Nanjing

The train for Nanjing left at 8:30 AM. Naturally, we left our apartment at 8:15 AM. After a 2 minute walk/run to the subway station and a 4 minute wait for the subway, it was now 8:21 AM. We got to the train station at 8:29 AM. And, after another walk/run (more run than walk), we were on board by 8:30 AM. BUT, when we went to get our seats, we found people sitting there and only then realized that we had gotten on the wrong train (the 8:37 train). It wasn't a huge deal. For some reason, the two super-fast two-hour express trains to Nanjing leave 7 minutes apart. But we had to spend some time looking for new seats.

The first stop was the Nanjing Museum. These are the bastards who won't let me see their tomb epitaphs. They told me that if I wanted to see their epitaphs, I needed to fax them a letter explaining my research. Which I did. I called them a few days later and they told me they had lost my letter and I needed to fax it again. Which I did. I waited another day to call and they told me I couldn't see their epitaphs because they're too heavy to move. Why didn't they tell me that to begin with? So I asked them if I could see rubbings of the epitaphs. Needless to say, the answer was no. Presumably, as soon as they ascertained for sure that I was white (and not an American-born Chinese), it was an easy decision to forbid me to see their stuff. Despite the fact that the museum is run by racist bastards, their collection includes a few items that made the trip worthwhile, including a Western Han jade burial suit and inscribed bricks from a 5th century tomb depiciting the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove.

It was oppressively muggy when we first arrived in Nanjing; I was relieved to see signs of an impending thunder storm as we left the museum. We made it to a restaurant for lunch just in time to escape the downpour. Then, we took a cab to the forested Zijinshan (purple-gold mountain); more precisely, we took a cab most of the way to the mountain, until the cabbie got lost, and then walked the rest of the way. Gina really likes climbing mountains, so the chairlift to the top was pretty much out of the question. After a year of Chinese polution, it was a delight to breath in the fresh air of a forest after rain. There was another brief downpour during our ascent, so we did not spend as much time on the mountain as would have been otherwise possible (and took the chairlift back down).

We then decided to visit the tomb of the first Ming emperor (the capital of China was in Nanjing for the first 50 years of the Ming). We didn't actually go in because the ticket was too expensive, but we did see it from the outside:



In addition, part of the spirit path, which marks the lengthy approach to an imperial tomb, lay between two lanes of the public road, so we were able to examine several fine 15th-century statues:







We continued south along the same road until we reached the city wall, a very impressive structure that survives almost intact along most of its 30-mile course.



Old Ming-period bricks were neatly stacked in front of the wall, all bearing the names of the brickmakers or the people in charge of the brickmaking. This brick was made in Jiangxi Province:



For a change of scene, we then took a cab to the center of town (Xinjiekou) to try to get a glimpse of modern Nanjing. Numerous unmemorable department stores were clustered around a pedestrian zone. After a bowl of noodles, we headed to Nanjing West Station for the trip back to Shanghai.