Nanjing

Having reached the end of my longest train journey so far I always knew I wasn’t going to fancy having to find the latest hostel, but given the instructions on its website I really didn’t fancy it. You have to question the extend of the staffs effort when the detailed instruction on the site say to make your way to Sanshan Jie underground station then “ask a local for directions”. I had spent the last two weeks trying to ask the locals for directions! Instead I consulted my Lonely Planet guide which go t me to the correct location but failed to mention the hostel was in fact a staircase at the back of the world’s smallest bookshop. I must have walked past it four or five times.

The hostel I had left in Chengdu was a bit worn down but made up for it with a cosy family feel where as the Sunflower International Hostel in Nanjing, despite the encouraging name, was just worn down. I didn’t mind as I was only staying one night and I did quite like their “please graffiti our walls” policy as well as the cat. It seems owning a pet is a crucial feature of any Chinese hostel.

When visiting any other country the level of pollution wouldn’t normally be the first thing I identified, but following the mess that was the Chengdu atmosphere, I was very pleased to see some sky in Nanjing and in fact a generally very clean city. 

As I am leading my description of my latest destination with a pollution update it may be obvious that there actually isn’t much in Nanjing. Having left the hostel I visited a park with an excruciating number of steps and then headed for a Buddhist temple. Ive often noticed people carrying their own supply of incense but this was the first time I had been given some sticks of my own. I had no idea what to do with them but the idea of adding any more incense to the air was not one I was going to entertain.

 

It had been a while since my last Drum Tower fix so I headed to the centre of the city to find one. This I managed but despite exploring the extent of the tower I failed to find a single drum that looked bigger than one you might find in an Argos catalogue. Im not sure they could have been used to warn the city of impending danger like those in previous cities.

Another of Nanjing’s popular sights is the man-made 447 meter Purple Mountain but a lack of bus maps and English speaking locals meant my quest to at least get anywhere near it failed miserably . Once again I found myself at the end of the line being shooed off the bus.

I returned to the hostel area to browse the local streets where Nanjing finally delivered. The streets offered traditional stalls where you could buy all the standard things such as t-shirts, souvenirs, bags etc but they also had some more obscure stalls like the animal and fish shops! The most memorable unfortunately being the few which sold rabbits, turtles and even cats and dogs in tiny cages. I’m pleased to report however that when one owner wasn’t looking I saw two rabbits escape out of a cage. Although I’m not sure life on the streets of Nanjing is necessarily better for a rabbit, I wasn’t going to point out the great escape to the owner.

One of Nanjing's canals lit up at night

Over my time in China I have heard and read a lot about Confucius, the innovative Chinese philosopher from about 2500 years ago, so I took the opportunity to visit the Confucian Temple that evening as it was still open and so close to the hostel. Im not sure how the widely respected thinker, famed for lines such as “Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles”, would react to the scene inside his temple found today. Following the annual Lantern festival a few weeks ago there are 3D wireframe and silk cartoons all over the temple resulting in children running and screaming everywhere, as well as a Bell and Drum tower which you can ring or beat for a price. Having said this, I had gone about a dozen temples in a row which all looked roughly the same, so I actually quite enjoyed it.

One of many temporary scenes set up in the Confucius Temple featuring the man himself

The following morning I was back at the station I had left under 24 hours ago to continue by journey onto Shanghai, however I intended to stop once more on the way. It would only take four hours to reach Shanghai but I have always planned to see the small town of Suzhou, so I took the relatively short 2 and a half hour train to my next, and by far smallest, destination. As the journey was so short I opted for the lowest class resulting in a lot of staring, a lot of locals trying to communicate and not a lot of space. But I did save a pound.