Thursday, August 24, 2006
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12:33 p.m.
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Above: One of the many odd sights in China that I took photos of. A man getting his hair cut on the city walls of Nanjing.
Nanjing is a blight on the face of the Earth.
Okay, that may be putting it a bit too seriously, but this place had few redeeming qualities. We left paradise on Earth (Yangshou) and wound up in a place that was entirely too much grey concrete to be pleasing in any form. David had just left his girlfriend behind and a late arrival into the city and a confusing taxi ride to find the hostel didn't help.
There is little to nothing to do in Nanjing. David takes all responsibility for us going there in the first place (he wanted to visit a couple of museums) but more than once I was wondering why we had gone there. We went to a bar street called 1912 our first night to find food. Even if I was a yuppie I wouldn't eat there. Tacky and expensive.Hot, too. Damn hot. The humidity made it like walking through a sauna. The relief of our hostel room was cold comfort because the bathroom walls were entirely made of glass. Want to watch a loved one relieve themselves? Go ahead. Also, I developed a powerful ache in my chest that wouldn't go away.
So it was a good day to walk up a very steep hill and more than 300 steps to visit the tomb of some dead guy I'd never heard of. Part of the incentive was the hope that it was air conditioned, much like Mao's was back in Beijing. We walked a long way up and not only was the tomb not air conditioned, but the floor was slick with sweat and the guy wasn't even embalmed (or pickled as David puts it.
Here's a video of the disappointment:
Making the best of our day, we headed down to a tea house at the base of the steps. We wanted air conditioning (badly) and figured this would be a quick stop.
Three hours later we had a lot of tea to drink. We even had to brave the dreaded squat toilet. For the full story (with excellent details), feel free to ask. It's one of my favorites. Basically, I did it wrong, but still produced positive results.
The tea cups are incredibly small and there's a system you have to follow to drink. Catherine and David take a sip and do their best to look "serene."
To summarize, don't go to Nanjing. Stay in Yangshou or Beijing. We still wound up having some laughs and seeing some pretty neat things there, but overall, it's not a great city. It'd be like travelling to Canada to go and visit Cambridge.
And who would do that?
Well, not you guys anymore.
9 actual days at work left.
Posted by
Parallel
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