China 2009 Nanjing

China Day 14 – Thursday July 9, 2009

TWO WEEKS already and we’ve seen enough for two months. China is an amazing and fantastic place and EVERYONE should visit. More about the country later when we ever get a day free, maybe next week.

So today was a travel day, or half day, as we left the wonderful Bamboo Grove Hotel in Suzhou at 9am (not 8:30 as planned) and took nearly an hour to get out of the city; too much traffic on the highway, with a lane closed for something or other. Where is everyone going? Not to Nanjing, our next stop, I hope. After a pit stop (where I still can’t use the standing pits) we arrived at an even more wonderful hotel, the New Era Hotel, right in the heart of Nanjing. This is an even spiffier hotel than the BG, and my room is delightful. There’s a frosted window in the bathroom, with a vase with flower in it, a beautiful design element, as it’s hardly necessary. The bed is nice and firm like all the beds here; this country knows about sleeping. And free internet again, although little time to use it. I am keeping up with the NYTimes, but Facebook is blocked, so no one can access it. Various theories about it, as it worked in Hong Kong. All other news web sites seem to work ok.

After we checked in we were bused off to the Presidential Palace, actually not too far from the hotel, but the afternoon heat was intense. Too bad the Palace was a series of pavilions and un-airconditioned, but we had a good guide, a teacher from the exchange program here. This was built in the first years of the “republic” of 1912 when Dr. Sun Yat-Sen led the Chinese finally in a successful revolt from the imperial rule, and the last boy emperor abdicated (remember the movie, a romantic view of things). Learned quite a lot from a good photo-exhibit with some models and reconstructions (and air-conditioned), as Dr. Sun is quite revered here as the Father of the Country, like George Washington to us, and Mao is hardly spoken of at all. Too bad that Dr. Sun did not live long enough to see the country through to its glory, as the Communists came in strong in the 1930s. We’ll visit Dr. Sun’s mausoleum later, but since Nanjing was his home and the first capital of China, they are very proud of him here.

Back to the hotel very briefly and then by Bus to an older quarter of Nanjing, which is full of restaurants and shops in a pagoda style architecture, all lit up gaily at night but more crowded than Times Square on a Saturday. We ate another great dinner at a restaurant with an auction of scroll paintings (!) and some entertainers. After that, somehow we managed to walk through some of it and not get too lost, as we had our teacher guides with us, and we found the Bus to take us home.

New Era Hotel
http://www.newerahotel.com/english/main.asp


China Day 15 – Friday July 10, 2009 – Nanjing University

This morning we walked around the corner to Nanjing University, one of the premier research universities in China, where CSI sends students every year. We got a tour of the campus, a beautiful one, with huge tree-lined streets and a few old buildings from the founding in 1902, when it was started as a normal school by missionaries, as well as many big modern buildings. We headed to the other end of the compact site to the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Center, a new modern building, nicely air-conditioned. We were shown to its new library and some apartments for faculty and for students, as well as their roof terrace and small gym. This is a cooperative venture that takes Chinese students and foreign students, usually Americans, teaching economics and political science mostly, and teaching the Chinese students all in English and the foreigners all in Chinese. Needless to say they must pass language tests to be admitted, as well as other strict guidelines, it being very prestigious and competitive. The students are paired up in rooms of two, a Chinese student with a foreign student.

After this tour, we walked back to the other side of the campus, and a restaurant in the student building on the side with the dormitories. All students must live on campus, 41,000 total. There were still a lot of students around, although the semester was over. They are building a new campus out in the suburbs in an area with nine universities, and will move all undergraduates there in the Fall 2009. The area will have stores, schools, hospitals, etc. etc., a new city of some 300,000 people.

We had drinks and discussions with some of the professors in the International programs at our hotel (thankfully indoors as it is still very hot) and learned quite a lot about the programs and life here for students and faculty both. One professor we talked with explained his progression from a one-room apt. – and that is ONE bedroom, no living room, just a kitchen – through various upgrades in assigned housing until a few years ago when he was able to buy an apt., and more recently when he bought a house in a suburb and of course a car—the Chinese dream. Now he still owns the first apt. plus the house and will soon buy another apt. in the new University Town, quite a property owner. Needless to say, most of the professors we talked with are quite happy with the new and improved China.

Then on to dinner in the hotel, quite different from our lunch the other day (where do they get the ideas for all these kinds of foods?). And more discussions with our guest professors, who all spoke excellent English as they after all are teaching it, as well as Chinese subjects. It was our guest Prof. Wang’s 50th birthday, so a cake was produced with candles, and we had a cake dessert!


Nanjing University
http://www.nju.edu.cn/cps/site/NJU/njue/profile/index.htm
Nanjing semester
http://www.ccisabroad.org/program.php?link=china_nanjing
Hopkins-Nanjing Center info
http://www.nju.edu.cn/cps/site/NJU/njue/profile/index.htm


China Day 16 – Saturday July 11, 2009

A sightseeing day, and a very very hot one.

8:30am Bus to Zhonghua Gate, a Ming dynasty city wall (1366-1386), and a huge one that was attacked by the Japanese in 1937, a prelude to the Nanjing Massacre of 300,000 people. We could climb to the top of the wall and it was nearly a parade ground on top. It was a hugely thick wall, nearly a city block wide, with several gates from one end to the other, and the Japanese must have been desperate to get through it and over it, but the Chinese army at the time was very weak and poorly organized with many deserters. Maybe this is one reason they are building a strong army, never to be invaded again.

Next we went by Bus to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s mausoleum on the Purple Mountain. At least some people climbed to the top on the hottest day yet at midday—392 steps—but not me, I just took a photo from afar. Many many Chinese tourists here too, many tour buses, and the public bus comes here from the city. After that it was a short ride to more Ming dynasty elements, a row of huge stone animal statues, two by two facing each other along a long tree-lined avenue: elephants, camels, horses, unicorns, etc.

Then lunch finally, a vegetarian non-alcoholic one in a restaurant attached to a Buddhist monastery for nuns (but we didn’t see any). Now our group is too large for one table, so we split into two tables, as they are round, with the lazy-susan in the middle for the dishes. I never thought I would eat so much tofu, all disguised as shrimp, pork, beef, and a large fish. It was pretty impressive, and pretty tasty too. I tried nearly everything, being half-adventurous with food. It’s either that or go hungry, and we are not doing that.

The afternoon event was a visit to the Nanjing Massacre Museum, an immense very modern set of buildings separated by huge open spaces for some reason. First was a photo exhibit of the 1937-38 events, several weeks of slaughter, some from photos and diaries kept by the Japanese. There were many school children here, and they were laughing at us later from their buses. It seemed to me a bit too horrific for young children to see this gruesomeness, and it depressed all of us. The last building had skeletons and relics, and I passed through quickly, desperate to get back to the bus and peace and coolness.

Fortunately, the day ended positively, and a dinner with some professors from the University. My table had a retired librarian professor, and a VP provost one, so I learned quite a lot about the structure of the university and its students. Librarians are professors, although they do not have to publish books, just papers (articles) for promotion. Their system is very like the U.S. system, the universities being mostly modeled after US ones, when the schools reopened in 1979 after the ten year ban. That strikes me as one of the oddest things I’ve heard so far, as I didn’t know anything about it. I gave the VP a copy of my book, so hopefully it will end up in their library.

Early to bed for the 5:30 call to the Bus to the airport for an 8am flight to Beijing!


To Beijing