The trip to Nanjing was planned by Chenrong of FUSSA and it was most enjoyable. Perhaps it was also due the people that went on the tour. The people included NCS students and FUSSA students.
5 of us from Da Jia Yuan woke up really early that morning and left for the train station. It was torturous after the previous night’s activities (Dinner @ White House with NTU). Nonetheless, we were all still full of energy and eagerly anticipating the Nanjing Trip.
Our tour guide met us at the station and it was a guy … a very experienced guy! This tour guide was really good though, too good in fact as he speaks with such ‘cheem’ words and I had major difficulty understanding whatever he was saying about Nanjing and her history, culture, etc …
First Stop :: Lunch – we went to this ulu place to eat … the food was awful (even their speciality dish salt water duck was awful!) There was even a auction going on adding noise pollution to the already very bad meal … yucks! That’s the problem with going on tours, you seldom get food which is good, because they arrange the cheapest food for you, more often that not.
2nd Stop :: Zhong Shan Ling ä¸å±±é™µ
This was the place that Sun Yat Sen was buried. His body is really at that place. The buildings I felt looks very much like the building in Taiwan. The Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall. The view from on top of the flight of stairs was really breath taking. Many stories were told by the tour guide, but I am afraid that my grasp of the chinese language only made me understand a little of whatever he said. Furthermore, even if my command of the chinese language was better, I doubt my memory was so good as to remember everything that the tour guide had said.
After that, we proceeded to Ling Gu Temple. The most notable structure of that place was the pagoda which had a splendid view from the top. Climbing that pagoda was one interesting experience for 2 reasons. Firstly, the pagoda had a very very small stairwell and it made climbing it difficult. Secondly, due to the first reason, some of the girls, namely kathy and jen, were making the climb up very very interesting. In general, they are already very “flamboyant” characters! Hmm … not such good a description. Probably, “animated” would be a better word. Yup, they really attract attention with their loud and funny antics.
Let me explain… they are ABCs (American Born Chinese) who are studying at Fudan University currently. Having grown up in New York they have American characteristics but they look Chinese. So, with their weird blend of Chinese, american accent and interesting sense of humour, they come across as very interesting individuals. They created “alter egoes” for alot of the guys, ranging from Li Gong Gong (Eunuch), Long Ge (Dragon Borther), Xiao Huang Bao (Little Yellow Puma), and Hua Bao (Flower Puma)?!?!, and Xiao Xing … go figure who they are … hahaha!
After that, we went to Ming Xiao Ling (Tomb of the First Ming Emperor, Zhu Yuan Zhang)
The tomb has not been opened as technology is not good enough to protect the items within, hence China has not decided to open up the tomb to the world. In a way its good, because like all the other tombs around the world, the items have all disintegrated due to the oxidation and climate of the world. Better the preserve the hitorical heritage then to see it and fulfil a temporary desire only.
That ended the itinerary for that day … we went back to our hotel and after which, we got the tour guide to drop us at the famous street in Nanjing, Fu Zi Miao. This is somewhat similar to the Cheng Huang Miao we have here in Shanghai. Ate dinner with some of the people (9 of us) at some posh restaurant. Food was good, but wasn’t enough to fill our tummies … haha … we are all big fat eaters! After dinner, went to look around the place … there was loads of shops … woooooo!!!
must clarify here … shuhui, yvonne and i were shopping for min chuan … he wanted to get some clothes, so we decided to help him update his wardrobe. quite interesting to shop for other people. everytime i get the urge to buy something i just let someone else try it … then if someone else buys it, i won’t buy it anymore since i wouldn’t want to wear the same thing as someone else, right?! clever!!! In the end, I still ended up buying a shirt and it was more expensive that the 2 shirts that min chuan bought … oops!!!
after roaming the streets, we decided to go in search of MASSAGE …
we chance upon a massage place which was very classy and very good … cost 68rmb for 90 mins and it included light snacks, drinks and fruits … the service was good, the massage was good (not the best … the best was still at beijing) and totally no regrets going for that massage … BLISS!
Yvonne and shuhui, preparing for the massage!
Headed back to the quite cosy hotel and knocked out … Fa Yuan Hotel … (Law hotel) … literally!