About 200 km north-west of Shanghai, Nanjing is the capital city of fertile Jiangsu province and one of the most attractive big cities in China with wide tree-lined streets running between soaring office towers and apartment blocks. Few remnants of old Nanjing remain, although long sections of the 33 km wall that once surrounded and protected the city are well-preserved.Nanjing is also a University town with many universities of assorted types dotting the inner city and suburbs. We came to Nanjing last Monday on a 90 minute flight from Tianjin with China Southern Airlines, and checked into the Jingli Hotel just north of the city centre and overlooking the grounds of Nanjing University where my second class was held. The modern subway has a stop close to the lobby of the Jingli, so we made good use of that to glide into and out of the city centre just two stops down the line.
The Nanjing class organizer took us a on a drive to the north of the city to see the first bridge built over the lake-like Yangtze River that flows through here on the final leg of its journey to the East China Sea. Apparently the Chinese engineers built the bridge by themselves after their Russian allies left in a huff in the early 1960s, taking the designs with them. The bridge opened in December 1968 and was an engineering marvel for its time. One of the longest bridges in China, it has a 4,500 metre long vehicle roadway above a railway line that provided the first direct railway link between Shanghai and Beijing. The approaches to the bridge are highlighted by large, impressive socialist sculptures that tower over the heavy road traffic below.
Nanjing has twice been the capital city of China; first for about 300 years from the mid 1300s and second for a brief period in the early 1900s. Most westerners know Nanjing by its former name Nanking, and know of it for the hideous events that occurred here in late 1937 – the “Rape of Nanking” by the Japanese army. The Japanese invaded China earlier that year and in August launched an air attack on Nanjing from air bases in Nagasaki. They apparently reported the event under the headline “The First Magnificent Trans-oceanic Bombardment”, a rather ironic headline given the tragic fate that was to befall Nagasaki itself from the air eight years later. Karma Putrid.
In December 1937, after a brief stand-off, the Japanese army broke through the city walls of Nanjing and set about systematically killing and raping the population. Within four weeks, many thousands of Nanjing residents had been murdered (the chinese claim 300,000), often after rape and torture. The terrible events are chronicled without hyperbole in the excellent Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre, located just to the west of the city centre on one of the actual massacre burial grounds. Although the subject matter is grim, it is presented in a sensitive and professional manner, and this modern museum/memorial is a must-see if you come to Nanjing. We joined the long, silent, sober rows of normally animated and boisterous Chinese people who filed through the huge building. In one place a wall several stories high supports a stunning stack of thousands of indexed folders containing the evidence that was used in trials after the war to convict the worst of the war criminals involved in the planning and conduct of the massacre.
At the time of the Japanese attack there was a sizeable community of foreigners living in Nanking, and the Japanese, to a limited extent, respected the neutrality of these communities. This provided an opportunity for some of the foreigners to hide and shelter fleeing Chinese residents, and the efforts and personal risks taken by the former are detailed with gratitude in various displays in the museum. One in particular caught my eye because of its supreme irony. One of the most active and fearless foreigners to help the locals was a German citizen, and his efforts that saved many Chinese lives were recognized a year or two later in an ornate Certificate of Appreciation presented to him by the German Red Cross, and personally signed by no less than the leader of the German nation. Mr Adolf Hitler to be precise, who was himself soon to re-define evil. What would Oskar Schindler have made of this? It’s a strange world.
Nanjing has many large parks and gardens and today we caught the subway to the historically-significant Yuhuatai Park in the southern suburbs. This large park covers an area of nearly 400 acres and amongst all the attractive greenery and interesting pathways there are numerous monuments to various historic, revolutionary and heroic figures. Official sights in the park include The Tablet Pavilion With Emperor Qianlong’s Inscriptions, A Group Statue of Revolutionary Martyrs, The Tomb of the Troops Lost in the Revolution of 1911, the Eastern and Western Execution Grounds of Revolutionary Martyrs, The Tablet Inscribing Eunuchs’ Official Discussion, and The Spot Where Yang Bangyi Had His Chest Cut Open. We had better fortune than many who trod the grass here in decades past, thankfully emerging from the South Gate a pleasant hour or so later unscathed and intact. From there we strolled through a side-street lined with shops stocked with the freshest of produce before descending back into the subway to whiz under the full length of the city centre, popping up again just down the road from the Jingli where our bags were waiting to be packed for tomorrow’s departure from happy Nanjing.
