Strange Days in Nanjing

On Friday morning we met up outside the hotel to go to our train. A Chinese guy named Samson, who's a friend of Dave’s, drove us. Samson was a factory manager of some kind who got laid off not too long ago and decided he wanted to learn a bunch of English. I'm not sure exactly how Dave met him but he offered to drive Dave anywhere so he could practice his English. It's not too common to have a car here so it's pretty nice having someone willing to drive us around just to get a chance to speak with us. In the US I'm just a recent college graduate and an English major, not such hot in demand skills, but it seems as soon as I stepped off the plane here I was an expert who possesses highly in demand and valuable skill, namely that I grew up speaking English. We got to the train station and onto the D train, which is the faster of several trains that runs along the Nanjing to Shanghai route. Once in Nanjing we got on their nice Subway system, it's pretty easy to figure out since it's only one line that snakes around the city. We got to the hotel pretty quick with the idea that we would put our bags down then see what was around. That didn't so much work out, here Dave explains:



In Wuzhen we didn't have passports either but it wasn't a problem, I guess in Nanjing there just stricter about this sort of thing. We weren't really sure what we were going to do but we decided to see some of the things near the hotel we were trying to stay at first. There was a temple of some sort close to there so we walked in that direction passing about a million shops selling all manner of things, including at leant four KFCs. We saw a canal near the temple with boat rides and I thought it would be fun to take a little boat ride around so we paid about 50 RMB and got on one of the boats. There was no one else anywhere around the boat area and the people who were supposed to drive the boats just sort of looked at us and went back to their card game. Dave suggested that the boats might only leave when full which would mean that our trip to Nanjing would consist of not getting a hotel and then spending all day sitting on a boat to nowhere. It was warm on the boat though so we decided to wait it out. It has been getting colder and colder in China and I think this weekend was unseasonably cold on top of that. It was pretty much in the Upper 20's to low 30's all weekend, and while we had warm cloths being outside all the time just left us freezing.

A Chinese girl got on the boat eventually and after about another 30 minutes a tour guide of some sort and someone to drive the boat came to and we were off. The tour guide would occasionally say things in Chinese that we didn't understand and the only other Chinese person was busy talking to the person driving the boat. She may have been in training to be a tour guide, I've heard that some of the people go on the tours so they can learn what's up and try to get a job giving them. The boat ride was nice passing some interesting looking buildings by the side of the canal, and some really colorful ostentatious tourist crap that they had built there. The canal and the buildings beside it were much nicer and cleaner then the buildings and water I'm used to seeing. The water was a dirty green, but it didn’t' smell or anything. In fact Nanjing as a whole is a pretty fancy built up city with some really nice and clean downtown areas, a lot more like Shanghai then Changzhou.

After that we looked in the guide book and decided to go up the mountain at the edge of the city. You could either walk up or take a skiing chair lift type device to the top. Dave and Ken of course wanted to walk but there was no way I was climbing a mountain so I got them to take the chair lift. It was pretty cold out so there weren’t that many people up on the mountain. On the lift there was a beautiful view of Nanjing and the surrounding area. It was still extremely hazy, though with the weather this was probably the clearest it ever gets and we could see pretty far. The city is pretty beautiful and the haze actually had a sort of pretty mist like effect on it. The most amazing thing was that all the land around the mountain was green and covered in trees except for a few temples and what not. I don't think I've seen anything resembling a nature preserve in China and this clearly was since the city could have easily sprawled in this direction. The chair lift took a while to go up about half a kilometer but there was this once Chinese guy who seemed to be walking along the mutinous path underneath the chairlift and was beating us up the mountain. He was really kicking it up this path though we eventually overtook him once it got really steep.

It was really cold up on the lift with the wind blowing and everything. We almost accidentally got off at the half way point since it looked like a stop and you couldn't see from there that this was just the much lower second peak of the mountain. On top there was a little park with a beautiful panoramic view of the Nanjing and most of the surrounding area. Down a little lower was a big Buddha statue that we all took pictures with. There was one guy running around the park with no shirt on which was pretty amazing considering I was freezing in a T-shirt, sweatshirt, jacket, and hat. As we came down toward the chair lift again a bunch of Chinese students saw us and all wanted pictures with us. With the number of different students and all the different pictures they wanted we must have taken 30 pictures before they left. It must be what it's like to be a celebrity to be just walking around minding your own business when all of a sudden you’re mobbed for pictures. It also shows just how unusual Americans are that where ever we go people want to take pictures with us to show their friends, "look no really I met an American!"

After we got back down we decided to go to the Tomb of Dr. Sun who is considered the founder of modern China by both the Communists and the people the defeated. To get there we took a bus, which in Nanjing apparently don't stop unless you jump up and down furiously to get their attention. Even when you do get on the bus they drive around these two lane roads on the mountain at about 60 mph and take every turn in such a way you think you're about to be thrown out of the bus. It took us a few wrong stops, the character for the tomb and for a botanical garden look similar until we got there. Like almost anything in China entrance wasn't free and they sold crap about every 10 feet. In America it would be pretty rude to sell toys, and food at a guy’s tomb, but I guess that's how they get 9% growth. The tomb was up a long walkway then up 400 or so steps. The tomb itself was nice and simple but the view and the look of it perched onto of all those steps was pretty amazing.

After the tomb it was getting late so we decided to go to the French restaurant owned by the French guy I met at the Changzhou Expo. It was pretty far across town so instead of just getting a taxi all the way there we took a bus that was going in more or less the right direction until we asked a Chinese person and she told us that we should probably get off here. We then tried to hail down a cab to get us there. For some reason it took us probably 30 minutes to get a cab including two that seemed to be empty but just drove on by. We were even starting to get worried since in China dinner time usually ends a little after 7 and it was getting close to 7 already. We finally got a cab that got us there though he had to study the little map on the back of the business card I had about four different times to find it. Les 5 Fens was though open until 10, extremely late for China, so we had no problem getting a table.

The menu was written in Chinese, French, and English and all the wait staff spoke at least some English, though they didn't exactly have the French pacing down. The restaurant itself was pretty with yellow walls, French pictures, and low lights. We each ordered three courses. I got foie gras for a starter, a lamb dish for a main course, and an apple tart with ice cream for dissert. They even had more European drinks and I had a glass of Kir. The food was all really good and very French. It was pretty expensive by Chinese standards, we spent 400 RMB total or about $60. I'm probably glad that there isn't a restaurant like this in Changzhou since I think I'd eat there constantly. It was just really nice to have something really western in the middle of China. After that Dave called a person he knows who lives in Nanjing and asked if we could stay with him for the night he was busy doing something," playing with my friend," so we went to a popular foreigner bar to wait for a while. While it took forever to find the French restaurant it took telling the cab driver two characters to let him know exactly were the bar was.

The bar was down a flight of stair almost exactly under a McDonalds. When we got there they told us there was a cover charge because an American metal band would be playing. We didn't have a lot of cash so we went a street over to an ATM. It was so warm in the inside area near the ATM that we hung out there for about 20 minutes before we went back to the bar. At the bar a Chinese metal cover band was banging out some music when we got there:



In between songs we got this mini keg and brought it to one of the table in the back. The bar was pretty empty. It was about four Americans presumably in the metal band, and about 10 Chinese people including two warm up bands. Some of the Chinese people were really into it banging there head in time with the music. China is not a really good country for heavy metal music. Here the most generic annoying pop I've ever heard is more popular then you could possibly imagine. The Backstreet Boys could play every city in China and never run out of shows to do. I think these 10 Chinese people may have represented every metal fan in a city of 6 million. After a few songs the American metal band, called Corrupt Absolute came on. Now some people stumble in cliché, some people just can't avoid cliché, and some people embrace it whole heartedly. Corrupt Absolute must hit every conceivable metal cliché I can think of. There songs are indistinguishable guitar riffs and drum solos. They yell every lyric in a voice designed to be as course as possible and there songs are all about death and suffering.

The singer introduced one song this way, "This is a song for my mother, it's called Fist Fuck Her." Actually I'm not sure if it was "Fist Fucker," "Fist Fuck Her," or even "Fist, Fuck Her." But either way he seemed mad. He then went on with, "Let's slow it down for a minute. This is a love song, it's called Postmortem Slut." The final song had a call and response section were he screamed "I don't care about you, fuck you," to which the small crowed would call back, "fuck you." I stole one of there posters off the wall and noticed that this is part of a whole Chinese tour there doing. I can't possible imagine there's any money in this, or that any metal band really wants to play China. After they were done a lot more people showed up, they were probably waiting for the cover charge to be lifted.

After a while we headed up to the McDonalds to wait for Dave's friend. He finally showed up and brought us to his house around 1am. His apartment was pretty nice with a couple of rooms. He is a student at our school in Changzhou but I think he's from Nanjing so his parents gave him this place to live whenever he's in Nanjing. There was a bed and a couch, Dave and Ken slept on the bed while I was on the couch. The bed was small but they got a blanket which I had a thin sheet. For some reason even when they have heat the Chinese don't seem to like to use it so despite that I had on all my cloth, my shoes, my hat, and my jacket, I thought I was going to freeze to death at night. In the morning the guy we were staying with had to leave pretty early so he wasn't there by the time we all got up. We wanted to see the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum, about the Rape on Nanjing, so we got up and took a cab there.

The museum was actually free, though we did have to wait in a line to get in. The Rape of Nanjing was during World War II when the Japanese conquered Nanjing started raping and murdering a huge number of civilians left in the city. The Chinese say about 300,000 civilians were killed in the months following the takeover of Nanjing, in either organized extermination or just random killings. International estimates are somewhat lower but with maybe even double the number killed in the areas surrounding Nanjing. The museum itself is big and a lot of it is out doors. It is built around the mass graves of some 10,000 victims of the massacre a fact which they confirmed by the excavation the very top of the grave in one section. The museum is incredibly detailed and fiercely anti-Japanese, though this isn't quite so hard to understand. The Japanese have quite a history of not really apologizing for the massacre and for doing things to inflame the Chinese. In fact much of the museum seems carefully put together to respond to any claim that the massacre didn't happen or was exaggerated.

The most disturbing part comes from a series of photos by Japanese solders of people about to be executed with a sword or heads sitting of barricades. Another interesting note is the downplaying of the involvement of Nazi Germany in the relief efforts after the Japanese left. There is a flag from the Red Swastika Society next to two from various Red Crosses. One German businessman there who helped shelter some of the Chinese was also the learned of the Nazi part in China and was commended for his action by Hitler. The museum though takes almost no note of this. It was still a very powerful museum and interesting to see.

Finally, we went to a section of the old wall which is a huge 60 or 70 foot wall that used to stretch around most of the city. Constructed in only about 20 years and containing about a billion stones it's no wonder the Chinese were able to build things like the great wall. In fact Ken suggested that if we never get to the Great Wall then we could pass off the pictures from Nanjing and no one would know the difference. Besides this huge wall was a gate, actually a series of four gates that seemed so big and intimidating that it's a wonder how anyone ever attacked this city. Each stone in the wall was stamped with the location it was from who was in charge of it and when it was made so that it was easier to fix if it broke. Some sections of the wall have been clearly rebuilt, though the place we were at makes no mention of this, but it's really a site to behold. Probably more then half of the wall still exists today as well, an estimate to its engineering.

We returned to the train station and got a ticket back to Changzhou; though since the D trains are so popular we had to wait about an hour. The rest of the trip back was pretty easy and it was really nice just to get inside somewhere really warm for a change.