Nanjing

After a good night's sleep in my cosy top bunk, I woke to a whole a new landscape: paddy fields, buffalo ploughing the land, farmers in big Vietnamese style hats. We were still two or three hours from Nanjing, and the views continued to change.

Nanjing is another likeable city. We visited a huge 'scenic area' up on the hillside beyond the city, where cicadas sang almost deafeningly, toytown trains drove tourists around what looked like an extensive network of roadways, and a few 'sights' were dotted around. I opted out of the 392 steps up to Dr Sun's mausoleum and instead pottered the woodland walkways and relaxed with a cold drink. It all felt rather Malaysian, though actually quite a few places do.

In the afternoon we were let off the leash to roam freely, so I went with three others to Zhonghua Gate in the city wall. We had a quick shot at the archery on offer before exploring the site. There was lots to see, most of it well explained. The buildings on top of the walls have been reconstructed - we didn't realise quite what this meant until we got close enough to see that they were simply scaffolding, cased in plyboard on which polystyrene tiles had been stuck and painted to look like bricks! The whole 'gate' with its three courtyards (let the enemy in then shut the gate and shoot them from the walls), tunnel-like 'cave' accommodation for 3,000 soldiers, storage for half a million tons of food and so on is really a whole garrison rather than a gate.

We walked back via the very pretty canal area and semi-pedestrianised square and surrounding streets, where tour boats ply their trade, buildings are very traditional (even though I doubt they are very old), bridges have a wannabe Venice look and a squillion Chinese tourists throng. In the evening we wandered here again and were blown away by the twinkly lights, the even thicker throngs and oh, the kitsch of it. It was fabulous. Everythring that could be trimmed with coloured lights was gleaming, huge illuminated dragons and rotating circles glowed from the wall of a temple whose wall banked the canal, the whole place was unbelievable. But overall, the effect was rather lovely, maybe because of the happy buzzing crowd, maybe it had just been quite well done, and though it can only be described as complete Disneyfication, it worked.

Had fun getting ourselves fed, language being an issue, but we made friends with the staff in the restaurant quickly - I don't think they get many linguistically challenged foreigners willing to have a go without a tour guide.

This morning I went with Gursh to the Memorial to the Massacre of Nanjing. It was a very informative museum, extremely well done, and of course at times somewhat harrowing. But I do think it is important to learn about the horrors of a place's past in between enjoying the pretty bits. I won't even try to explain it all here, but in six weeks an estimated 300,000 civilians (including women, children, babies) and disarmed soldiers were slaughered by the Japanese - shot, bayoneted, drowned, burned or buried alive. In the first month 20,000 women between the ages of 11 and 76 were raped. There were numerous eyewitness accounts, photos proudly taken by the Japanese, even a Japanese newspaper egging on two officers who were engaged in a race to be the first to kill 150 people. I could go on...

Instead I will flick quickly to the scene outside the museum where we had a very interesting conversation with taxi driver... spurt after spurt of rapid and animated Chinese flew in response to our maps and hotel card (an essential communication device) and it really wasn't clear whether we were going or not, but we eventually set off with the driver clutching the four-street map on the back of the hotel card to the steering wheel.