Pratting Around the World

Nanjing

Nanjing was the former capital of china until 1949. It still remains a hugely important city with over 5 million residents.

While Nanjing has a memorable museum and a couple other landmarks, the city wasn’t amazing to walk around. much of the city center is full of chains and malls. we stayed at an okay hotel on the outskirts that was in a neighborhood of boring shops and horrible food choices. we experienced our first chinese grocery store and were not impressed. besides the produce section, it was nearly impossible to find much that was appetizing. one night we found this restaurant that looked okay and managed to order what we thought was sweet & sour something (pork? chicken?) by pointing. When the dish arrived it looked amazing and we were starving. we tucked in only to realize with the first bite that we had ordered a plate of cartilage chunks. we never really found out if the chinese break it up with their teeth or just suck it and spit it out. after trying in earnest to deal with the cartilage, i ended up eating a chocolate bar for dinner.

crazy chinese ice lollies – pea flavour and sweetcorn flavour. They looked pretty awful but we did see plenty of chinese kids munching away. yes, these popsicles seem like the ultimate mean trick to kids everywhere.

we wandered through the Confucian Shrine area that includes a lovely canal. the shrine has been rennovated (or something) and is too cheesy to bother with, but the canals were kind of picturesque.

I had just munched some free* haribo bears, hence my big smile.

Nanjing is probably most famous for the massacre of approximately 300,000 chinese civilians by japanese troops in 1937. The museum was really interesting and included some graphic photographs from the massacre. One of the most interesting exhibits of the museum was the testimonies of chinese and the japanese people from the time. this museum was well-designed and gave off a grave and chilling feeling.

Nanjing’s city wall was the longest ever built. yes, true. hudson got very excited about this wall, although it just looked like an overpass to me.

the old ming palace ruins. a great place to watch public, group dancing or individuals practicing yoga and meditating.