Nanjing Part 2

Our adventure to the Temple of Confucius turned out to be just that. The map lied to us and said the temple was right by the subway stop (the subway even had signs inside!), but when we exited, we only saw lots of people and no temple. We definitely walked in circles for about 20 minutes trying to figure out where to go, when finally we just decided to follow the crowd. A few other places also had tickets and entrance fees, but none of them were the Temple of Confucius. Thank you for being so helpful, dear map.

When we finally found the temple, we also found the incredibly crowded culture fair occurring in the courtyard. Walking in the crowd involved literally walking into people, because Chinese people don’t have the same sense of personal space that Westerners do. Friends would be dragging each other along by the arm regardless of whether the person being dragged ran into a silly foreigner. 

I think this is part of the temple: 

These guys in yellow were dragging these rickshaws and would constantly be ringing bells:

Old and new, a gate at the Temple of Confucius and a 喜羊羊 balloon: 

Anyway, the sheer number of people in the area scared us away from visiting the temple, so we just kept walking around until our feet hurt. We couldn’t find the subway stop again for a good 30-40 minutes of walking, and when we did, we saw masses of people going inside, so we took a cab ride. Little did we know, we’d walked so far that we were only about half a mile from our hotel.

The next morning we decided to actually be cheap tourists who didn’t want to spend money and went to the park next to the Ming Tombs. The park itself was not terribly interesting, but Claire and I did find a book fair that had translated books, with half of it in Chinese and the other half in the original language. I purchased a book of Obama’s speeches that had been translated, and so far the translation has been really interesting. 

The gate to the park: 

 After some meandering around the garden, Claire and I decided to search out the Nanjing Museum. As with much of this trip, we didn’t actually find the museum; we found the Nanjing city wall and two foreigners who had just arrived in China to make a documentary. Except for the treacherous stairs, the wall was really fun, with some pretty nice views, including a lake and lots of traffic. Only part of the wall is actually standing; the Japanese destroyed a decently sized section when they invaded in 1937. The two foreigners were nice; one of them was Australian, but he had gone to college in Long Beach (CA, not LBI), and the other one was American. Both of them were named Josh. 

We had a nice view of a canal on our walk:

It seems like every city has a street named Zhongshan Lu. It's a main street in both Wuxi and Nanjing:

Traffic and grass from the Nanjing city wall:

 

It's a pretty broad wall: 

Behind Claire is a pretty lake, but I had to prove that we were there: 

 We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in a coffee shop and drinking rose tea before searching out some dinner. Instead of sticking with our neighborhood, we wandered in a new direction and found this really cool fusion restaurant with purple booths and lots of sparkly things everywhere. We definitely splurged and spent a lot more than we normally would, but it was that kind of place, and the food was quite good. It’s genuinely the first real fine dining place that I eaten at in China. 

Sparkly beads, a chandelier, and the weird purple sofa-booths: 

My delicious, delicious mango smoothie-thing. That mango piece on the side was also delicious:

This was mushrooms and beef in some kind of sauce with mangoes on the side. The beef was cooked perfectly:

Asparagus in (I think) pumpkin soup. Surprising, but delicious. The asparagus was perfect, nice and soft but still with a light crunch:

Claire enjoying our rare fine-dining experience:

The weirdest sushi I have ever eaten. The white sauce is mayonnaise on the salmon; the white roll has mustard. Definitely a fusion restaurant: 

That meal was our last act in Nanjing. Almost immediately afterward, we left for the train station and managed to get home.

The rest of the holiday was buckets of fun. Dominique went to Shanghai, but Shaun was in town, so he and I hung out and got dumplings on Wednesday, then met up with Tim and Claire for drinks and a doubles game of pool. (Tim is a British guy who works at Claire's school.) Tim claimed to be out of practice and then kicked our butts. Shaun put up a good fight, but Claire and I are just abysmal at pool. I guess we need to practice a little.

Friday kind of stands out for me because we spent 6 hours (yes, SIX HOURS) singing karaoke. Dominique and I arrived at 1 pm and left with everyone else (they arrived in the interim) around 7. We sang about 80 songs and I really had no voice, but it was totally worth it; the karaoke place had Hotel California, California Dreamin’, and California Girls, so I got to have my moments of state pride (and homesickness).

Then, of course, it was back to work on Monday.