Drive to Nanjing

May 6, 2007 Sunday

Up with the birds. We leave for Nanjing this morning and I wanted to do a load of laundry before we left. Wouldn’t you know it, this was the morning that the soap wouldn’t rinse out. I ran 2 extra rinse cycles before it was OK.

The university car came to pick us up promptly at 9:00. They sent two students to get us in the car. The driver doesn’t speak any English. 15 minutes to the highway and the sign that said that Nanjing was 151 K away. That is about 100 miles and at highway speeds, 2 hours was a good estimate.

We were happily rolling along, when suddenly all of the cars ahead of us were stopped. People were getting out of their cars. That never bodes well. Our first Chinese bouchon (that’s French for major traffic jam.) 45 minutes later we crawled by this:

We can’t even ask the driver what is going on. During this wait, I realized that if we are going to drive for 5 hours to Wuhan I’m going to need a lot of phrases written out for me. (Stop at the next rest plaza to use the facilities, being the most important.)

Prof. Ping was getting worried about us. We arrived about noon and he took us to the restaurant at the Guest House. It is one of the restaurants recommended in the guide book. We had duck, lima beans, cucumbers, sautéed greens, spicy beef fish and watermelon.

He wrote the Provincial Museum for us and also the name of the shopping district. He said that there were a lot of restaurants there. The museum was good. (1 flight) Interesting porcelain, bronzes, laquerware, but not too much of it. It closed at 5, so we took a cab directly to the shopping area. Walked around a bit and stopped at a dumpling place. With help from another patron, we got 3 kinds of dumplings and soup. It cost a big 31¥. For dessert, we shared a Häagen-Dazs cookie crunch sundae which cost twice as much.

Home to the guest house where a wedding was in full swing.

Unfortunately, the guest house does not have internet access. I also discovered that my cheap phone cards only work in Hefei. (Perhaps the reason that they are so cheap?) And to top things off, my cell phone needs more minutes. I will stop at a phone store tomorrow. I am feeling very cut off.

Only 1 flight today, I’m going be spoiled.