Nanjing

July 4, 2008

Nanjing. Today we toured Nanjing, a city of about 7 million people. It was very hot, about 100 degrees. The city itself is about 2,400 years old and was the capital of China through 10 dynasties. It is surrounded on three sides my mountains and is very green and beautiful. This is where I will spend the next two weeks. I learned a lot and found it very interesting. A lot of wealthy people live here. To buy a nice apartment in Nanjing it will cost you about 11,000 RMB per square meter. (That is about 160 dollars per meter.) When they buy an apartment or house here, you are really only renting it because the people only have the right to it for 70 years. Then it is turned over to the government because all land belongs to the government.

We first toured the mosuliam for Dr.Sun Yatsen. He was one of the original revolutionaries. He was educated in Hawaii and then in Europe to become a medical doctor. He came back to his native China to help better his country. He found the people very depressed because the warlords were stealing, raping, and keeping the Chinese people in constant poverty. His goal was to give the government back to the people. He is one of the countries heroes, for both the Communists under Mao Se Tong, and the Nationalists under ChangKie Shek.

Then we went to a famous cemetery where soldiers of the revolution are buried.

We ate lunch at a local Nanjing diner. It was very interesting because the traditional meal consists of 16 small servings....8 soups (one was made of congealed duck blood) and 8 solid foods. I tried some of everything, but did not eat much.

We got to go shopping today in the little shops. It was a lot of fun to bargain. My purse that I bought two years ago broke and I needed one to carry my personal belongings. So I bought one for about $6.50 American money....50 RMB. Mary Lum surprised me how good she was at bargaining ....so quiet and getting things so cheap.

The last tour we took was to the Nanking massacre museum. It was the most troubling thing I have seen so far. There were 300,000 men, women, and children that were brutally butchered in a 6 week period of time by the Japanese. The Japanese troops took over Nanking on December 13, 1937 and by January 1938 all those people were killed. The individual stories were the most horrific.

These are statues of Pee-shues. (I have no idea how they are really spelled). The are children of a dragon and a lion. They are the symbol for financial success. They are all over Nanjing.