Nanjing

I figure I should write about the second half of my vacation over Guoqingjie. The first half was Shanghai, and I ended that blog with us barely catching the train heading to Nanjing. This was a much shorter train than the first, only about 4 hours long, which was nothing compared to our ride to Shanghai. It went by so quickly and we were there before we knew it.

We went and found our hostel, having to ask a few people for directions and being directed in all different directions (the way of the Chinese, no one will ever admit to not knowing something, they’ll just make up an answer and act so convincingly that it’s true). We finally found it and checked into this little hole in the wall kind of place. I’m so glad I got to experience a true hostel . The boys and girls were split into two different rooms. Me, Abby and Gidianny were lucky enough to get a room to ourselves. Adam, Josh, and Brett however had to share their room with a stranger for the first night.
After we dropped our stuff off in our rooms, we headed out to check out the town. We ended up at this little restaurant for dinner and struggled to read the all Chinese menu. We stumbled across a dish that was 60kuai (about $9), which is very expensive for China. So we looked at what it was, and it said 狼肉 langrou. I didn’t recognize the character, as Gidianny read it out loud, I lifted my eyebrows. Wolf meat? Really? We asked the fuwuyuan, the waiter, if it was real wolf meat. He nodded and said it was. So of course we had to get it.
As we were waiting to pay after the meal, a group of Chinese girls stopped to talk to Abby. People in Nanjing were much less familiar and much more fascinated with foreigners than the people in Beijing. So we gave them all English names, which most Chinese people are so excited to get, and exchanged phone numbers.
Later that night, we wandered into an outdoor market selling all sorts of souvenirs. Every shop sold basically the exact same thing, so if you wanted something you could wander from shop to shop in order to get the best price. The girls we had met earlier ran up to us and handed each of us a balloon. Giggling, they quickly ran off. Chinese girls are so cute, haha. At the market, so I got a prayer bead bracelet, and a few presents for my friends.

One of the other days, we went to Zhongshan Mountain, I think it was called. We did a looooottttt of walking, and ended up at this really pretty place that had a bunch of stairs and a pretty building at the very top. So of course we had to take jumping pictures .
As I mentioned earlier, the people of Nanjing were very fascinated with our foreign-ness. I thought I had gotten attacked in Shanghai with people wanting pictures, but that was nothing compared to this. So many people asked to take pictures with us, with me and my blonde hair, Abby and her friendly smile, Tina and her curly hair, and Josh and Adam with their white-man handsomeness.
Later that day, we visited a Buddhist temple. I got to drop a coin into a pond that had all these different characters at the bottom, representing different kinds of fortune. My coin landed on the character 囍xi which means double happiness and/or luck in love. That’s a nice fortune .
We then bribed a worker into letting us ring a giant bell and hit a giant drum for free because we gave them English names. Like I said, they love getting English names from real Americans. After that area, we proceeded into a room full of ancient traditional Chinese instruments. Adam and Josh asked one of the workers if they could play them, and they said no. But knowing you can bribe just about any Chinese person, they offered to pay for it. When they said no again, Josh pulled out an American $1. This caught their attention, and they accepted the fascinating American currency as payment and let Josh and Adam bang around on the instruments for a few minutes. We got video of it, but blogger barely lets me upload photos, let alone videos.

That night we went to this little restaurant place that Adam really liked, and we all got chicken sandwiches and ate them on the steps. Then we went back to the hostel and added our marks. The walls were completely covered with drawings and notes drawn by those who have stayed there in the past, so we had to add our own “I was here”.
The next day, we went to the Rape of Nanjing memorial. The Rape of Nanjing was a six week period in 1937 in which Japanese soldiers invaded the former capital city of Nanjing. An estimated 300,000 people were killed, which added up to one person dying every 12 seconds. There were a bunch of statues and photos and various other kinds of exhibits showing the brutality of what happened. It was a really eye opening experience to see something like that.

Later on, we went to the Nanjing wall. We climbed up onto the wall, and then decided to pay for a little golf cart thing to take us to the other end of the wall. Almost joking, Adam asked them if we could drive it ourselves. Not even thinking twice, they agreed, and the guy who would’ve been the driver slid into the passenger seat. So we all took turns driving a golf cart on top of the Nanjing Wall. Pretty cool, right?

After the wall it was just burning time until we had to catch our train back to Beijing. We asked the people at our hostel if there was anywhere we could go to get a cheap massage, and one of them knew just the place. She walked with us because it was really close, and set us all up with a full body massage. It was pretty glorious. Not the kind of massage you’d imagine in China, because I pictured ladies standing on top of me and walking across my back and then maybe pile driving me into the ground. But it was really laid back and relaxing, they were really gentle—too gentle even. But it was much needed after a week of stress and adventure.

Waiting for our train, we sat around in the hostel’s lounge and played pool, followed by Egyptian rat screw, chess, and card tower building. But then it was finally time to go so we went to the train station, early this time so we didn’t have to rush like before. Our train from Beijing to Shanghai had been a soft sleeper, but this one was a hard sleeper. So it was just normal seats, crunched together for efficiency rather than comfort. First the seats filled, and then the isles filled. And I’m not even kidding when I say the isles were filled. One time during the train ride, I really had to use the restroom. So I had to try my best to step over and around people. It took a lot longer than a trek to the back of a compartment should take, but every single step had to be carefully analyzed in order to avoid stepping on body parts. And then once I got to the bathroom I almost considered just holding it in for the rest of the ride. Urine everywhere. Not only all over the squatter, but all over the floors. This tiny little room covered in pee. I had to hold my breath, and then afterwards wash my hands with hand sanitizer about a hundred times. Me, Abby and Josh were in three seats next to each other, and across from us were three Chinese strangers, none of which knew each other. So we made friends with them. They were all very nice people. And once the late/early hours arrived when we were all painfully sleep deprived, the ridiculous conversations came out. Us three Americans were trying so hard to speak Chinese, and it was working, but at such an hour, you say strange things.

After an extremely long train ride with no sleep whatsoever, we finally made it to Beijing. It was a great journey full of adventures and I’m so glad I got to experience more of China!