Nanjing

Nanjing means South Capital

(Beijing means North Capital).

Nanjing was twice the capital of China. First in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and again as the capital of the People's Republic of China in the early part of the 20th century.

There is a highway tunnel under this lake. We drove through it when we came back to the train station the last day in Nanjing. Apparently they built it just to be different. Pretty cool.

Ray and I took the bullet train from Kunshan to Nanjing, two hours. It was very comfortable and fast. We met up with 4 of his friends - two from Liuzhou, two from college. His birthday was on the 5th of May, so he had lots of friends around for his big day.

Nanjing has many nice sites to visit, but it isn't really a touristy city. The first day that we toured around, we hardly saw any foreigners. It seemed I might be the only ET in Nanjing.

Ray and his friend Charles hadn't seen each other since college 3 years ago.

We visited a Chairman Mao museum and saw lots of buttons worn by the chinese people during his rein. Also many statues and pictures of Mao.

Nanjing had a 33km long city wall which was the longest city wall ever construced according to Lonely Planet. Most of the wall is still standing. Zhonghua gate had 4 rows of gates and could house 3000 soldiers.

Of course we had a nice meal in the evening. In Nanjing, they seem to really like duck. It was very tasty.

We also had big bone soup which I had in Liuzhou as well. The object is to suck the bone marrow out of the center of the bone using a straw. It's tasty!

I got up early one morning and went for a walk along the outside of the city wall which is all park area. I watched many people doing Tai Chi, playing badminton, and old men congregating to listen to their singing birds.

May 5th was Ray's 25th Birthday. It was a beautiful day and he got to spend it with many friends. We joined thousands and thousands of people who climbed ZiJin Shan to go to the Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum.

We waited for a long time and put up with lots of pushy, rude chinese people to get the honor of seeing his casket. Sun Yat Sen is known as the father of modern China.

It was a beautiful day for walking around and site seeing.

One of Ray's friends is also from Liuzhou like Ray and told us that there was a Luosefen (spicy snail soup noodles) restaurant in Nanjing. Ray loves Luosefen (me too) and he really misses it. So he was really looking forward to eating it for his birthday. Unfortunately when we got there we found that it was closed. The owners had gone back to Liuzhou for the holiday. Damn!

So instead, we had Duck Blood Noodles and Duck neck. It was good. As a treat we also had Vanilla Coke. Wow that was good!

Ray and his friends thought this sign was really funny. It says that it is an honor to stop at the red traffic light. Apparently the government says that there are 12 honors and 12 dis-honors. I didn't get them all but they are things like: honor your country, honor your parents, it's an honor to learn science, etc... stopping at red lights isn't on the official government list.

All vacations must come to an end, and so did this one. I had quite a trip home from Nanjing. Train one day, bus and plane the next day and bus again on the third day. Of course i could have just flown from Nanjing and taken a taxi all in one day but that would have been too easy. I need the practice of getting around on my own in China. I just may get a chance to do a lot more of it here soon.

Stay tuned.