City tour of Nanjing

Another 3rd grader experience- a city tour of Nanjing in group mode. We hopped on the bus and found ourselves facing a Chinese family of 5. Our guide had the wonderful task of translating everything for two groups. It was another rainy day, and our first stop (one of 5 “attractive spots” we would visit) was the Qinhuai River, the area called Fuzimao. It was once centered on the site of an ancient Confucian temple. The area today was like a Chinese Quincy Market…restaurants, tacky souvenir shops, a McDonalds and KFC.

We got back in the bus heading to the Presidential Office (Xuyuan Garden), a site that wasn’t even in our guidebooks. It turns out that it was a royal garden in the Ming Dynasty and after the Revolution of 1911, it acted as the palace of the provisional government of China. It had a fascinating exhibit of the history of the site (some English).
Back on the bus and we picked up a huge group of Chinese men from the Western provinces (obviously party men in for a boondoggle).

From there, we headed to the eastern part of town to Dr Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum. Visiting the mausoleum is something of a pilgrimage for many Chinese. He is recognized by the Communists and the Kuomintang alike as the father of modern China. He died in 1925 (sometimes the difference between a great man and a failure is that great men die on time…).

The tomb itself is at the top of a huge stone staircase (392 steps) leading to his crypt.
We couldn’t miss Linggu Park and the famous Beamless Hall. Built in 1381, it was built entirely of bricks, without beams. Inside was a memorial to those who died in the 1926-28 revolution.

Our next stop was lunch. We opted not to share our lunch with the others on the tour and ended up at a table with the original 5. By this time, John had dubbed the older woman, Peppermint Rice Patty. She was a hawkering, crude woman who bossed her husband around mercilessly. While we waited for our standard kung pao chicken to be served, we heard what sounded like our dog sucking on her skin (the noise that drives both of us crazy at night) and realized that the sounds were coming from our table companions. They were wolfing down their food, making horrifying sucking sounds. The man next to John would fill his mouth with food and with cheeks swollen like a squirrel, continue to pile more food into his mouth.. At the next table, the party group was devouring plates of food and one guy was wiping his hands on the drapes. John dubbed it our “peasant lunch”.

After our hysterical lunch, we thought we were ready for the last two scenic spots, when they threw an USO (unscheduled or undesired shopping opportunity) at the Crystal Factory. We skipped the Chinese tour and did a quick circle around the showroom- with 40 salesgirls watching our every move.

After a painful wait, we got the group together with their purchases in tow and headed for another scenic spot, Xuanwu Lake Park. It was surrounded by hills and the city walls and filled with 50’s-esqe theme park sites (a monorail, dragon statues, paddle boats).

Finally, we got to our last stop, the Nanjing Yangzi River Bridge.

This was one of the great achievements of the Communists (complete with hero art showing the proud people holding their Little Red Books high). It opened in December 1968- one of the longest bridges in China. It’s a double-decker bridge with a 4500-meter road on the top and a railway line below. They say that the bridge was completed by the Chinese after the Russians marched out and took the designs with them in 1960.

Our tour was done and we bid farewell to Peppermint Rice Patty and our uncouth friends. We decided to pick up some food for our room and found the GE (Golden Eagle) Department Store. On our way up the escalator to the 6th floor of this modern, sophisticated department store, we watched a young mother position her child over the stainless steel trashcan so she could pee. They truly aren’t very far removed from the rice fields.

We had some wine in the room and spent our last evening at Henry’s Home Café pigging out on spags and lasagna. What a treat- eating Italian food, listening to a Chinese guy singing Peter, Paul and Mary songs on his guitar and watching Tom and Jerry cartoons on TV.
We decided that China is the land of surprises. Who would have guessed that this country with a history going back 5000 years would have trashed their own history and be caught in a 50’s time warp?