C & C globetrotting around the world…

Our next stop: Nanjing, a city of over 5 million inhabitants on the lower stretches of the Yangtze River. It briefly served as China’s capital twice and is now also a famous university city. We visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall (the Japanese invaders massacred 300,000 people within a few weeks after they took the city of Nanjing in December 1937. During that time there were also gang rapes and mass executions since the fleeing Chinese government encouraged the citizens to stay). At first it was kind of weird because there is a statue of a raped woman holding a dead child in her arms and it’s very touching. Nonetheless the Chinese were taking pictures of it (they even put their little kids in front of it!) and we thought they don’t really know what it represents. The entire grounds are very well-made. At the end we went to a section where there was the entire history of this Massacre and how they tried to reconcile their relationship to Japan. It was very interesting and certainly a must-see for every Nanjing visitor.

In the evening we went to the Fuzi Temple area, a centre of Confucian study for over 1500 years and now also a pedestrian area with lots of little shops and plenty of kitsch. But it’s also nice, especially around the river, with its illuminated dragon and the boats drifting around.

The Ming Palace Ruins were kind of disappointing, but at least the main gate still stands. As Christoph says, the Chinese don’t really maintain anything… They don’t seem to have a midway thing: Either something is completely destroyed (such as this) or they tear it down and re-build it (such as Christoph’s “Disney-hutongs” in Beijing). Afterwards we went up Zijin Mountain to the Ming Xiaoling Tomb, the only Ming emperor to be buried outside Beijing. There were some buildings leading up to it and especially a wide bridge and the large Linghun Pagoda. Behind the pagoda there was a hill, so we climbed it looking for the tomb. We went down on the other side and hit a wall, so we circled back to the pagoda. That’s when we noticed some inscriptions on some stone slabs behind the pagoda marking the tomb. This is actually where the tomb was! The Chinese believe that opening a tomb brings bad luck, unlike in Europe where they seem to have less superstitions.We then walked through some of the gardens in the area and finally headed back down the mountain. At the city gate, we climbed on the city wall (large parts of the Ming dynasty wall still stands) and walked along it for a nice view of the surrounding area. Since the city was heavily bombarded by the Japanese, there are not so many old buildings, instead there are lots of chic apartment blocks and office buildings and is said to be one of China’s more prosperous cities.