6/2 - Nanjing

We woke up sorta early the next morning to drag ourselves up to the rooms we had originally wanted, and then to set out to the Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum. By the time we got dumplings and canned coffee, it was around 12. So not a rushed day. I couldn't really tell you what I thought of Nanjing overall, except that it doesn't have a lot of bars that we could find. I mean, my impression was that it was a nice, modern city that reminded me of New York, but I felt drugged and lethargic with a massive headache that whole day, the precursor to the full on blechness I'd feel in Shanghai. Like I said, probably the bad fish at the Guangzhou airport.

We took the convenient tourist bus for about an hour and a half to Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum, a not particularly attractive but rather impressive edifice for the tomb of the Father of the Country. While climbing the steps to the top, I did a double take when I saw a soldier wearing a Guomindang uniform. I looked around and saw a lot of them. It turned out that they were actors shooting a movie. Still, pretty freaky to see, as if you went to Moscow and suddenly saw hundreds of guys in Soviet uniforms. In general, it's odd to come to the tomb and see so much Nationalist iconography, as it's pretty much taboo outside of the tomb and Sino-Japanese war serials. Once again, I had my set of reflections on Sun Yat-Sen, whether he'd have remained a national/international hero had he lived longer, whether he's someone that deserves praise, having crafted the nationalist framework that the CCP clings to to this day. Hard to say. All I know is that circling Sun Yat-Sen's coffin is one of the only times I have seen the Chinese keep perfectly quiet and fully respectful of anything.

After that, we went to a pretty unremarkable temple solely because it was included in the ticket price. There was a nice nine story pagoda designed by an American that we climbed to get a view of the city. I actually got incredibly dizzy climbing the steps and was terrified by the time I got to the top. The view was also made somewhat less dramatic by the Nanjing haze. Actually, I won't blame it on the temple. I had an awful headache and just felt like a total wreck, and my traveling buddies weren't much better off: at one point, we just lay on the steps leading to the temple while Sarah and Michelle ate corn. For like an hour.

Eventually, we made it down to the Nanjing University area. Nanjing University makes Yunnan Normal University look like a horse barn, real fancy and with a ton of foreigners. I hate seeing other foreigners in China. Partly, it's my own general misanthropy, but I feel like a lot of them have weird reasons for being in China, either to exploit China or because they have weird sexual fetishes, or whatever. I had coffee which enabled me to get through the rest of the night, and then we had some pretty mediocre Korean food next to the university. We immediately cursed ourselves after passing by a million better looking food joints, and crawfish, which I would have loved to have but never got a chance to try in China for whatever reason. We spent the rest of the night wandering around Nanjing searching for a bar, with no luck. It seemed like we were in a damn dry county. Finally, we found The Castle, a bar that seemed to be in the basement of the city drum tower, with the surliest bartenders in all of China (a girl literally threw the bar menu at me). Not the nicest place to have a drink, but they had a good deal on wine and after a few glasses, we were relaxed and spent the night chatting about the trip and life. A pleasant end to an admittedly wasted day.