Shanghai in Retrospect (Part 3).

7 April 2008 (Day 4): Nanjing

Finally I’m going to Nanjing! As I mentioned before, it was quite amazing that I went to Hangzhou 15 times (or 16 if you count the one I went the previous day) but never to Nanjing. So this time round I told myself I’ll make a trip to the former capital city of China no matter what. I took the CRH again from Shanghai and about 2 and a half hours later, I was in Nanjing! The first thing I did was to grab a Nanjing map and off I went onto the Nanjing metro, heading towards… erm… somewhere.

It looks like having a metro that goes past the train station is an in thing. We have that in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and now, Nanjing. It seems that even the Hangzhou metro is set to have a stop at the train station. I think having a metro system in China is increasingly becoming the trend.

And this metro line is kinda long too.

I headed first to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, hoping to get myself an impactful lesson in the history of what truly had to be the worst war crime in the modern world. But when I got there, I realised that the Memorial was closed on Monday. I heard from some locals saying that because entry is free, so they will have a rest day every week. The joke was that if they charge admission fees, it would be opened 365 days a year! Unable to get in, I could only resort to taking pictures on whatever I can see from the outside. That said, the view from outside was quite impactful as well:

300,000 victims (and some of the Japanese are still trying to deny that).

Some sculptures outside the Memorial.

Leaving the Memorial, I headed towards the Yuhuatai Martyrs’ Memorial. The place is quite massive, and it was free admission, so the exhibition hall was closed again. That said, some of the monuments inside the Memorial was quite grand too. The Memorial was built back in the 1980’s – I wonder where they found all the money to do all these at that time.

They even have the Chinese National Anthem engraved on one of the huge pieces of stone. All together now…

There was a small Chairman Mao museum inside the Memorial which, much to my surprise, was opened to public on a Monday! Photography was not allowed in the museum, but nobody stopped me from taking some from the outside.

A mega-size badge of Chairman Mao – according to my mum, who went through the Cultural Revolution, this badge was one of the must-haves during that period, and even though everyone was madly in love with Chairman Mao, not everyone had the right to wear the badge. It seemed like you could wear this badge only if you are “revolutionary”.

Portrait of Chairman Mao, similar to the one at Tiananmen Square, only smaller.

After the Martyrs’ Memorial, I headed towards the Confucius Temple. I initially wanted to go in there and offer a josstick or two to the Great Teacher, but the admission ticket of RMB 25 put me off. So I decided that I would sneak a picture from the outside inside. I’m sure the teacher won’t blame me and make me fail my two modules at my Masters course this semester.

As I was walking towards the bus stop, I saw this:

Now if I were to visit Nanjing again I know where I can put myself up for a night or two.

My next stop was the Presidential Palace – of course it has been turned into a museum now – and they were charging RMB 40 for the entry. Being a great fan of history of Modern China, I was more than happy to be paying for this entry.

Imagine the Communists did not come into power and the Kuomintang/DPP still ruled China. Chen Shuibian could have been working here instead of his Presidential Office in Taipei.

The whole Presidential Palace had this very strong sense of the Kuomintang, which was quite interesting. I’m sure because the relationship between the Communists and the Kuomintang has been getting better these couple of years, the tone in the whole museum had been changed. I would think that 20 or even 30 years ago they would have called the KMT a bunch of bandits under all circumstances, just like what KMT called the Communists. Oh well, maybe there’s really no eternal enemies in this world.

The people who created the Republic of China. Respect.

忠孝仁愛信義和平 – not just the names of the roads in Taipei, but also the advisory motto of Dr. Sun Yat-sen.

My whole day in Nanjing concluded with the trip to the Presidential Palace, and unlike the previous day in Hangzhou, I had ample time to take a bus from the Presidential Palace back to the Nanjing train station. One thing I noticed about Nanjing was that it wasn’t really a very modern city like Shanghai or even Hangzhou. The whole place seemed to appear quite old and under-developed. Perhaps I wasn’t in the place long enough, but it looked like Nanjing is still carrying some kind of historial burden on itself, and I thought it was a bit odd. that said, I’m sure they are going to develop this place somehow – perhaps the “historical burden” was meant to be the characteristic of Nanjing?

Sidenote 1: I spotted this when I was boarding the train to Nanjing at the Shanghai Railway Station and I simply couldn’t understand what it was trying to say:

What does it mean by “Moves the Vehicle Crew”? You mean there is actually a crew of people who would manually move the train? I suspected something fishy here, so I went to check what they did, and bingo!

It’s about time they hire someone who could do better translation than to depend on Babelfish. “Moves the vehicle crew”? You’re having a laugh.

Sidenote 2: Poor translation doesn’t stop at just English – even Japanese translations are quite amusing too:

I really didn’t know that “male” is translated to be “マレ” in Japanese. I did a search on “マレ” on Google, and the first result I got was Malé, the capital of Republic of Maldives. I didn’t know by entering a washroom I could transport myself all the way to the Maldives. Fascinating!