Post 124. Nanjing, China.

Our last day in China.  Journey to Nanjing.

(The Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, our goal for the day.)


Jason had been on the train for work, and he decided we could handle the train by ourselves.    I was less sure, primarily because I worried about how we would ensure we made it from the destination train station, to some tourist site, and back to the train station since no one would speak English.  But after a brief few moments of panic, I agreed we should go but I left making arrangements to make the travel possible to my husband.

I had read, an another American my husband had chatted with, had suggested if we ventured out for a day that we should head to Nanjing.  Our concierge wrote two sentences in Chinese on a piece of paper.  "I need to go Ming Xialong."  and "I need to go to Nanjing Train."

(We realized later that these sentences had been written with a sharpie like pen, not terribly conducive to a day outside in the rain, but we managed to protect them from getting wet - so spoiler alert - all ends well.)

The train station was like any train station.  I had been worried about how we would ensure we got on the correct train, since they had departure times just like an airplane.  This just goes to show how little experience I have with trains, I had imagined a subway like system with trains every couple of minutes, so until we got there I couldn't imagine how we would get it right.  Turns out they have a fabulous system.  There is a big waiting area, inside.  On a big board are the upcoming trains, and your train # is red (for don't get out of your chair), yellow (almost time to walk to your platform), and green (get up, now you can walk to your platform).  And you insert your ticket into a turnstile that verifies you are indeed allowed out on the tracks.

Easy peasy.

Oh, except for the potties.  First off, that is where everybody goes to smoke, so it really stunk.  Then this was my first encounter with a true Chinese potty.  It did not go well.  (You can Google Chinese potties, I did not desire to preserve that memory, so no photo, sorry.)

These were our lovely seats.  Notice the speed posted on the sign - 300 km/hr.  We were moving.

 It was rainy all day, so everything seemed a bit hazy.  But once again we got to see a lot of beautiful scenery, buildings with all sorts of fabulous detail that we just don't see at home.

 There was a lot, a lot of uphill walking to reach the mausoleum.  This was the most interesting part of the walk - not stairs - kind of a ramp.  A super slippery ramp from the rain.  But we made it to the top.  (These stairs go up to the top of the building that is in the very first picture.)

 Awesome door handles.

So we made it all the way to the top after probably 30 minutes of climbing.  We go inside and low and behold...  A gift shop.  I am so not joking.  It was so strange.  There was one large room, all open.  There were story boards with more information about the mausoleum, but the story boards ran along the outside of the room with gift shop type items in the middle. 

We were truly baffled.  That was it?  So we saw some more stairs, leading further up.  Maybe there was more?  (Nope.  But we climbed another 15 minutes or so, sweated a ton more, and made it to the top of the mountain.  There were so many trees that we couldn't get a good picture that showed we made it to the top, but we did.  My husband did get a nice shot of me during the final climb - I kind of fell behind.)

The upside was that after walking up all that way we got to walk down.  That went very well.  Then, since the mausoleum was in a huge park area, we wandered around and saw more.  There was a neat museum, but it was all in Chinese so we weren't really sure what we were looking at. 

The man's history involved some sort of battle.

(But my favorite part of the museum was this wild, copper face on the front desk).

More neat buildings and some awesomely huge concrete animal sculptures ended our day.

See on,
Julee

Post 123. Shopping and Dinos in China.

So on my last day 'alone' in China I was bored enough of walking to the same park and starbucks area that I braved a cab on my own.  I had a nice map that had the places I wanted to go in both English and Chinese characters, and the concierge assured me I would be fine. 

Visiting a shopping area maybe wasn't highest on my list of desired places to go, but there was not a lot of tourist type activities that were within an hour drive of the hotel, and I really did not want to take a cab 90 miles away and risk not being able to get back.

So I headed to the downtown shopping center.  In the back of my mind I kept hoping for some sort of rustic market, where small vendors sold food, baskets, jewelry, whatever.   But this shopping mall, almost three or four malls really, was as modern as any U.S. mall.  But for adventure I wandered a bit outside of the shopping areas and found two excellent parks.

 

 

 

The entrance to the shopping mall, and an interesting food stand.

 



 

 

 



 I liked the shape of the building above, then the Nike store - nice!  And the Chinese also care about your safety on stairs.

 

I'm not completely sure I understood the message of this picture, but I'm not terribly good with icons or the abstract.  Interesting though.  This was just hanging on one of the glass walls outside a clothing store.



 

 I found one bookstore and wandered around for about a half hour.  I found some photography that I could understand since - yeah - all pictures. 

 I liked the neat art-work that part of this clothing store's display.  Look close at how the people made of string were created.  Neat.

 These metal characters were outside of a bar.  (It had a sign that said "Bar" so I'm guessing it means what I think it means, but it was closed so I couldn't go inside.)

 A street view.

 

The most authentic looking area all day.  

 

A movie theatre.

 

The shopping center area only took up a little over two hours of my day, so when I got back to the hotel I still have 4 hours until my husband would be finished working for the day.  We had talk about taking the train to Nanjing on Saturday, so I figured I would use the rest of my free time to see what a Chinese amusement part was like.  China Dinosaur Park here I come.

 

 



 Getting into the park took me a while.  There were lots of people just standing around outside of the ticket booth when I arrived so I wasn't sure what was going on.  None of the price signs were in English, and it kind of looks like maybe ticket prices varied by what time of day you entered - and there was something about 3:30 so I thought maybe cheap tickets started later and people were just waiting.

Eventually I realized it was only 2 pm, so yeah, that wasn't right.  And then after about 10 minutes of thinking and watching I saw a sign that said - in English - that the outside attractions were closed for a little while because of the weather.  Huh?  It was... humid.  It was not raining, it was lightening, it was not stormy, and it was not that hot.  It was humid.  I foudn that baffling.  Also, isn't like the whole park outside?  What exactly is open?  Finally there was one lady who bought a ticket and I watched her go through the gates.  So I went to the ticket counter to buy a ticket too.  The lady tried to tell me that the park was closing at 5 pm, so that took me 5 minutes to figure out.  (I didn't care - I just wanted to see the scenery.)  And the scenery did not disappoint.

 I watched two live shows, a bird show and a walrus show.  Pretty much like English shows.  The parrot drove a bicycle on a wire, an emu ran out on stage, the walruses played with a ball and did flips.  The rollercoaster ran twice in the two hours I was at the park.  I saw the log ride go once.  I did not see any other rides with riders.

The trip back to the hotel continued the excitement since when I tried to get a cab four men rushed me - I assume telling me I could not have the cab.  (No English now.)  Okay, okay.  I won't take the cab.  I'm thinking maybe there was a line, but who knows.  Then a guy in a silver car tried to talk to me, I'm thinking he was telling me that he could drive me.  But his car was silver and the cabs are light green.  I read the travel books, only official cabs for me. 

Luckily I had prepared for this possibility and the Dino Park was only a little more than a mile from the hotel, and it was straight down one road.  So I just walked back, getting to enjoy more of the Changzhou scenery, and I was treated to a few more cute dinos.

 And soon my hotel was in sight.

See on,
Julee

Post. 122. Calming park in Changzhou. Plus a Starbucks.

My second and third day in China were spent wandering around the hotel while my husband worked.  We had seen some sculptures and a park nearby the hotel during the cab ride to Tianning Temple, so I figured my first goal was to find those.  (It'll take a long story before you'll hear again, so a preview  success!)

But first I had to cross the street.  Holy Moly.  Each direction had six to eight lanes for cars, another lane for mopeds and bicycles, and then there were pedestrians.  I had read that pedestrians do not have the right of way like they do in the US, so I knew to be careful.  There were lights for pedestrians at this intersections, and there other people I could cross with, so I made it across without incident.  But boy, it really is everybody for themselves.  The mopeds and bicycles especially, seemed to ignore the traffic lights, occasionally driving right out into traffic.  It was wild.  (This intersection actually had a traffic cop around 8 and 5 pm.  He gave harsh words to mopeds and pedestrians who failed to stop where they were supposed to, and I saw him give one car a ticket for turning when he wasn't supposed to.  So the government is trying to enforce rules.)  And that helped my comfort level during crossing.

The next intersection I got to was without lights for pedestrians, and the cross-walk was kind of crooked, and the some of the traffic signals were obscured by trees - so I couldn't see when the left turn was green.  I watched a couple cross the road and they stopped right in the middle to wait a while.  There was even this strange marking in the middle of the cross-walk like it was a spot for stopping.  But I wasn't sure I was up for standing in the middle of the road as cars whizzed right by me, so I turned around and did not make it across.  A photo of the intersection where I turned around is below.  (I obviously should have taken more time to look at the photo I shot before I turned around.  This photo shows absolutely no chaos, but I swear it appeared crazy and disorganized, and unimaginably dangerous.  If you look closely at how the cross-walk goes, you can see that it kind of seems to stop in the middle.  Plus the intersection is wider than it appears here too, I just wasn't brave enough try that first day out.)

But I had made it across the first intersection, and I had actually passed a park I just hadn't been sure it was the right park. 

But it was the right park and it was glorious.  It was so green, it had rose sculptures, and water, and tai chi, and a playground, and a small children's amusement park, and trees and flowers.  I must have walked for two hours on my first excursion to the park.

 

 

 

It was very hot, even at 8 am in the morning, primarily because of the 100% humidity.  So while the park was glorious, I was just as excited about the Starbucks right next to the park.  The building that Starbucks was in was beautiful, and I could order in English - yipee.  I happily ordered myself a venti iced latte.  It wasn't until I ordered another iced drink the next day that I remembered I wasn't supposed to have ice.  Whoops.  Luckily I did not have any trouble.

(The Starbucks is the brown building.  The tallest building way in the back, you can barely make it out, but it says 'Traders' in red at the top, that was our hotel.)

See on,
Julee

 

 

Post 121. Changzhou I'm loving you.

So I'm back from an exciting week in China, with tons of photos and stories.  Overall I loved the trip, although it certainly had its scary and challenging moments.

Day 1.  Tianning Temple.  (Isn't the detail at the top of the temple just gorgeous?)

(We flew into Shanghai Sunday night and had the hotel pick us up and drive us the three hours to Traders Fudu in Changzhou.  The hotel is the taller building on the right that says 'Traders' way up high.)

Since we had traveled nearly 24 hours to arrive, the first day basically involved dinner and sleeping.  But Monday we were up and out the door to Tianning Temple.  This was a beautiful Buddhist pagoda.  There were gardens and sculptures galore.  A myriad of details, too many photos to share everything. 

The detail at the bottom of the temple was incredible too, all that carved white rock, it surrounded the whole temple.

Here was a particularly vibrant character inside one of the building on the grounds of the temple.  What you cannot see is a pad for kneeling that was in front of each Buddha where you could pray and a box where you could put money.  There must have been a hundred of these praying stations throughout the temple area.

The gardens also contained all sorts of praying stations like the area below.  There was incense burning, although it is hard to see in the photo.

We think it was also some sort of monestary where monks lived at one time, however there were no guide books available, the signs were all in Chinese, and no one spoke English to talk to us about what we were seeing. 

Here is one view of Changzhou from near the top.  Changzhou is a city of approximately 4 million people.

We had walked around the grounds for maybe 45 minutes, and then my husband noticed someone inside the pagoda. We had not seen a way in.  So we went and looked harder and sure enough, despite some construction we could go in.  However, after some hand waving and furious pointing by the security guard we figured out we needed to purchase a second ticket to go inside.   Once inside there were Buddhas all over, essentially the rooms, all 15 or 16 floors, were in a ring with quadrants of displays.  (There were a few middle floors that were still under construction that we couldn't see.)  The security guard's helpful gesturing again helped us understand we were proceed in a clockwise fashion.  (Despite 4 million people, one of the amazing parts of the whole trip was the distinctive lack of people anywhere outside.  Inside the pagoda there was no one we could just watch to determine proper behavior.)
 
This was my favorite floor, the room with the crystal Buddhas.  The lights in the ceiling changed color so the room changed from red to blue to green to white back to red.

Here are a few more of the neat details that we saw.

 

 

 

 

More tomorrow.

See on,
Julee