Nanjing

Nanjing was supposed to be a quieter, more rural place a bit off the tourist route.  Population 5.9 million - not again!  Both Hangzhou and Nanjing are very touristy and not with western tourists. Its funny because before we came to China I had no idea how big the tourist industry was here, but from what we have seen it is massive, however its tailored to the local Chinese population which is unsurprising when you have a client base of 1.3 billion.  So why did we decide to visit Nanjing?  Well its the original capital of China, is a walled city unparalleled anywhere else and has lots of tombs and history, oh and its not on the normal western tourist route.  This would become both a plus and a minus.

 

Since the ferry to China we have started to get a lot of attention, well when I say we I mean Emma. It started with a nice Chinese gentleman with his son who wanted to have their photo taken with her on the boat. Shanghai it got a little worse with people stopping in their tracks and pointing.  In Hangzhou she was asked a couple of times to stand and have her photo taken with them, but Nanjing is where it got to a point where it was not funny anymore. The younger people don't seem to be too bad and ask if they want a photo taken with her, but for the most in Nanjing people would just stick a camera in front of our faces and take a photo. They are also very open with their reaction and point and shout to their friends about us.  At first this was funny, but after a while it gets very tiring and makes the hotel room at night a very welcome haven from the gorkers. What with glamorous Emma wafting through the streets and Bill with his baseball cap and dark glasses we must look like a right pair, someone famous and their security perhaps (the famous one being Emma of course).

 

Being Westerners and not understanding the language you have to expect a certain amount of people who don't like you or are annoyed that you don't speak their language, but in China and especially Nanjing this was extremely obvious. It has been obvious to us that the older generation do not like Westerners, and will not attempt to help you.  It even goes as far as to be deliberately rude to you. Its funny even though we don't speak the language you know when someone is not being helpful. The young are fine, friendly chatty and extremely helpful, the older generation especially the woman are bit**es. It got so bad that I had to go to the supermarket on my own after a number of incidents involving Emma, she was about ready to really lose her temper so I went on my own to buy the supplies. To give an example, we had put our stuff on the belt ready to have it scanned and this older woman pushed past Emma (elbows included) and put her stuff at the front of the belt, without saying a word or looking at her. Emma politely picked her stuff up and put in behind ours, this type of thing is not an isolated incident. Another one was this lady was sweeping the steps of the underground, stopped when the Chinese people in front walked past and then as Emma steeped down proceeded to sweep the dust onto Emma shoes and almost swept her off the stairs!!  We have no idea what it is about Emma they don't like and its certainly not us being rude to them.  Its obvious that some are not great fans of Westerners and for whatever reason really don't like Emma!!!

 

The other unique thing to China is the traffic rules, there are none. All the roads are split into three.  Car lanes, bike/scooter lanes and pedestrian pavements. They also have green lights to allow pedestrian traffic to cross the roads, however all the above rules are completely ignored. When crossing the roads the motor traffic ignores the lights so making the pedestrian signal useless.  Not only do they ignore but they do so at speed, so making a crossing very dangerous. At the same time you have to contend with scooters coming at you from every direction doing about 30 miles an hour. Even when walking along a very crowded pedestrian pavement the scooters are coming at you from every direction with your only notice being the horn. This for the first few days was very funny but in Nanjing it became extremely stressful, making a walk down the street a life or death decision. Traffic plus the pointing has made this part of our China trip a bit unpleasant.  I know the guide book said it would be challenging but not this challenging. We have met some really nice people, Chinese learning English who don't want to sell you stuff but the rest................

 

So enough of the rant and back to the sights of Nanjing.  It is the biggest remaining walled city in the world, the wall being 32km long, up to 12m high, made of over 2 billion bricks and each brick has the name of the maker craved/stamped on to it, their manager and the place it was made. This was so that if there was any quality control issues they knew where to go back to and some one to one time on what to do right next time (oh I bet!!!).  I'm sure it meant that people were taking great personal responsibility for the work they were doing making these bricks.  It seems like a great system that should be used more in the west :)  It was a very impressive sight and more so that the Chinese have not pulled in down and used it as building material (like the Egyptians did with the outer stones of the pyramids).

 

Also Nanjing has the only buried Ming emperor outside of Beijing.  This is contained in a massive park and includes a long avenue lined with huge stoned carved animals and soldiers leading up to the tomb and lots of Pagoda's. We spent a very pleasant afternoon looking at all the sights on our hottest day of the trip so far, circa 30 degrees. There was lots more to see in the surrounding area but we ran out of time. This bit of Nanjing was really nice and not very crowded and to be honest is what we needed as by this time we had had enough of people and needed some space.

 

Next Beijing population 16.9 million................

 

Actress: Emma Coates and personal security Codd