritage. We decided to start with a UNESCO-heritage site, the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum. It's the tomb of the founder of the Ming dynasty, one emperor Hongwu. The place is rather grandiose, no denying it (it took 100,000 labourers to finish the construction of it). But actually there isn't all that much to see there, since the tomb itself is sealed. There are some pretty nice views from the top of the tomb building towards the surrounding woodland & nicely maintained park.
Somewhat disappointed, we carried on towards another famous resting place - the mausoleum of Sun-Yat-Sen (the father of modern China, who died in 1925. The architecture is an interesting mix of historic Chinese and modern styles - and again, the place is rather majestic, located on the slopes of Mount Zijin (the purple mountain). Judging from the hordes of tourists (a phenomenon one gets used to pretty quickly in China), mr. Sun-Yat-Sen is a very well-respected historical figure indeed...
We then made our way to the third major attraction located around Mount Zijin, the Linggu temple. The temple was actually located where the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum is located today - since that is where the emperor wanted his tomb, so the temple had to be moved here. It was a pretty interesting place to visit, in particular since there were a lot less tourists than at the other two sites we'd gone to. And the sun also came out from behind the clouds, making the surrounding landscapes look very splendid indeed, in their autumn colours (especially from the top of the Linggu pagoda (which dates back to 1929).
For the evening, we decided to go and see an opera play, Nanjing being one of the cradles of Chinese opera, after all. It wasn't an easy task, as it was hard to find any information on the internet (at least in English) about it. We also had a rather hard time finding the place - on the map it seemed so easy to find, yet we wandered about like headless chickens for about an hour until we eventually found the venue, more or less by luck! Anyway, the play was actually great, very much worth the effort of walking around randomly in Nanjing in the dark.
The play we saw (the name of which I've forgotten, unsurprisingly) actually reminded me a lot about some of the Shakespeare plays I've seen, which is kind of surprising. There are the themes of confused identity, confused gender identity (men pretending to be women and vice versa), some very low-brow humour (for the masses...), all tied together by a pretty entertaining story. Thankfully, there were screens with English sub-titles ;). All in all, certainly more accessible than for example Kabuki. We had dinner and a couple of drinks in a nice brew pub, run by an American chap, after which we hit the sack, satisfied with a great day!
The next day, the plan was to get the train back to Shanghai, where we were meeting Isabelle. But we had plenty of time to visit Nanjing before that. We decided to start by checking out Nanjing museum, a fantastic museum covering Chinese history, mainly the Ming and Qing dynasties (which was Nanjing's heyday) - that would mean from the 14th century to the beginning of the 20th century. It's a fantastic museum, basically, with loads of interesting artefacts, very clear explanations (well-translated into English) - a real journey through Chinese history. And what's best, it's all free!
Having checked out the museum, we decided to check out another feature Nanjing is famous for, its city walls, which date back to the Ming Dynasty. They are also among the longest city walls remaining in China. So I was quite looking forward to checking them out. Unfortunately, most of the sections aren't walkable, so instead of walking on top of the walls, we decided to follow a guided walk in our Lonely Planet which follows the city walls (on the outside of the city.
It turned out to be quite a nice walk. The walls themselves are not the main attraction actually - rather the lakes and nice woodlands we walked through. We found what seems to be THE spot for people getting married having their picture taken - nice lake, with the city walls as a nice backdrop. We actually staid for so long (well, I blame Nick here, who's an even worse paparazzi than me!), that we were starting to be in a bit of a hurry as far as catching our train was concerned.
The end of our walk took us past the rather beautiful Xuanwu lake. Actually, there's a section of the city walls that can be visited by the lake, so we decided to go for it, even if we were in a hurry. It was well worth it, in spite of the rather stiff 10 Euro entrance fee. But the views more than made up for that!
It felt a bit wistful heading back to Shanghai - Nanjing is a great city, the cultural and historical heritage the place has to offer certainly merits a longer visit than the 2 and a half days we gave it.
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