Spring Break Nanjing!

So we have been back from Spring Break for a few days, but I still feel like I’m stuck in Spring Break mode! I could definitely use a vacation from my vacation, since the entire time we were busy sightseeing! I could not have asked for a better Spring Break! We barely got any sleep, but we got to see everything we wanted to and then some! I also could not have asked for better friends to spend break with!

We left Beijing on Wednesday night. We took an overnight sleeper train from Beijing central station to Nanjing. Our train left around 11:30 PM. The train ride was very much like our train ride to TaiShan a few weeks ago. Since there were six of us traveling together, we were able to get a whole cubby of bunks all to ourselves, which ended up being incredibly convenient for the long ride. Shortly after the tickets were collected, the lights went out, which was around midnight. I woke up around 8:00 AM, when the Chinese people on the train started waking up and making noise. I woke up to the sounds of “Beijing Yuanying Ni,” or in English, “Beijing Welcomes You,” which was a song created right before the Olympics. It’s very popular all over China. They play it in KTV, they carry speakers around and play it on the streets, and it’s so catchy that it gets stuck in your head and you end up singing it yourself. I am glad I got up early, however so that I could look out the window for the part of our trip through southern China in the daytime. It was really cool to see the farms and rice paddies, which is so different from the city life of Beijing.

After about 14 hours on the train, we arrived in Nanjing. While Nanjing is a major city, with a population of about 3 million people, it has a very different feel from Beijing. It appears just as busy as Beijing, but a lot more laid back and slower paced. It’s definitely a southern city. The weather is warmer, there were tons of flowers, and it was a lot more humid since canals of the Yhangtze River flow all throughout the city. It was also a quieter city with a lot less honking than Beijing, which I really appreciated!

After arriving in Nanjing and buying our next set of train tickets to Shanghai, we checked into our hostel, which was located right on the water of Fuzi Mao. Fuzi Mao is the pedestrian only shopping area surrounding the Confucian Temple. The hostel felt a lot like a summer camp. The six of us stayed in one room with bunk beds and one western style bathroom for the six of us to share. It was a real bonding experience! This is the first time I have ever stayed in a hostel. I couldn’t believe that we had a place to stay for only $7 a night!

After checking in at the hostel, we walked around Fuzi Mao. We visited the Imperial Examination Rooms, where we jumped over the dragon door for good luck on our exams. We also got to visit the Confucian Temple, which was decorated specially for the spring festival. The Fuzi Mao area was very cool. There were tons of rickshaw drivers, shops, and street food. As it got dark out, all of Fuzi Mao was lit in colored lights, which were really neat to see!

Because all of the restaurants in the Fuzi Mao area were really fancy and expensive, we walked outside of Fuzi Mao to a “hole in the wall restaurant,” which in China is where you will usually find the best food for the cheapest prices! The restaurant owners were so welcoming. I thought it was funny that they were able to pick up on the fact that we live in Beijing because we all speak Chinese with a Beijing accent. In Beijing, a lot of words are pronounced with what is called a retroflex ending, which basically sounds like “argggh” at the end of every word. This type of pronunciation is very uncommon in southern China. Dinner was delicious! We tried the specialty of Nanjing duck, which was served cold. I have to confess though I like the Peking duck in Beijing better!

After dinner, because we were tired from traveling, we went back to our hostel. Our hostel had a pool table, so we actually ended up having a pool tournament, which was a lot of fun. Jon and I, the underdog team, came out on top to win the tournament! After pool, we went back to our room and played bullshit with two decks of cards, which is something I probably haven’t done since the lunch table in high school. It was so nice to just hang out all together and play games at the hostel.

We went to sleep relatively early. The comforters on our hostel beds were really funny because they seemed really juvenile and were some excellent displays of “Chinglish.” For example, Aaron’s comforter had puppies on it labeled as “xiao pengyou,” or “little friends,” and Jon’s blanket had teddy bears labeled as apples.

On Friday morning, we accidentally slept in because we accidentally set the alarm for PM instead of AM. It was 10:30 AM before someone woke up and noticed the time. It was not a big deal because the six of us were able to quickly get ready and head out to Purple Mountain. For all of us history nerds, Purple Mountain was a major highlight of Spring Break. Not only is the mountain picturesque, but you can also hike all around the mountain to a ton of different historical sites.

Our first stop on Purple Mountain was Dr. Sun Yet-Sen’s Mausoleum. Dr. Sun Yet-Sen was responsible for ending the traditional dynastic system in China and promoting democracy. It is also ironic because as a child, Dr. Sun Yet-Sen was sent to the United States to study and actually attended the same school as Barack Obama in Hawaii. When Sun Yet-Sen died of liver cancer, his body was kept in Beijing while the mausoleum was built and then moved to Nanjing. Unlike Mao’s mausoleum in Beijing, Sun Yet-Sen’s body is covered by a plaster mold. His mausoleum is also surrounded by beautiful gardens with an impeccable view of the city.

After seeing the mausoleum, we went to Sun Yet-Sen Memorial Hall, which was a museum all about Sun Yet-Sen. It was really cool because the museum had primary documents and writings of Sun Yet-Sen as well as the authentic furniture from his study. There were also pictures of famous world leaders coming to visit the mausoleum, including President George Bush Sr.

After seeing the Memorial Hall, we hiked to the Lingguo Pagoda and Temple. We climbed all the way up to the top of the pagoda where we had a beautiful view of several of the sights of Purple Mountain, as well as the Nanjing skyline in the distance. At the top of the pagoda, a tradition has been started that it is custom to write your name on the wall of the pagoda at the top. I was able to write my name in Chinese characters on the pagoda wall to prove that I had made it all the way to the top!

Our next stop on the Mountain was the Outdoor Music Venue, which was beautiful. There were fountain choreographed to music and plum trees blossoming all around the amphitheatre. The worst part about the Outdoor Music Venue was the pigeons everywhere. There were white pigeons, which in China were clearly dirty, who were just landing on people’s arms, heads, and shoulders. One pigeon got awfully close to me and I swatted it away, but I have to say that I was a little bit freaked out. Molly has a really funny picture of me swatting the pigeon, where the pigeon is just a big, white blur in the picture.

We then hiked to the Ming tombs housing the bodies of the royalty of the Ming Dynasty. Unfortunately, a lot of the tombs are undergoing renovation, but what we were able to see was pretty cool. What I thought was even cooler was the Ming Tombs spiritual walk where there are giant statues of mythical creatures intended to protect the tombs. Of course, we had a blast climbing these giant stone creatures and taking pictures!

By the time we left Purple Mountain, it was already 6 PM. I think we really took advantage of the day and got to see some really cool, historical things! We decided to take the bus back to Fuzi Mao from Purple Mountain, which ended up being a really good choice. It cost only two kuai, which is about 30 cents, for an hour bus ride that really allowed us to see the entire city. I’m always fascinated by how everything in China is always lit up and so colorful at night!

When we got back to our hostel, we freshened up and went out to dinner. The food we had was absolutely delicious. When we walked out of the restaurant, we saw some fire dancers with torches dancing in the distance and decided to go and check it out. The fire dancers were on the other side of this gate and there was a huge crowd of Chinese people watching. There was a huge performance going on inside the park on the other side of the gate in honor of the last day of the spring festival. All of a sudden the guard at the gate turns to us and says “nimen xiang jin lai ma?” which means do you want to come in? The guard snuck all six of us into the performance for free by letting us in through the backstage gate. We were literally on the stage with all of the lights and the actors. There were people dressed up like Huns that we ended up running from because we didn’t want to end up actually being a part of the show. We found some rocks to sit on by a Confucius statue and watched the rest of the show. There were sword fighters, and plate spinners, and boats, and dancers, and the most beautiful fireworks I have ever seen. It felt very much like a Disney Epcot show.

After the finale of the show, which ended with about 15 minutes of straight fireworks, we were able to walk around the garden and check on the canals, some pretty cool statutes, and another beautifully lit pagoda. Jenn and Sarah went back to the hostel to go to sleep and Molly, Jon, Aaron and I went to a video game arcade near Fuzi Mao, which was a great way to spend all of our jiao, which are coins that are worth even less than a penny. We then went back to the hostel and went to sleep.

The next morning we woke up really early so we could all be ready to be at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial as soon as it opened at 8:30 AM. We actually got ready so quickly that we were able to grab a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin before heading down to the Memorial. The weather was really overcast and it looked like it was about to rain.
Outside of the memorial, there were fountains and statues. The statues were of emaciated Chinese people carrying their dead children and wives. In both English and Chinese, the statues were captioned with slogans such as “Family Ruined.” Outside of the memorial, I made a Chinese friend. He was a young boy who came up to me and was so excited that we were at the memorial. He could not believe that I was able to speak to him in Chinese. He told me that I was very beautiful and that he liked my blonde hair and took a picture with me. The guards outside of the memorial actually did not allow people to enter the memorial until a little bit before 9:00 AM. When we entered the memorial, the guards had us, as foreigners, sign the guest book for the memorial. I assume they track the number of international visitors. I found it very odd that there were not more foreigners at the memorial.

To start the tour of the memorial, we went into the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum. When you first enter the museum, you walk into this dark room. All of the walls are black and reflective and there is a big screen hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room. Every five seconds a bell was rung and the portrait of another victim flashed across the screen.

The museum was three or four floors and it was so well done that it completely blew the Smithsonian Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC out of the water. The museum housed so many primary documents, including a ton of Japanese propaganda and testimonials from survivors as well as Japanese soldiers reflecting on their involvement in the attack. The thing that gave me the chills however, were letters from Hitler to different activists, praising them for the work in helping the women and children who were wounded and raped in the attack. Note here that the Nanjing Massacre took the lives of 300,000 victims as a part of the War of Japanese Aggression Against China from 1937-1938, just a few short years before the start of World War II and the Holocaust in Germany. As we were going through the museum, the Chinese tourists came up to us and asked us how we knew about the Nanjing massacre. They were in disbelief that we had actually studied the Japanese War of Aggression in school because in Japan, this era of history in not ever discussed. I think several of the Chinese visitors really appreciated our presence and our respect. I could have spent the whole day in the museum. It was really unfortunate that our time was so limited.

When we came out of the museum, it was thundering and lightening, which really helped to set the tone for the memorial. We walked passed bells and a big wall displaying the number 300,000 to honor the victims. We then walked through a garden with stone walls, with scenes from the Rape of Nanjing carved into the garden’s walls. The next part of the memorial, the open mass grave, was the most moving and terrifying thing I think I have ever seen. The mass grave is so tastefully done, that it feels very much like a museum and it becomes difficult to believe that you are looking at the actual piles of skeletons of the innocent Chinese women and children killed during the Nanjing incident. When we came out of the mass grave, we walked into a reflection hall, where a single flame was burning in absolute silence. When we left the reflection hall, we reached the final section of the memorial, a huge outdoor reflecting pool with the statue of peace at the far end. As soon as we stepped outside, the clouds opened up and it started to rain, culminating are experience at the memorial. The memorial was definitely one the things I was most looking forward to seeing and it by far exceeded all of my expectations.

We then went back to Fuzi Mao, checked out of our hostel, and were on our way to the second half of our Spring Break adventure in Shanghai!