Qinhuai River in Nanjing: Life blood for centuries
The rural/industrial countryside flies by at 125 km an hour on this fast train from Nanjing to Shanghai. The trip should take just over two hours – a good buy for $20 these days. The cars are clean, the seats even have international computer outlets. It’s a bullet into the 21st century that is about to get even faster when the new China Railway High-Speed (CRH) train opens in July, doubling the speed– and the price, while cutting travel time between these two hubs to 45 minutes.
But Old Nanking (the English pronunciation before the standardization of Mandarin) is not too far away at any time whether in the preserved landscape of the city or the hearts and minds of its people.
Today, two-thirds of the 35 kilometer, 14-century wall around the city (built entirely of perfect-or-die bricks mortared with a mixture of lime and sticky rice that adheres to this day) is intact or rebuilt and inside it is brilliant city of “hutong” style neighborhoods, bridges over canals and a lively bazaar selling carvings of rare woods and stone to silk purses to batteries. Of course you can always buy a watch or trendy Fendi. Just look for the man in a business suit with a bound catalogue in hand and a story about how he just came from an import show in Shanghai with a stash of goods to sell hidden in some off location.
Most of the time the streets here and the lively promenades are bulging with Chinese tourists vying for the perfect photo opp on the bridge by the illuminated dragon wall.
In fact, if you don’t like crowds, forget Nanjing (or any other tourist spot in China for that matter). This was China’s capital before Peking and the residence of Sun Yat Sen, considered the great liberator and father of modern China. His tomb presides here in the peaceful foothills of the purple mountains about 20 minutes outside the city. But it takes 392 steps to reach his marble resting place — one step for every 1,000 Chinese souls alive in 1926.
But Nanjing’s complicated past just gets more complicated as the moments tick by. As the city was the seat of power from the turn of the 20th century until 1949 it was also the scene of war and massacre, surrender and forgiveness.
A “must” for a trip to China, if not just Nanjing, is a pilgrimage to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum. This expansive and artful undertaking ranks among the world’s finest interpreters of history, right up there with the Holocaust museums in Berlin and Washington DC.
The museum is crowded with school children and throngs of Chinese nationals who come from far villages and cities to remember what is commonly referred to as the “White Terror”: 13 months of slaughter between December 1937 and January 1938 that wiped out 300,000 people in Nanjing: one person every 12 seconds.
It is not on every tourist’s itinerary. In fact, few non-Chinese will be seen among the throngs on any given day. The museum offers in a variety of documentaries, photos, artifacts and stunning dioramas, a living history of Nanjing’s darkest time – told through the voices of those who remember (there are some 400 survivors now) as well as diaries of witnesses, Japanese soldiers and officers. The English footnotes come surprisingly well written and clear (making the hiring of the incomprehensible English-speaking guide for 200 yuan, or $30, unnecessary). The story takes in the beginning of Japanese imperial activities dating from 1870 to provide the full context of this history and ends with Japanese surrender at the Treaty of Nanjing. In between, the rape. Afterwards, the museum winds through a sad courtyard of pebbles and rocks representing the bones of the dead. It leads to a pit of real bones and skulls in the earth laying just where they fell for the museum is on the haunted site a village outside the city center where the peasants and farmers were butchered and left to rot.
White Terror: A murder every 12 seconds
The museum ends in a meditation chamber, completely black except for a field of flickering lights in random spots, ghosts in the night and not forgotten. Admission to the museum is free.
An easy overnight segue from Shanghai, historically riveting and stunningly quaint in its own way, Nanjing is what you do with any extra time in Shanghai. If you can ignore the Disney elements of the Old City, you can find the true mind of China here.
Information:
Recommended Accommodations:
Mandarin Garden Hotel, Old City
Starting Rate: $69
