Nanjing

Nanjing is a very affluent city, growing rapidly with the rest of China. The city has a human scale appeal; even though there are some major skyscrapers cropping up. As we wandered through the streets on foot one sunny afternoon we were amazed at some of the newly constructed buildings. The new library was quite a site! We also ran into a lot of retired men and women socializing in parks and public squares. The following day we visited the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat Sen upon the purple mountain by bike and it was a great way to see more of the city.

Rav at a local stall for lunch

Adam and Naomi enjoying lunch

The library at Nanjing

A cool building

Another cool building

Dr. Sun Yat Sen is commonly considered to be the father of modern China. He was the leader of the Nationalist party in China who successfully overthrew the last Imperial Chinese Dynasty. He was born in China but educated in America and when he visited his home land he saw that the Chinese people were suffering greatly and he wanted to help them. So he became a doctor, but then decided to go into politics in order to help the masses. Nanjing was the capital city of China during the Nationalist period. The Nationalist party did not enjoy much success in the northen regions of China as the war lords of that area did not want to give up their feudal system way of life. Dr. Sun Yat Sen tried to unite the entire county into the Nationalist ideal through diplomatic ties but failed to do so. China’s civil war occurred in the early 1940’s between the Nationalist party and the Communist party - where the latter party was victorious. The Nationalist party no longer exists in China as they became what is known today as Taiwan, an independent self governing society. The Communist party unified all of China in 1949 and the start of the cultural revolution in China began to take shape under the leadership of Chairman Mao. As part of the mandate of the Communist party, all things that were historically thought of as Chinese were destroyed. So temples, grave yards and tombs were all demolished to make way for the new way of thinking. A truly sad thing to have occurred as it was very hard to think of China without its rich four thousand years of history.

Mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat Sen

We ended the bike ride with a picnic in the park next to Lake Xuanwu. The picnic was cut short as the sunny weather had disappeared only to be replaced with wind and rain.
We waited out the rain catching up some reading that evening before heading out for dinner. We had wanted to revisit one of the local stalls that we had dinner the previous night for only 10 yuan ($1.50 CDN) but due to the bad weather, the stall was not open that night. We did manage to find a restaurant that was still open so we headed in to try our hand at ordering dinner. It must have been a popular place for the locals for they were out of everything we had wanted. The waiter would take our order, go to the kitchen and then come back a couple of minutes later shaking his head and waving his hand. This happened three more times and every time some one else in the kitchen would come out to give us the bad news. So it took 15 minutes and 5 people later before we could find a dish that we could agree to eating. We both had a delicious large bowl of noodle soup in the end, and it was well worth the wait.