Weekend in Nanjing

Why Nanjing?

Nanjing used to be the Chinese capital and has a lot of historical sites although many things were destroyed (mostly by the Japanese in the Nanjing massacre -> 6 weeks invasion, approx.250.000 deaths, pls. refer to Wikipedia if you're interested to know more). Nan Jing literally translated means Southern capital.

Nanjiing offers:

- some part of the large city wall still in place including some gates.

- emperor's tombs (Ming dynasty) as well as a memerial site for the Chinese (Dr. Sun Yatsen) who freed them from British rule

- a soon opening museum remembering the Nanjing massacre (we visited what was already there :-))

- the Yangtse river (third longest river of the world) with an old railway bridge

The overnight train there was quite crowded, but hygiene was okay (not excellent though). We didn't sleep that well.

When we arrived we drove into the mountains ("Purpurgoldberge", "Zijin Shan") to visit the tombs, the Sun Yatsen memorial site as well as some strange stone monument. The stone monument was quite high and didn't look that interesting, but the surroundings were nice and the story of it: An emperor let it be carved and thought he could let it be moved to another place far away. He thought he could do that because as an emperor he thought he has divine power. But even many people couldn't move it not even a little bit.

Another highlight was a buddhist printing house. The only traditional one still existing in China. They still product the books with handwork / manpower only. Amazing! Unfortunately, the books are in old Chinese letters. And I cannot even read perfectly the new Chinese letters!

So far for the text. I shall attach some Nanjing photos for your reference.