I know I said last time I'd try to be a bit more frequent in posting, and here it's been the same amount of time since my last post. This time though it wasn't a firewall issue, just filling up my time with exploring Nanjing and Shanghai and having fun. As I said last time, I left last Thursday morning to head up to Nanjing to stay with Emma, also HMC class of 2010, for a few days and see the city there. Ian, another HMC grad, was also there--he had taken Chinese all throughout college and wanted to practice by living with Emma for two months. After Emma picked me up from the train station, I began my immersion into Chinese culture with a meal cooked by her mother at home. Not only is her mom a really good cook when it comes to authentic Chinese food, I got the full cultural experience by being the only one unable to speak Chinese at the table. Ian and Emma were doing their best to translate for Emma's parents (whose English is only slightly better than my Chinese) and me. It was fun to listen to them talk and contribute when I could by gesturing or using Ian and Emma to translate. This continued throughout my stay at Emma's house at breakfast and lunch each day. Unfortunately I didn't pick up more than one or two words of Chinese during these meals, but thanks to Ian and Emma we managed to have pleasant conversations.
After that first lunch, we partook in one of the favorite leisure activities in China with Emma's friends--karaoke. With a good mix of English songs (in which I participated) and Chinese ones (in which I did not), we had a great time. But that was not the end of my cultural immersion for the day. After karaoke, Emma and Ian took me along to their calligraphy lesson. Writing is an important artistic symbol in China, and the way a person writes says a lot about their education, their personality, and in old times could influence careers. Here, several flights of dark stairs above a mini mart in the small home of one of Emma's friends Ian and Emma were learning the ancient methods to create beautiful, balanced characters. The lesson took place in Chinese, so I sat and watched for most of it as Ian worked and explained the general principles of calligraphy. After he finished, I got an opportunity to try and realize just how much practice goes into making beautiful characters. And even once you have the brushstrokes down, understanding the nuances of creating balanced, harmonious characters that reflect their meaning takes even longer to perfect and may not be possible without knowing a bit about Chinese philosophy. After my attempts, the instructor demonstrated the art for us by decorating traditional fans with sayings in Chinese for Ian and me.
The next day, Emma took me to meet with a professor from Nanjing University who specializes in Environmental Impact Assessments for development projects in China to talk about transportation networks and their importance in city planning. I won't go into a lot of detail now on this conversation as I haven't yet typed up and given significant thought to my notes, but in my next post I'll talk about this meeting more as well as subsequent meetings. After this and lunch at Emma's, the three of us headed out to Sun Yat-Sen's Mausoleum and the Ming Dynasty Tombs. This was my first experience of traditional Chinese temple architecture and my first trip to famous cultural sites. Dr. Sun Yat-Sen is a key figure in China's independence and pre-Communist Republic, and a trip to his mausoleum seemed almost a pilgrimage of sorts for many visitors. You enter the compound through a gate above which the mausoleum sits on a hill and then climb multiple sets of stairs and ramps to finally arrive at the knees of a seated monument of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen.
The quiet of the hill which you must climb creates a reverent atmosphere--if not for tourists, the only sounds would be the wind in the trees and the cicadas in the bushes. Unfortunately, when you reach the mausoleum and prepare to pay your respects to this great man, the reverence is lost, killed by the caretakers of the monument. Though the architecture and interior decorations are kept immaculate, the building was not conceived with air conditioning in mind. As tourists pile into the small tomb room, the heat rises, and to counter this the caretakers have placed 3 large, noisy floor fans in plain sight. combined with the large number of loud tourists moving through the site every minute and it is hard to feel completely consumed by the monument. I thought as I was walking through how nice it would be to tastefully retrofit the building with air conditioning so as to at least remove the loud fans (two of which are on the sunken floor next to the tomb), but I suppose that isn't on the top list of priorities for the government. Despite the noise and visual intrusion of the fans, thousands flock here daily to pay respects to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. Perhaps with other pressing concerns, a few floor fans are not a big deal.
After climbing down all the stairs, we headed over to an even more reverent spot--the tombs of the Ming dynasty. When Nanjing was China's capital, this was where government leaders were interred. Leading up to this monument requires walking over 1 kilometer down a tree-lined avenue guarded by 12 pairs of stone animals, each depicting different characteristics of the emperors and Chinese legend, and 8 pairs of civil servants and generals.
The walk is very pleasant, especially in the evening when the temperature is cooler and a nice wind rustles the trees overhead. Arriving at the end, you are met by a stone wall atop which sits the richly decorated tomb building. Passing through the stone wall and under the tomb is almost as if passing onto another life as you emerge from the perfectly manicured road to a forest growing over the pathway leading up to the tomb itself. The atmosphere here was much more peaceful than at Dr. Sun Yat-sen's memorial, and it was nice just to stand in the breeze and contemplate the history that took place on that hill.
Walking back, however, the reverent atmosphere disappeared once more as scores of motorbikes drove down the sacred road, nearly running over pedestrians returning from the monument. The road apparently is a shortcut to the nearby swimming pool and water park, so the caretakers allow bikers to ride through carrying their inner tubes (a funny site). Sadly, this disrupts the peace of the old road.
The rest of the evening was spent at Confucius Temple, the former site of the civil servant's college and testing center, now adaptively reused as a shopping complex. Here I noticed that the crowds were distinctly smaller than shopping areas in Shanghai. I guess compared to Shanghai (20 million+ people) Nanjing is a sleepy little town of only 8-9 million. A visit after that to a nearby bar allowed for some catching up among old friends, and resulted in some sleeping in the next day. However when we did awake, Ian and I took on the Presidential Palace for another lesson in Chinese imperial history.
This structure was used both by emperors and revolutionary leaders in the 20th century and thus is an interesting mix of ancient Chinese architecture and Western design. The whole compound has lavish and beautiful gardens intermixed with temples and distinctly modern state houses and residences. It was an interesting window into the evolution of China's history from the Ming dynasty until Mao. From this, we headed to Xinjiekou, a modern shopping mall in the heart of Nanjing for our "last supper" together before calling it a night.
Sunday Ian and I packed up and left Nanjing. He was leaving China altogether, heading home to prep for grad school while I was just returning to home in Shanghai. Below is a view from my apartment in Shanghai.
Well, that was a long post too, and doesn't even cover my first couple of project-related interviews. I'll write again soon and cover those topics for those who are interested. (And this time I promise it will actually be soon!)
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