Purple Mountain in Nanjing

May 7, 2007 Monday

Hongxia Huang was assigned to be our tour guide. I am never sure how the student is chosen. Qualifications? Lottery Loser? Anyway, she is a lovely young woman who took us to see the sights in the Purple mountain, which is just on the outskirts of Nanjing. This trip would have been impossible without her.

Nanjing is a city of trees. Even very wide streets (6 lanes) have a canopy of green. It looks like the trees are trimmed to spread sideways after they reach a certain height.

First, we went to the Sun Yat-sen tomb. The roof tiles are blue instead of yellow, but in all other circumstances, it is a royal tomb. The taxi dropped us off at the entrance to the parking lot. There was a walk through the shops area and then up a long corridor of greenery to the start of the steps. The flower gardens are all just potted plants arranged in complicated patterns.

Each building had a flight of steps in and out as we went up the hill. The final push to where Sun Yat-sen is buried is 392 steps. It was tough, but all of those flights that we have been doing to get to our apartment paid off. At least we weren’t carrying a toddler. Many, many people were. (I’m counting this as 16 flights)
Then we took a tram to another section of the park.

We visited the Beamless hall (1 flight), which is a large structure made of brick with a vaulted arch construction. It had wax people displays of Sun Yat-sen’s life and important events in the beginning of the Kuomintang. Each display had an English explanation

We then wandered to the Linggu pagoda. Ms Huang was very good about asking for directions if she wasn’t sure so we never went out of our way.

I said that I was willing to walk to the pagoda ( 3 flights), but totally unwilling to climb to the top. After I saw the staircase, I really knew that I made a good decision.

I think that she was a little relieved.

It was getting to be lunchtime (and Chuck’s tummy alarm goes off promptly). I had spotted a vegetarian restaurant near the entrance to the pagoda, so suggested that we stop for a nosh and a rest.

The waitress helped Ms Huang order, assuring her that westerners loved the choices that she had made. We had soup, a sweet and sour fried something, a strudel with vegetable innards, a green vegetable and noodles in broth.

I had my picture taken with the turtle, in honor of Purple lightning, who came in 6^th in the turtle race.

After lunch we walked back toward the entrance, stopping at another very smoky Buddhist temple (2 flights) and took a taxi back to our hotel. We needed a little rest.

Our room had been very warm and the air conditioner did not blow out cool air, so before we left, Ms Huang had told the desk our plight. When we were resting, a woman came to the door with a new TV remote. I was making motions that the TV wasn’t the problem, but she came in and started working her remote. Then she tried the old remote and realized that it wasn’t broken. I pointed to the air conditioner (blowing warmly) and she showed me that the switches moved. Right, bitch. Notice that they were in the correct positions for cool, 15 degrees, and high fan!! She left and I called Ping. He called the desk and then they called us and said that in ½ hour it would be cool. It was cooler, but never really cool.

We went on our own to the Zonghua Gate. It is a remnant of the wall around Nanjing that was built in 1386. The mortar was glutinous rice (super strong). There were ramps that would let both people and horses and carriages go to the top.

At this point we were ½ way to the top. (4 flights) The wax soldiers are wearing uniforms of the time.

Flat Isabel looking at the guard buildings and downtown Nanjing.

We went to a very nice restaurant in a 5 star hotel. Ms Huang had written the address for us. Chuck had found it in the guide book. We had pickled baby bok choy, cold pork (sort of the texture of corned beef), sauteed eels, vegetables with red bell peppers, and yellow conger fish (a local delicacy) in spicy sauce.

Our room is now a little cooler. It doesn’t help that because the room key has to be in a slot to connect the electricity, every time we leave the room the air conditioner turns off.

26 flights