A Weekend Trip to Nanjing

I just got back (to Seoul where I am now) after spending a weekend (Thursday evening through Sunday morning) in Nanjing. I taught and the whole family lived there during the 2000-01 academic year. We arrived there at the end of August 2000, so it's been almost 10 years.

I traveled there with Ed Monsour, one of the two people I went to Mongolia with last summer. Tom Doherty, the other traveler was planning on coming, but his visa didn't work out (More on that below).

Some quick thoughts on Nanjing now versus Nanjing when I was there. First, the city is much more modern and feels a lot bigger. There is an 89-story building on the north side of the Gulou traffic circle, for example (information here). The city has a lot more car traffic and a lot less bicycle traffic; and much of the bike traffic is now motor scooters, which were rare when we were there. The city is also brighter. More storefronts with neon or lighted signs. And a lot more small storefronts than I remember from before. Though, this could be because we were staying in a different part of town.



We arrived on Thursday evening around 6:00 p.m. or so and took a taxi in from the airport to the Holiday Inn at Aqua City, a new shopping mall. We walked over to the Confucius Temple (Fuzimiao) and looked around. We rode a boat up and down the Qin Huai River, or at least the canals inside the city that are fed from the Qin Huai. Fuzimiao is a much more upscale shopping area than it used to be. Though the area immediately to the side and behind the temple is still full of cheap touristy souvenir shops like I remember from before.

On Friday we visited the Ming Tomb, which now has a museum at the southernmost end near the old entrance. We walked up the "spirit way" to the tomb and there is now a path that you can take up to the top of the tomb hill itself, though there is nothing up there but trees. We then went to visit the Nanjing Massacre Memorial on the other side of town. The museum there was rebuilt in 2008 and is very nice and very memorable. In the evening we went to dinner at the Gold and Silver Restaurant near the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. We had the Shanghai-syle eggplant, Kungpao chicken and fried rice. Then we did a lot of walking. From there past the center, which is having some cosmetic renovation right now while school is out, up to the drum tower and then over to Hunan Road and the walking street there. Back when we were living in Nanjing they had a big night market there on the weekends, but now the road is full of traffic and the night market must've been shut down or moved. Next we walked to Xuanwu Lake and strolled along the shore. We watched people dancing in the park and practicing their traditional instruments and singing.

On Saturday we started out with a walk down Zhonghua Road from the hotel to the city's south gate, Zhonghuamen. We walked around on top of the gate and took some photos before heading over to the Yangtze River Bridge. We got dropped off a the traffic circle right before the ramp up to the bridge and we walked from there all the way to the other side of the river. The walk was nice because of the breeze up on the bridge, but it was still a good two and quarter miles of walking in some pretty humid weather. We caught a taxi on the bridge going back the way we came and went to the Nanjing Arts and Crafts Building. This is one of the first places we visited in Nanjing after we moved into the center and they used to have very low prices on really nice arts and crafts. The goods are still nice, but the prices are not nearly so low. We had a great lunch at a nearby restaurant: stuffed eggplant and Chairman Mao's favorite braised Hunan-style pork. Our next two stops were a bit of a bust. Chaotiangong, an old palace, is under renovation and the flea market wasn't there. The old Taiping History Museum is also gone and has been replaced by a memorial and library for Zhou Enlai. We went back to Fuzimiao and did some shopping instead. By this time it was raining. So we tried walking back to the hotel, but I got us turned around and headed the wrong way. We got a taxi though after Ed got sick of following me while I wandered about in the rain. That evening we went out for dinner at a nice restaurant in the mall next to the hotel. We had twice cooked pork (good), some hot braised green beans (very good), and Mongolian style beef with little fried buns to stuff (excellent!). I'd forgotten how much I miss authentic Chinese food.

The trip home today was quick and easy. All-in-all a very good trip.


Tom failed to get his visa because of really bad karma. The three of us went to the Chinese embassy the Monday (June 28) before classes in the afternoon. The embassy was closed for repairs and in any case no longer deals with individuals when issuing tourist visas. We went to the USO instead and both Ed and I applied for tourist visas. Tom did not have any empty pages in his passport, so he had to go over to the US embassy and get some new ones put in. He got it back on Thursday and took it in to the USO and they asked him for his "photo residence card," which Ed and I did not have do supply and which none of the three of us have. When Tom pointed this out they told him is was a new policy that went in to effect on July 1st. Moral of the story, if you are coming to both Korea and China, get your Chinese visa before you leave.