17/05 Nanjing:
Things I ate: today I woke up late and so didn’t really have breakfast. For lunch I found a small restaurant by walking away from the hostel in the opposite direction from the tourist area. I ate fried rice with baby bok choy and egg. In the afternoon I really needed a chocolate/sugar fix so I bought a chocolate-choc biscuit magnum from a stall. For dinner I went back to a restaurant I spotted on my first night here, and (in an effort to try some local dishes) chose an eggplant dish that I did not recognise. It turned out to be eggplant cooked in oil and garlic, and was quite nice.
Places I went: after lunch I went looking for the bus stop to catch the Y2 (that’s 游2 - tourist bus number 2) which goes to Mt Zijin, just west of Nanjing. This mountain has a number of historical sites, and the bus goes past all of them. There is also a shuttle bus that goes between some of the sights - it is free with an entry ticket to one of the sights. Unfortunately the information in the hostel’s lonely planet was sufficiently vague that I figured I could just go and work it out there and did not plan properly. Here is the information I needed: tickets are Y80 for the Sun Yat-sen mausoleum and a temple the name of which I have forgotten (it’s the last bus stop) and Y70 for Mingxiaoling (the tomb of the first Ming emperor). The shuttle bus runs from the mausoleum to the temple, and from the temple to the tomb, so visit the mausoleum. Not knowing this, I thought I would go to the temple - the most distant sight - and work my way back. Because the ticket price was so high (I didn’t realise it included the mausoleum) I decided to skip it but couldn’t get the shuttle bus without a ticket so had to get the public bus. When I got to the mausoleum I figured out the ticket situation and then decided to skip that too and come back some other time to see both of them. So the only place I actually visited was Mingxiaoling. This tomb is a (reconstructed) world heritage site. The public bus stop for it is down the road from the lower entrance, but I think it’s actually not such a bad way to enter, as you then approach by (I think) the historically accurate path. The first part is lined by pairs of stone animals which symbolise various things, the second by stone generals. The tomb itself is buried (you can walk around the hill) but several buildings and bridges of the tomb complex survive in whole or in part, as well as some later inscriptions. After leaving through the upper entrance (near the tomb) I tried to find another bus stop but the directions from a policeman and a ticket office woman led me in the opposite direction to the one I was intending to go, and in fifteen minutes I discovered that I was back at the city gate - the same one I had climbed when I visited the wall the other day. I got off the bus early to visit an ‘old books’ bookshop I had spotted that morning, and then walked back to the hostel. A number of the buses in Nanjing are operated by the ‘Argos’ bus company, and have that name on the front, next to the route number. It amuses me to think that when I ride on it I am nearly an Argonaut.
People I spoke to: No-one in particular. Strangely, when I was looking for the bus in the afternoon and asked ‘where is the bus stop for the number 2 bus,‘ both people immediately replied, ‘not here!‘ (as though that weren’t obvious). At the restaurant where I had dinner the proprietor wanted to know whether I was American or New Zealander (for a change).
