Week 8: Nanjing

This week I braved solo travel again, to a city about an hour and a half by bullet train from Shanghai, called Nanjing. Upon arrival, I decided to explore the most touristy-looking area there, called Purple Mountain. I read somewhere that the name comes from the colors the clouds turn around sunrise and sunset, but declined to be in the vicinity of the mountain during either of those times during the day. My first stop was a pagoda up on the hill. To get there, I walked through nice shaded paths which helped assuage the pressing heat, and was rewarded with some gorgeous views of the city and surrounding mountains upon reaching the top. The strangest thing was that even though I was in a tourist area, I only passed about 20 other people during my walk-seeing as this is China, that is practically unheard of, but I enjoyed the solitude and little piece of quiet I had managed to find. After enjoying my fill of the view, I headed over to a famous mausoleum and was swiftly reminded that yes, I was still in China, as the throngs of tourists engulfed me and removed all sense of quiet. As everything was written in Chinese I can’t say much about the mausoleum itself, other than that it was grandiose and contained a lot of stairs.

Upon returning to the area where my hostel was located, I was determined to sample the local stinky tofu. (I’ve found that this delicacy is only found in tourist areas, it is not standard fare. Due to the language barrier, I had to gesture what I wanted by holding my nose and pointing. (Consequently, I found the tofu stand simply by smell.) Needless to say, a food that must be identified by holding one’s nose is unlikely to be tasty and unfortunately, I was not won over by the stinky tofu. I did however, get approached by a young guy who was traveling with a tour group from a Northern province and wanted to practice his English and get some food. At one point, I was worried I had stumbled unwittingly into a date, but it turns out that the language barrier was higher than I realized and he left to catch his tour group shortly after we had finished eating.

The next day I set off to see the presidential palace, and in typical fashion I ended up at a different destination. (I say typical fashion because my idea of navigation is to look at a map, figure out the cardinal direction I need to go in, and walk that way looking for landmarks. If I miss those landmarks, I usually end up somewhere completely different, albeit usually interesting. This is why all my nature trips are though a tour group!)
I had found the imperial weaving and cloth manufacturing building, left from years before. Though I could not understand most of the museum, I did enjoy looking at samples of “cloud pattern” cloth-an object of Chinese heritage recognized by UNESCO and originating in Nanjing. Upon leaving the museum, I managed to walk in the wrong direction and actually found the palace I had been originally seeking, so I decided to take a look. The main exhibits were similar to other historic buildings, with some information on the walls, various artifacts, and the unavoidable wax figures that are seen in almost every Chinese museum. What sets this location apart is the smaller exhibits in the outer rooms as you exit. They had been dedicated to an anti-drug museum, complete with propaganda, samples, historic significance (especially of poppy/opium) and specimens of babies born to drug-using mothers, suspended in jars. A bit grotesque, it was an unusual sight to see at the very least. However, with the hot sun and high humidity outside, the air conditioned exhibit was a welcome reminder that drugs are dangerous J