Nanjing & Huaian, Jiangsu province, China

The capital city of Jiangsu province and home to over five million people, Nanjing was also formerly the Chinese national capital during several dynasties and immediately before the civil war in 1949. Chinese history buffs find plenty of interest in Nanjing and surrounds. Nearby Zhongshan (“Purple Mountain”) is one of China’s leading scenic parks containing numerous old temples, a large Ming Dynasty tomb, the Linggu Pagoda commissioned by Chiang Kai Shek as a memorial to soldiers killed in battle, and most notably of all, the final resting place of Dr Sun Yat-sen.

Widely respected in his homeland, Dr Sun is considered the father of modern China who played a leading role in overthrowing the Qing Dynasty in the 1911 Revolution and resisting the destructive invasion and bullying by foreign powers. Dr Sun died in Beijing in 1925: in June 1929 his body was removed amidst great ceremony to a specially built mausoleum on Purple Mountain in Nanjing. Occupying an area of 133 hectares on the southern slopes of the mountain, Dr Sun’s granite mausoleum sits imposingly above a grand entrance of 392 ascending steps punctuated with 10 wide landings. Thousands of visitors each day take the energetic walk to the top to pay their respects and to admire the mausoleum itself and the surrounding parks.

On one of the landings of the grand staircase sit two large bronze tripods. One still contains shrapnel damage sustained when the Japanese bombed and occupied Nanjing in 1937, shortly before its army went on a rampage of murder and rape across the city, killing many thousands of innocent Nanjing residents (the infamous “Rape of Nanking”). My Sunday morning class was drowned out by loud sirens wailing across the city for an hour or so. The students explained that this very morning was the annual commemoration for 2009 of the time and date in 1937 when the massacre began. The sirens made it a sobering hour.

 

We checked out of the friendly Jingli Hotel on Sunday afternoon and travelled by car two hours north of Nanjing to the fast developing city of Huaian where construction cranes in all directions presided over the sprouting shells of massive apartment complexes. We stayed overnight and the following afternoon caught a 6 hour bus to Shanghai where under a twinkling decorated tree and to the strains of “I’m Dreamin’ of a White Christmas” we checked in at the lobby desk of the cosy Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel in the city centre mall, leaving the biting air outside. From our 11th floor window we watched umbrella-covered specks far below lean against the gusting chill and heavy drizzle and scurry along the mall. We joined them for a few hours on Tuesday before heading to the Pudong International Airport in the afternoon, flying out at 8pm bound for Sydney, Australia, where any dreamin’ of a white Christmas would be futile, and on to Adelaide sweltering in 40 degree heat where the only white was white hot. But we were home. And in time for Xmas.

Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China

Late November saw us arrive in beautiful Hangzhou for the third time this year. We came here in late July with our American cousin Dick to see the total eclipse of the sun, and again briefly a month ago after our hike on Yellow Mountain. But this time we stayed a fortnight and started to experience the daily rhythm of the city more from the perspective of a resident than a visitor merely passing through. Each evening during peak hour, swarms of bikes whooshed past our hotel lobby and across the road crowds of city workers jostled into the restaurants for a hot dinner to provide fortification against the cold outside. 

Winter has returned to China and temperatures are plummeting but there are still a few pockets of late autumn colour about. On Monday we joined a few thousand other visitors on a stroll around vast West Lake in the city centre. The crisp cold air was much more comfortable for walking than the oppressive heat and humidity we encountered in July, and West Lake in its early winter apparition was as serene as ever.

Early Tuesday morning saw us speeding out of town on an east-bound train. The China Rail Gazette on our seat had a story about China Rail aspiring to be the leader in high-speed conventional trains. It wasn't idle speculation. The view outside our window blurred past at 201 km/hr, and parallel with the track was a new one under construction that when completed will enable the train we were on to cruise along at its design speed of 350 km/hr. A similar train is already operating at that speed between Beijing and Tianjin. We pored over the other impressive developments in rail outlined in the Gazette, then sank back in our seats content in the knowledge that we were in expert hands.