The ladies of Nanjing

Nanjing,

I arrived in Nanjing via the midnight train from Beijing. In China they generally separate train seats into “hard-sleepers” and “soft-sleepers.” While the hard sleeper sounds like they put you on a wood board and call it a bed, like at the residence in Tamkang, it apparently isn’t really so bad. During Chinese New Year’s Season though, you’re lucky to get any seat you can, so I basically had to go for the more expensive soft-sleeper. Basically it was me and three elderly Chinese riding in a 4-bed cabin that was as cozy as you would expect in the most populous country on Earth.

Nanjing itself is a world different than Beijing. Here, the Soviet-inspired imagery here is limited to the museums and memorials, notably the Martyr’s Memorial. Nanjing seems to have been a part of China’s embrace of rampant capitalism (though don’t ever tell them that ;)). I stayed at a hostel in the Fuzimiao district; a district that was originally an enlarged temple complex but has now become a shopping extravaganza where you can buy Pepsi brand sneakers and glazing neon drinks that are as bright as the lights dancing atop the old-style roofs. The area is laced with canals, fed with water from the nearby Yangtze, and surrounded with the white-painted walls that give it the feel of the Mediterranean done Asian-style. On one section, there are two lit dragons, who dance to same Mando pop song that is played constantly by the fashion boutiques in the area, a song that ironically has become known as “miao ger” (temple song) in Nanjing, due to people hearing it here.

The hostel was on the top 3 floors of a 4-story building with a restaurant and art shop in the basement, the canal floating by immediately beside it. I never actually went down the canal on any of the boats for rent, but I saw a few people doing this. Some of my Chinese friends told me, when I brought up the subject of the canal, which I thought, looked cool, that they didn’t see what was so special about it, but it was a popular suicide spot. I guess Taiwan and China do have a lot in common.

My first days in Nanjing were spent getting used to being there and hooking up with Sharon, Alice, and their friends. Sharon and Alice, by the way, are two friends of mine that I knew from beforehand, Sharon being an exchange student to Canada a couple years back and Alice being an old friend of Sharon’s to whom Sharon gave my MSN. Most the friends they brought were coworkers including Sharon’s boyfriend who also happened to be her manager (can’t imagine how that is for office politics, hehe). I met up with them on Saturday and we went to a museum or two and poked around Nanjing University, their old alma mater. Nanjing U is in the center of the city, but still has a lot of green space and those elusive ivy covered halls, only with oriental trims. BU also has an exchange agreement with them, and I was quite torn between going to Nanjing or going to Tamkang, choosing Tamkang in the end because of its Communication department (which, as it turns out, I have no use for whatsoever because they actually don’t teach in English even though they say they do). Of course, before coming to China, I had no idea that Tamkang U would be a bit of a joke, while Nanjing U was actually something of a Chinese Harvard, known throughout the country as a great university (probably explaining why it wasn’t as desperate as Tamkang for a foreign student). Luck of the dice I guess.

After eating pizza with pie crust at a Hawaiian restaurant called Aloha, I headed back to the hostel where I hooked up with the Anglo-Saxon Global Community (i.e. the assortment of English speakers from the hostel) for a trip to the 1912 club district, though we ended up going to a teahouse on the advice of the charming hostess Summer (Chinese people always choose interesting English names) who came along and smiled in confusion as the Aussies, Americans, English, and Canadian (i.e. me) laughed at each other’s accents. The tea was nice though.

On Sunday, Sharon and Alice and friends took me to the Olympic stadium, so-named because of the national Chinese Olympics (a sort of “China Games,” if you will). The games were big enough to warrant the construction of a brand new stadium, complete with giant red arches you could almost use to walk across the stadium, and the newest, and cleanest, subway system I have ever laid eyes on (They even use poker chips for tokens, awesome!). While we were originally intending to go there for a jolly old game of badminton, the gym was closed so we headed for a nearby park shaped like all the provinces of China and complete with botanically accurate agricultural design and miniature monuments that only the Chinese would recognize. The Nanjing crew decided to rent some 2-person bicycles, ostensibly to calmly patrol the park in. We tried this for the first few minutes, while Sharon calmly introduced the features of the park, but then I remembered the old game we used to play at sailing camp with the 2 person boats. Thus “bicycle pirates” was begun, with a few new rules (i.e. snatching your opponent’s tuque rather than pushing them overboard). The park was definitely a lot less tranquil after that, but I haven’t had so much childhood fun in years.

During the week, the Nanjing crew had to go to work, so I spent more time hanging out with the folks from the hostel. I taught a few people to play Chinese Chess, and someone finally explained to me how to play Go properly. One British guy, a Cambridge graduate and a bit of an egotistical blowhard insulting my English pronunciation, gave me plenty of unasked for advice on pool and other games. In the end though, I beat him each and every time at each and everything we played, including Chinese Chess, Go, and even his beloved pool. Take that, Cambridge Wanker!

For sightseeing, I went to a place called purple mountain (Zhijishan) with a bunch of temples, Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum, and some earlier Ming Tombs. Nanjing after all, whose name means “Southern Capital” just like Beijing means “Northern Capital,” has been the capital of China on numerous occasions, including a time with the Ming, and another time during the reign of the ill-fated Republic of China founded by Sun Yat-sen and moved to Taiwan by Chiang Kai-shek. As a result of its capital heritage, its not surprising that there are a few sites hanging around, although a lot of things, like the Palace were leveled by the Japanese back in the 2nd world war. Still, on Purple Mountain there are few things worth seeing, like the pagoda that makes you so dizzy when you climb it that you get vertigo at the top next to the railings that were designed for the safety of a person half of your size. What’s not so great though, are the tacky amusements that they have here and at popular tourist attractions across the country, like a “Bridge park” and “Slide Park” that you’d have to pay to cross a 20 foot bit of water. You also have to pay to go to a park with islands that you can walk around, a lake. Like many places in China, this area seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with numbers, proudly displaying the metric circumference of a tree and its number of pine needles while neglecting to say why we should give a damn about the tree in the first place. They could at least tell one of those interesting historical tidbits, like some say the Emperor saw this tree in a dream and it inspired him to win the a battle or name a magical chicken to be his advisor or something.

The most notable places were the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Palace (the Taiping were a group of anti-foreigner rebels who took over the Southern half of China during the nineteenth century, picking Nanjing as their capital), the Martyr’s Memorial, and the Memorial to Nanjing Massacre. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Palace had plenty of the now-celebrated Taiping’s memorabilia, including rusty swords and flimsy rifles, as well pictures of the Allied western and Qing forces that ultimately crushed them. The Taiping Palace also had a nice tranquil oriental garden that you can walk through after you finish looking at the old style uniforms.

The Martyr’s memorial is a Washington-Soviet style monument hidden amidst a string of half-finished museums, which are clearly after-thoughts. If you actually manage to find the main memorial though, it it’s a pretty imposing sight. Big gates and flat plains, obviously meant to leave a lasting impression. Inside the main museum complex itself, an arching Maoist monolith, are biography after biography of young communists during the Nationalist era who were executed or massacred for speaking against the government during Chiang Kai-shek’s reign. Technically of course, this doesn’t necessarily make them martyrs, but they definitely did more by the age of 23 than I did, and clearly were to act as role models for today’s Chinese elementary schooler who no doubt field trip through the place in droves. Granted though, as with any museum painted with the brush of the Communist Party, whom like their Generalissimo adversary Kaishek have hardly been ones to shy at the brutal massacre of their political opponents, it makes you wonder how much is true, or whether these martyrs would like the route that the “realization of their socialist dreams” has taken. The Museum carried a lot of personal items, like So-and-so’s high school abacus.

The Memorial of the Nanjing Massacre though, where I went with Sharon, was the most touching monument that I have ever visited. As this tragic event is probably one of the first things Westerners at least think of, when they hear the word Nanjing, meaning any visit to Nanjing should be accompanied with a visit to Asia’s Auschwitz. The Memorial is on the site of one of the burial pits of the victims of the massacre, perpetrated by the invading Japanese Imperial armies during the 30s and 40s. The museum has an open-air square feel to it, as you walk around outside and around post-modern statues, including one of the American-Chinese author Iris Chang of The Rape Of Nanking. The burial pits themselves are surrounded by glass, and the skeletons are clearly marked. The piles of bones are like something you’d expect to see in a film but not in real life. After Kai-shek and his cronies fled Nanjing before the advancing Japanese, locking in all the capital’s residents behind him while telling them to fight until they’re “broken as jade,” the Japanese came in and raped and massacred over 300 000 people. Horrific to say the least, as anyone can tell from the bodies, some of which have railway ties in their skulls and bayonet wounds around their private areas. While many of the Westerners thought a Japanese tourist that showed up here would be fighting for their life, the building had everything translated into Japanese (as well as Chinese and English), so they must come occasionally. Actually, I was impressed with how much stuff they had gesturing to improve relations with Japan: including notes that the Japanese populace had no idea of the atrocities being committed by their government, coverage of the post-war tribunals and the statement that the main perpetrators had all been found guilty and hung in Tokyo, and a photograph of one the Japanese soldiers who committed the massacre but then repented his sins in a book and a donation to the memorial. At any rate, it is quite clear why Japan still has some trouble with relations with its Asian neighbours to this day.

To change to a happier note, my time in Nanjing also coincided with Chinese New Year’s itself, China’s most vibrant festival. While it is commonly visually associated with people dancing in dragon costumes, for me it was more about the fireworks. The Chinese invented fireworks, and to this day they still like to go freak’n nuts with them. Nanjing sounded like Iraq on the first night, with gunpowder going off all over the city, even from the balconies of apartment hi-rises. In the streets, people hold them in their hands and fire them over their neighbour’s houses. In one park we went to, there was literally a firecracker minefield, with people holding them in their hands and throwing them around baton, all while having a cigarette. Firecracker smoke filled the city, which during the day had been completely clear of smog, and even had bright blue skies. Alice, whom I spent the first day of Chinese New Year’s (aka Spring Festival) with along with her family, had a cousin who was a nurse and had to leave the supper early to work. I’m sure you can imagine why.

Alice and her family were great. There were about 16 people crammed into a tiny apartment, but enough food to feed 2000. Her grandfather seemed like quite the character, a ninety-year-old who remembered Shanghai from its, and his, colonial glory days before the war. He could only speak a little English though, and spent most of the evening trying to feed me tiny but juicy oranges, which I couldn’t peel for the life of me. Alice’s uncle proved to me that Chinese people, when they want to, do know how to drink. The leather-jacketed guzzler downed glass after glass of rice wine (at least 60% proof in case you’re wondering) to shouts of COM PEI!! laughing as I struggled with mine. This was of course, BEFORE, we went to go set off the fireworks. Alice and I then went back to the hostel, where they were having a party of their own, with people dancing on pool tables and shooting firecrackers around the lobby. The next day, I went to Sharon’s for a somewhat more sedate, as she lives on a military base, but equally large meal. Sharon’s father was away for New Years, and her mother left with a male friend to go play cards so Sharon and I shot firecrackers over supposedly abandoned warehouses. I have to admit to I felt a little foolhardy standing with a fire-cracker in my hand and firing gunpowder over PLA buildings, but it was the Chinese person’s idea not mine!

I should really take the time here to mention how absolutely insane Chinese people are with fireworks. Most people say you shouldn’t travel in China during Chinese New Year’s (because of all the people on the road, but then its not really a problem so long as you’re prepared to plan a little bit in advance), but I say you should travel through China during Chinese New Year’s just to see how completely and unequivocally loony the locals are when it comes to fireworks. It was really one of the wildest experiences of my life. Before dark, in the middle of the afternoon of Chinese New Year’s Opening Day, the gunpowder explosions began, as kids tossed firecrackers in the street and others launched fireballs from the windows of their apartment complexes, often at other apartment complexes. At first the sound of rat-tat-tat-tat and BOOOM! Might make you think the city was under attack, but no there’s no social revolution underway just a billion or so Chinese people, with matches or lighters in one hand and a considerably lethal amount of gunpowder in the other, celebrating their union in the conception of the Year of the Dog with screaming Roman Candles, showering Chrysanthemum bursts, and the occasional scorched limb. From crowded back alleys and idle construction sites to 75th floor apartments and wherever you happened to be sleeping, the exploding majesty continued. On this night in particular, Alice and her family took me to a place where a particularly fearless company of revelers had gathered. People stood by the side of the road while ongoing traffic, crazy on most days, added dodging flaming carbon balls to hazards of Chinese driving. While a Westerner would runaway from a firework when lit, the Chinese will literally hold it there hands or toss them back and forth like a form of kamikaze rhythmic gymnastics. One woman, with a roman candle on each finger, walked out into the middle of the street, firing at the swerving motorists like a deranged sorceress taking revenge on modern science. In a nearby construction site, where people formed a mass against one wall and fired into the pit like a poorly trained unit from the Napoleonic Wars. They had some police there with megaphones saying things, supposedly keeping order, though my ears were ringing so much that they’d have better luck communicating with me in Morse code. And in amidst the fireballs, in the center of the action with burning cardboard and sparking rockets shooting about all around them, stood a group of about six men on their own, casually having a smoke. Despite the hell breaking loose in the streets and sky around them, they were as relaxed as a beach in the Cayman Islands, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if they cranked out the Mah Jongg board, right then and there, and had a game.

For their part, that’s how the Chinese treated everything. To them, there was nothing completely insane about this New Year’s tradition of explosions and the odd dismemberment, despite my frequent exclamations of “Holy Shit! Chinese People are Fucking NUTS!!” For my part, I predicted Alice’s cousin, who was nurse, would be in great demand in the next few days, and with a greater accuracy than Nostradamus might prediction came true within an hour as she was called back to work. “Hmm, I wonder why?” I joked.

The next day, we were watching a News Recap of the New Year’s Events. (like Japan, the Chinese also have cultural shows on New Years, including a fascinating one with over 1000 performers and dancers, but its hard to watch TV when you have a city gone mad playing with fire right outside your door, at all hours of the night). But anyway we watched the recap on China’s only English television network, which is strange in its own way, and it was one of those shows where the anchorwoman with her trademark smile talks on happily about how festive and celebratory everything is and how much fun everyone is having, while switching on a dime to a face of mourning as she announces how many people have now been rushed to hospital as result of going a little too crazy with the festive celebrations (perhaps though, this is China’s latest population control measure). They had another interesting segment, as it was the beginning of the Year of the Dog, about the increasing number of pet owners in China, which they chose to title (and I kid you not) “Dogs – They’re not just for good eats anymore”

For my birthday (as it turns out I was practically born on Chinese New Year’s, so I can choose to be a Pig or a Dog depending on my mood), the Nanjing gang took me out clubbing in the 1912 district, first to a rather noisy dance bar with impressive flashing lights but surprisingly little in the way of a dance floor. The Chinese tend to prefer to come to these places to see and be seen sometimes more than dancing, and often play dice games while destroying their ability to hear. They eventually started dancing in the aisles, because there was nowhere else to shake it, but we moved on to another club with a more reasonable floor and got jiggy with it there. The evening was going great until one of Alice’s co-workers, in his drunken stupor took this opportunity to express his love for her, despite the fact that she showed no signs of returning the sentiment. Why he chose this moment, when he had months of time before to make the announcement, is anyone’s guess, perhaps he thought having a foreign guy on the scene was a bit of a threat, I’m not sure. As Alice wanted to leave, I escorted her out (Sharon had already left some time earlier), but he followed us until we were able to convince him to take a cab home. The guy had been a good friend of Alice and the announcement came as a bit of a shock to her, and his pushiness really made her worried about going back to work after the break, but hopefully the guy will realize what an idiot he was and apologize.
Alice and I still had a good time though. Having left the party, we went back to the hostel for a bit to join the festivities there, and all in all I had a very good birthday. Before going to Shanghai, Alice and Sharon and their friends (minus the drunken coworker) took me out for dinner, and even bought me a cake. They really went a long way to show me a great time, and I hope one day to be able to repay them. If you’re reading this, thanks for everything Sharon and Alice!