DAY 2: NANJING (continued, 'cause I missed a bit by mistake)
So after Hunan Lu, we wanted to get a taxi home so we could sleeeeeep. So we waited at the crossroads. We waited at corner number one for a short while. As this wasn't working for us, we moved to corner number two. Then three. Then four. Then back to one, then three, then four, before finally getting a taxi. The whole process took around an hour.
DAY 3: NANJING
This day, we decided to be good tourists, so we got up at stupid o'clock in the morning, and spent 27 kuai on a taxi 7,000,000 miles across town to get on a bus which left from really near our hostel. The bus took us to 紫金山 (Purple Mountain), where we saw many sites. First, we went to see 宋美龄(Song Meiling)'s villa, which was done in both Chinese and Western style. It was a nice house, but not much to say about it really. But here's a photo of me in the doorway anyway:
After that, we got on another bus to 钟山风景名胜区 (Zhongshan Mountain National Park, another name for Purple Mountain) which had many sites. First of these was the Linggu Scenic Area (灵谷景区), named for the Linggu Pagoda (灵谷塔). Below are some photos, and I'll just summarise what we did. We saw the 灵谷寺 (Linggu Temple), a really important temple. Going in the door, you saw a courtyard where people were burning yellow paper in two drums at either side of a giant incense holder. There were loads of people praying, and it felt kind of wrong to be intruding, but people didn't seem to mind. Still, we didn't hang around long. The 灵谷塔 was terrifying, 9 floors (which doesn't sound much, but when you think about the high ceilings and the fact that there's basically nothing under you), but I climbed it anyway. But the weather wasn't great, so the photos aren't great.
After we finished there, we tried to get one on of those little tourist bus things made to look like trains to Sun Yat-Sen(孙中山)'s mausoleum (for the record, his name in Chinese is not Sun Yat-Sen, it's Sun ZhongShan). But we got on the wrong one, and went to the Ming Tombs instead. Which was okay, because we wanted to go there anyway. So we walked along the Sacred Path, which is in a curved line so as to avoid an old king's tomb (The emperor's advisors suggested destroying the tomb so that the Sacred Path could be in a straight line, but he didn't want to do that). We posed next to all of the animals as the animals, for example:
The animals they had were Elephants, Lions, Camels, Horses, Qilin (麒麟) (which is not a unicorn (which is the usual English translation), but rather a mixture of a lion, a tiger, an ox and a dragon, and it appears only in the reign of a benevolent and wise emperor, which is why only emperors have it in front of their tombs) and a Xiezhi (獬豸)(which is also a type of Chinese unicorn, which had a horn which it used to gore the guilty but it would never touch the innocent, so the Xiezhi appeared in courtrooms).
Then we saw the tomb itself, which wasn't particularly interesting, as it's just a big rectangular brick building in front of the hill, and his actual tomb is somewhere inside the hill. But out of respect, people don't look for it.
Then after a sit down (we were getting tired by this point) and some Starbucks chocolate covered coffee beans, we went to the mausoleum of 孙中山. They say communism never really reached Nanjing, and the way they are about the people from the Republic of China (1911-1949) makes that clear. His mausoleum is huge, they still have Song Meiling's house the way it was when she lived there etc., despite them being not too popular in China (as they were capitalists after all). The mausoleum is HUGE, and quite impressive, but 392 steps when you're already tired is not much fun. Still, we saw it, and it was good. We then got the bus back into town, and went to get some coffee. Not done being western, we went to Haagen-Dazs, which was half awesome, half not. I had Chocolate Cookie Dough ice cream, which was amazing, and a "Chocolate Stir," which was supposed to be rich hot chocolate served with a dark chocolate spoon. What I got was watery horribly hot chocolate with a sickly milk chocolate spoon. Unimpressed.
DAY 4: NANJING -> SUZHOU
Sunday, our last day in Nanjing, we got up kind of early, and checked out. We visited the Nanjing Massacre Museum, which was really quite grim. We went in, and a man came up to me, and gestured writing on his hand. I had no idea what he meant. He refused to speak though, as a lot of people did in South East China (they probably assume we're just like all the other white tourists who don't speak Chinese, which is fair enough, but still frustrating). Turned out, he wanted us to write our nationality and how many were in our party. Anyway, we then went on and saw the mass grave (which had around 10,000 bodies in it), then an exhibition which had loads of artefacts and stories from people who survived it, which were really horrible. The ways the Japanese killed people, the raping and burning...they were generally really horrible, and refused to admit it. They set up Comfort Centres, which were basically little buildings with Chinese women whom the Japanese could go and rape at will. The exhibition was slightly ruined by the schoolchildren running around screaming and laughing, and apparently finding the whole thing quite amusing. Although I do think they were two young to appreciate what it was all about.
After that, we got some street food (a big pancakey type thing with egg and mixed green bits with a spicey sauce, very nummy):
Then it was off to the train station to head to Suzhou. When we got to Suzhou, we went straight to the taxi rank where the guy immediately ran the meter (nice change) and took us to where we were going. Where they told us they weren't actually open for business, despite taking bookings online (I hadn't made one, I just looked and saw that they were). They sent us to another one, where they did have a room. But the walk was pretty:
We walked, got some street food (I got what in the UK would be called Chow Mein (炒面 - chao mian), and Nikki got some fried potato thing), and went to bed. And this concludes the second part of our trip to the South East.
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