Trip to Nanjing Part 1

I know it’s been about a week and a half since I posted, but bear with me this time; I have pictures and stories.

The last two days at work last week were actually Friday and Saturday rather than Thursday or Friday; the students had Sports Day on Friday and Saturday instead of actual classes. The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) took place on Sunday and National Day was on October 1, so this week has been full of holidays. Schools in China have this week off for National Day; our next long break isn’t until February.

To make the most of our vacation, Claire and I took a trip to Nanjing. Getting the tickets turned out to be a challenge, since most people travel during National Day, but in spite of issues acquiring our Sunday tickets out there, the website functioned perfectly for our return tickets on Tuesday. Our ride to Nanjing lasted a surprisingly short time, just under an hour for about 100 miles or so of travel. Arriving in Nanjing was a different story. We got through the crowd and piles of people just fine, only to get into a cab and subsequently a car accident not five minutes from the Nanjing train station. Our cab driver rear-ended another car as we were driving onto an expressway; her brakes (and driving skills) could definitely use some work. We didn’t hit the other car very hard and no one was injured, not even with whiplash, but the whole process was a little nerve wracking. When two people get into an accident in China, they both get out of their cars, and if one person is clearly at fault (in this case, our cab driver), the two drivers haggle over the price of the damage and how much the at-fault party should pay – right there on the street. At the time, I had no idea what was happening and was worried about the argument coming to blows. Luckily, none of that happened and the cabbie finally took Claire and me to our final destination: Motel 168 in Xinjiekou (新街口). 

On the train: 

Seriously, every train station looks the same!

Our accommodations had one very awkward feature, given that Claire and I are friends sharing a room: the wall to the bathroom was partially frosted, partially clear glass, with the clear part right in front of the shower. This allowed for next to no privacy in the bathroom; she and I had to work out a system so we could use the facilities and bathe in private. Seriously, hotels: a clear wall between the room and the bathroom is a bad idea.

My stomach chose that afternoon to act up pretty badly, so I spent most of Sunday afternoon resting at the hotel. Claire and I started talking that night and didn’t stop for a long time. We talked from literally 6 pm to 12:30 am with only short breaks for practical reasons. It seems like we see eye-to-eye on many issues, but my family tends to hold to tradition a little more than hers, which has created some interesting discrepancies in our viewpoints. Our topics of discussion ranged from non-traditional education in the US to gender norms in China.

The next morning I felt significantly better (we slept in until 9-ish!), so Claire and I made our first real trek out in Nanjing. Our first major tourist stop was the museum dedicated to the Rape of Nanjing. We got off the subway only to find a complete dearth of signs showing where we should go. Claire pulled out her handy-dandy Kindle-based guidebook – which of course said that the memorial was closed on Mondays. Well, October 1^st was a Monday. Luckily, October 1^st was also National Day, so the memorial was actually open, which we found out when we wandered into what we thought was a park. Good signage, China. 

"So uh...it's Monday...and the guidebook says it's closed on Monday...": 

The oh-so-helpful map. Each of the dots used to be a colored label with a corresponding description on the sign above. Now they are all white, which of course makes them even more helpful:

The museum contained some images that I will never forget, including a complete skeleton with a clear bullet hole through the skull. Most significantly, I will never forget the name wall. In Vietnam War Memorial-esque fashion, someone had carved the names of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre that could be identified into a wall. All of the names were in alphabetical order. I didn’t take a picture of the whole name wall out of respect for the sanctity of the place, but I took a snapshot of a small part off in the corner. About ten names listed there have the same family name and first character of their given name. In families in China, each member of a generation traditionally shares the first character of their given name with everyone else in the generation. For example, a man and his cousin could be named Zhang Wencai and Zhang Wenfa, and they would be in the same generation as each other, but from a different generation than Zhang Xingyou if they were all from the same family. With the caveat that all of the ten names listed are in alphabetical order, all ten of the victims’ names could have come from the same generation of the same family. The implications of that are completely devastating. 

I rather liked what China had done with the memorial. I think neither Japan nor China have successfully navigated the diplomatic swamp that arose from the Rape of Nanjing, so I was definitely grateful to find a museum that seriously honored the memory of the dead rather than one that emphasized nationalistic fervor against Japan. Much of the museum promoted peace and demonstrated how extremely awful the Rape of Nanjing was without excessive finger-pointing. 

After leaving the memorial, Claire and I wandered around in the giant mall nearby and grabbed some lunch. Eventually we made it back to Xinjiekou and took some much needed naps before facing the insane crowds of National Day once again for an adventure to the Confucius Temple (夫子庙). 

To be continued…