Showing posts with label Nanjing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nanjing. Show all posts
Feb 3, 2011
Oct 26, 2010
中國 (China) - Day 18
Beijing - Nanjing - Day 17
Oct 24, 2010
Last Night in Nanjing - Day 19
Aided by a dictionary and a few helpful Chinese girls, Sophia and I managed to get three train tickets to Shanghai departing tomorrow morning. Beijing train station fades in comparison to Nanjing railway station, at least when it comes to the amount of hassle, noise and general disorder. I have a feeling that we should get there well in time before our train leaves. The tickets cost us almost as much as our Beijing-Nanjing ones! (About 15EUR for a 75 min train ride is not cheap in China. But hey, it's Shanghai, the most expensive place one can find in Middle Kingdom... Remind me why we are going there again?!)
Our last afternoon in Nanjing was spent in Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, a quite gloomy place commemorating the 300,000 thousand civilians who died in the "Rape of Nanjing"; this nice little atrocity conducted by the Japanese in the 1930s. Even to this day the Chinese seem to feel very upset about this event (and I wouldn't deny them the right to feel pissed off at the Japanese), so the memorial hall was in no way an impartial or some sort of reconciliatory effort from the Chinese side. If I were a Japanese visting, I'd definitely get affected by the hostile environment.
Taking a bus to the memorial hall was a rather fun experience, because of the crazy traffic. We were in awe of how our driver (a girl who looked our age) navigated the streets without hitting all the scooters, pedestrians and bikers.
The rest of the night was spent hunting for something warm to eat. We were informed by our Taiwanese roommate that the Mandarin part in our vegan passport is written in an old variant of Chinese, which is harder for mainland Chinese people to understand... No wonder they never get the message! It generally works better to just point at the pictures of cow udders and pigs while franticly shaking your head, then point at carrots and nod as if your life depended upon it.
We also had another Chinese girl write down the simplified characters for meat, eggs and milk so we might show that to the food vendors and shop owners.
It's still possible to find decent grub if your willing to look for a little while. And as we've mentioned earlier, tofu is ubiquitous.
Now we have to go and get our sh*t together and get ready for bed. We'll report to you from Shanghai!
//R
Our last afternoon in Nanjing was spent in Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, a quite gloomy place commemorating the 300,000 thousand civilians who died in the "Rape of Nanjing"; this nice little atrocity conducted by the Japanese in the 1930s. Even to this day the Chinese seem to feel very upset about this event (and I wouldn't deny them the right to feel pissed off at the Japanese), so the memorial hall was in no way an impartial or some sort of reconciliatory effort from the Chinese side. If I were a Japanese visting, I'd definitely get affected by the hostile environment.
Taking a bus to the memorial hall was a rather fun experience, because of the crazy traffic. We were in awe of how our driver (a girl who looked our age) navigated the streets without hitting all the scooters, pedestrians and bikers.
The rest of the night was spent hunting for something warm to eat. We were informed by our Taiwanese roommate that the Mandarin part in our vegan passport is written in an old variant of Chinese, which is harder for mainland Chinese people to understand... No wonder they never get the message! It generally works better to just point at the pictures of cow udders and pigs while franticly shaking your head, then point at carrots and nod as if your life depended upon it.
We also had another Chinese girl write down the simplified characters for meat, eggs and milk so we might show that to the food vendors and shop owners.
It's still possible to find decent grub if your willing to look for a little while. And as we've mentioned earlier, tofu is ubiquitous.
Now we have to go and get our sh*t together and get ready for bed. We'll report to you from Shanghai!
//R
Oct 23, 2010
About Nanjing - Day 17 & 18
To our disappointment the traffic in Nanjing isn't any quiet-er than that of Beijing, both in the number of cars (and electric bikes, which are apparently the thing to have in China) and the sound level. Honking is used to signal pretty much everything, and do people have much to say!
English signs are much fewer, which is to be expected, but the spelling hasn't improved since Beijing. The funniest sings are the ones that have clearly been translated by a computer, with no regard for the context the words are in ("slip and fall carefully" = caution, slippery floor, "the green grass is afraid of your feet" = don't walk on the grass, "sehll" = shell, "love in the Paris" = the name of a wedding store, "drirking" and "oceries" = signs in a food market). But don't get us wrong, we do appreciate that they try!
We've had some trouble finding a good restaurant, but loads of snacks are for sale everywhere. This led to us wanting to have a picnic at a nearby lake, to try out all the interesting looking foods (everything from sugar glaced fruits to pastry like buns with cabbage(?) inside). We do LOVE to be food tourists. But our picnic plans were interrupted by rain. So we had lunch on Ruut's bed instead (she announced that anyone who spilled something would be killed), trying out all the foods we'd bought, no matter how weird looking. An orange cone formed thing I thought was a sweet potato turned out to be made of some sort of rice, and quite tasty.
The Hostel we're staying at is called "Sunflower International Youth Hostel" and is located near a shopping district. Just around the corner there are streets upon streets of small shops selling everything from clothes, tourist junk and food, to animals (in terrible conditions, dozens of turtles in one glass jar, just laying on top of each other and rabbits in so small cages that they can't move... It just makes you sick to see). There's a metro station about 5 minutes walk away and a big food market (like a tiny Prisma) across the street. But if you want toilet paper to be included you should look elsewhere for lodgings. Otherwise we're quite happy, not counting the overprized food upstairs in the hostel's restaurant. This place is quite similar to our Happy Dragon, the biggest difference being that there are more Chinese tourists here than at Happy Dragon.
Though the weather hasn't improved much since Beijing, it's been raining all day, the temperature is much warmer. We've been able to keep our window open and walk around wearing only one layer! But still, we'll continue to wish for sunshine and rain-free days.
//Sophia
English signs are much fewer, which is to be expected, but the spelling hasn't improved since Beijing. The funniest sings are the ones that have clearly been translated by a computer, with no regard for the context the words are in ("slip and fall carefully" = caution, slippery floor, "the green grass is afraid of your feet" = don't walk on the grass, "sehll" = shell, "love in the Paris" = the name of a wedding store, "drirking" and "oceries" = signs in a food market). But don't get us wrong, we do appreciate that they try!
We've had some trouble finding a good restaurant, but loads of snacks are for sale everywhere. This led to us wanting to have a picnic at a nearby lake, to try out all the interesting looking foods (everything from sugar glaced fruits to pastry like buns with cabbage(?) inside). We do LOVE to be food tourists. But our picnic plans were interrupted by rain. So we had lunch on Ruut's bed instead (she announced that anyone who spilled something would be killed), trying out all the foods we'd bought, no matter how weird looking. An orange cone formed thing I thought was a sweet potato turned out to be made of some sort of rice, and quite tasty.
The Hostel we're staying at is called "Sunflower International Youth Hostel" and is located near a shopping district. Just around the corner there are streets upon streets of small shops selling everything from clothes, tourist junk and food, to animals (in terrible conditions, dozens of turtles in one glass jar, just laying on top of each other and rabbits in so small cages that they can't move... It just makes you sick to see). There's a metro station about 5 minutes walk away and a big food market (like a tiny Prisma) across the street. But if you want toilet paper to be included you should look elsewhere for lodgings. Otherwise we're quite happy, not counting the overprized food upstairs in the hostel's restaurant. This place is quite similar to our Happy Dragon, the biggest difference being that there are more Chinese tourists here than at Happy Dragon.
Though the weather hasn't improved much since Beijing, it's been raining all day, the temperature is much warmer. We've been able to keep our window open and walk around wearing only one layer! But still, we'll continue to wish for sunshine and rain-free days.
//Sophia
From the North to the South - Day 16 to 17
Bei means north in Chinese, while Nan means south... so that's right, at the moment we are writing to you from Nanjing!
Couldn't write a thing yesterday, since our hostel computers don't like us visiting forbidden pages (like blogger) through proxys... but sneaky as we are, we found a way to get around all the blocks and tadaa! Let's hope this will post...
So, we arrived yesterday morning, after an interesting night on train T65.
At around 9 pm we started heading for Beijing Main Railway station. When we bought the tickets, mid-day, the huge hall inside the train station was almost empty.. now, late in the evening; the place was packed. People sleeping and sitting wherever they found some empty space on the floor. After walking through security and finding the waiting hall we where supposed to be in (It's quite easy as long as you know your train number, which is wirtten on the ticket. Large boards everywhere, and even though they are in Chinese the numbers are not, so first number - waiting hall for soft seat, second number - waiting hall for hard seat. So the second number, hall 6, in our case) we decided to follow everybody else's example, and set up camp on the floor. We figured we'd have to spend quite some time here, but we didn't mind, there where shops to be explored and post cards to be posted. This was, however, not the case, and "boarding" started almost an hour before the train left, so be on time!
With everyone else in the huge waiting hall, we started moving slowly towards our platform (says what platform on the board, but just follow the hoards of people heading the same direction). Turns out we should have ran as some of them did - there was no space to put our rinkkas by the time we got to the train!
We need not worry though, being the only young girls, and definitely the only foreigners, we soon had help, and our rinkkas fit without problem.
We had settled in for a long, boring train ride, and brought with us books and neck-pillows. Well, we never opened our books, since when the train left, at 10.54 pm, the only one speaking any English in our wagon had already forced the Chinese sitting opposite to us to move, and now sat at our table teaching us complicated Chinese card games.
Or well, tried to teach us. Everyone around us in the wagon decided we were lousy at the games we played (I still have no idea what the rules of any of the games we played were? Or the point with the games? As said, complicated.) so the three of us all had a personal coach (and a huge audience) telling us what card we should put next. Ruut's coach gave up, while mine was on fire - ie. I kept winning and Ruut loosing. This should give you a picture of how much WE actually played, mainly we where just card holders, but laughing along with all the Chinese in the vagon (probably laughing at us) was fun.
We then decided it was our turn to teach them some Finnish games, but apparently they were all too simple for their liking.
After spending most of the night speaking to the one guy who spoke English (well except for Sophia, who had her ipod with her and happily slept most of the night) and trying to sleep in awkward positions. (It's not that we found the hardseats that hard, but small, very small...) suddenly 10 hours had passed, and we would soon arrive in Nanjing.
All of us tired and hungry, with aching backs and feet (my feet honestly swelled to double the size... the pain. I guess that's why it's not reccomended to sit 10 hours without getting up once... Au, au, au.) we still felt we had no right to complain. At least we had seats. There were a whole lot of people with only tickets to the train, no seats, and they honestly stood most of the night, except for when someone was kind enough to give them their seat for a while or the whole row squeezed in an extra passanger.
During the whole train ride we were treated like princess's, no one ever wanted our seats, they let us change seats freely to better seats (window seats!) and even keep our feet on their seats... and the princess treatment didn't stop when getting of; they wanted to help carry our stuff (and of course we could not take our rinkkas down from the shelves ourselves...), followed us to the metro, helped us buy metro tickets, and asked if we wanted them to follow us to the hostel, so we could be sure we'd find. After being rather DIY the whole trip, all this kindness and helpfullness was a bit overwhelming, but very welcome considering how tired we were.
Even though the man who helped us with the metro tickets (he and his wife got on a couple stops before Nanjing. He spoke good English and had been in Sweden) thought we should buy better tickets than hard seat tickets, I disagree, since it was truly an experience! Can't imagine another way to get closer to the average Chinese (although don't expect to fit in... we where definitely the objects of amusement in our vagon, with people honestly staring at you everytime you opened your eyes, since the ones without seats really had nothing better to do... but you'd think they'd get tired of staring after 10 hours!).
However, we only recomend hard seat for 10-hour journeys (or over) for masochists (and if you're really hard core you don't even buy a seat ticket, of course) since we didn't feel all too awesome in the end, and sleeping was left at a minimum. (Sleeping was so uncomfortable, and the Chinese were all too eager to talk with us. Yes, even although only one of them could speak English)
But as said, it was truly an unique experience, and we arrived in Nanjing yesterday, at around 10.30 am, happy, although very tired.
//H
Couldn't write a thing yesterday, since our hostel computers don't like us visiting forbidden pages (like blogger) through proxys... but sneaky as we are, we found a way to get around all the blocks and tadaa! Let's hope this will post...
So, we arrived yesterday morning, after an interesting night on train T65.
At around 9 pm we started heading for Beijing Main Railway station. When we bought the tickets, mid-day, the huge hall inside the train station was almost empty.. now, late in the evening; the place was packed. People sleeping and sitting wherever they found some empty space on the floor. After walking through security and finding the waiting hall we where supposed to be in (It's quite easy as long as you know your train number, which is wirtten on the ticket. Large boards everywhere, and even though they are in Chinese the numbers are not, so first number - waiting hall for soft seat, second number - waiting hall for hard seat. So the second number, hall 6, in our case) we decided to follow everybody else's example, and set up camp on the floor. We figured we'd have to spend quite some time here, but we didn't mind, there where shops to be explored and post cards to be posted. This was, however, not the case, and "boarding" started almost an hour before the train left, so be on time!
With everyone else in the huge waiting hall, we started moving slowly towards our platform (says what platform on the board, but just follow the hoards of people heading the same direction). Turns out we should have ran as some of them did - there was no space to put our rinkkas by the time we got to the train!
We need not worry though, being the only young girls, and definitely the only foreigners, we soon had help, and our rinkkas fit without problem.
We had settled in for a long, boring train ride, and brought with us books and neck-pillows. Well, we never opened our books, since when the train left, at 10.54 pm, the only one speaking any English in our wagon had already forced the Chinese sitting opposite to us to move, and now sat at our table teaching us complicated Chinese card games.
Or well, tried to teach us. Everyone around us in the wagon decided we were lousy at the games we played (I still have no idea what the rules of any of the games we played were? Or the point with the games? As said, complicated.) so the three of us all had a personal coach (and a huge audience) telling us what card we should put next. Ruut's coach gave up, while mine was on fire - ie. I kept winning and Ruut loosing. This should give you a picture of how much WE actually played, mainly we where just card holders, but laughing along with all the Chinese in the vagon (probably laughing at us) was fun.
We then decided it was our turn to teach them some Finnish games, but apparently they were all too simple for their liking.
After spending most of the night speaking to the one guy who spoke English (well except for Sophia, who had her ipod with her and happily slept most of the night) and trying to sleep in awkward positions. (It's not that we found the hardseats that hard, but small, very small...) suddenly 10 hours had passed, and we would soon arrive in Nanjing.
All of us tired and hungry, with aching backs and feet (my feet honestly swelled to double the size... the pain. I guess that's why it's not reccomended to sit 10 hours without getting up once... Au, au, au.) we still felt we had no right to complain. At least we had seats. There were a whole lot of people with only tickets to the train, no seats, and they honestly stood most of the night, except for when someone was kind enough to give them their seat for a while or the whole row squeezed in an extra passanger.
During the whole train ride we were treated like princess's, no one ever wanted our seats, they let us change seats freely to better seats (window seats!) and even keep our feet on their seats... and the princess treatment didn't stop when getting of; they wanted to help carry our stuff (and of course we could not take our rinkkas down from the shelves ourselves...), followed us to the metro, helped us buy metro tickets, and asked if we wanted them to follow us to the hostel, so we could be sure we'd find. After being rather DIY the whole trip, all this kindness and helpfullness was a bit overwhelming, but very welcome considering how tired we were.
Even though the man who helped us with the metro tickets (he and his wife got on a couple stops before Nanjing. He spoke good English and had been in Sweden) thought we should buy better tickets than hard seat tickets, I disagree, since it was truly an experience! Can't imagine another way to get closer to the average Chinese (although don't expect to fit in... we where definitely the objects of amusement in our vagon, with people honestly staring at you everytime you opened your eyes, since the ones without seats really had nothing better to do... but you'd think they'd get tired of staring after 10 hours!).
However, we only recomend hard seat for 10-hour journeys (or over) for masochists (and if you're really hard core you don't even buy a seat ticket, of course) since we didn't feel all too awesome in the end, and sleeping was left at a minimum. (Sleeping was so uncomfortable, and the Chinese were all too eager to talk with us. Yes, even although only one of them could speak English)
But as said, it was truly an unique experience, and we arrived in Nanjing yesterday, at around 10.30 am, happy, although very tired.
//H
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