my son was not schooling on the 10th and 11th Nov, so we decided that we should make a trip to somewhere. initially, we wanted to head to beijing and as usual, i was slow in making the decision, so by 5th, i decided yes, beijing would be the right place to visit. thus, we started to purchase train tickets and was not able to. there were no vacancies available for the train that has the sleeping seat. what a let down.
the next day, after discussing with my wife, we decide to head to nanjing that is about 300km away from suzhou. nanjing was the capital during the 3 kingdoms and during the initial years of republic of china.
i sourced the hotel from ctrip and get joan help to book the hotel and D-train ticket the next day. we managed to get everything very smoothly.
like i explained in my other blog, i would be travelling on sunday as i would like to go riding on saturday.
day 1 - Suzhou, Nanjing, 1912, Presidential Palace, Fu Zi Miao and Xin Jie Kou
anyway, on sunday, we were at the train station by 8am for a 8:25am train. this is my first trip on the train in china so i do not know what to expect. the good thing was that i can speak, read and listen to mandarin. at the entrance of the train station, we were checked for ticket and our bags went through a x-ray machine. we looked at the sign-board indicating where to go for the queue for d406 that would take us to the nanjing, passing wuxi, changzhuo and zhenjiang.
the queue for d406 was long but since we have our seat number assigned so we are not in a hurry to queue. we get ourself a seat in the other lane for a later train... actually when the gate opened, we noticed many were like us, waiting at a nice seat instead of standing.
the speed of the train were 171km/h and at one point at the last stretch to nanjing, i saw the reading was 206km/h. if you noticed outside the train window, you could notice the train was moving very fast.
this is nanjing train station. if i remember correctly from what the guide told me, it was opened in year 2004, thus, it is pretty new but crowded.
we proceeded to guo xin hotel (国信大酒店) from the train station. after our lunch, the first place we visited is the 1912. it is a place that has many pubs and restaurants. the place actually does not look chinese other than the chinese characters used on the signboards.
after visit to 1912, we headed to the 总统府 (Presidential Palace) housed the office of the republic of china from 1912 to 1949.
sun yat-sen (孙中山) was sworn in as the president of republic of china at this presidential palace during 1912 after the last dynasty of china fall to kuomingtang (国民党). it was occupied by 2nd kuomingtang leader chiang kai-shek in 1927 but as the china warlord era and wwii, the palace was occupied by other till 1945 when chiang kai-shek government moved back from chongqing. in 1949, near the end of the chinese civil war, the communist forces capture nanjing and chiang kai-shek government fled to taiwan, and mao zedong declared the people's republic of china with capital in beijing.
in the afternoon we headed to fu zi miao walking street. it is similar to that of guan qian jie in suzhou. we did some shopping and by 6pm, we are ready to head back to hotel. we were by the road side waiting for taxi. we had try to board 5 taxi but non wanted to take us to our hotel because it is a changing shift time. so we walked further to a main road and managed to board a taxi back to our hotel.
xin jie kuo (新街口), our last stop for the day was a highend shopping area with lv, prada, guess, tods and many more. one of the mall had a last day promotion and they employed guards to control the crowd. every entrance and exit of escalators, there is a helper to ensure no one blocked the way. every well organised.
day 2 - Purple Mountain, Yangtze Bridge and Hunan Jie
after a hot and good breadfast, we together with the guide head to the purple mountain (紫金山) where the first and second leaders of kuomingtang were buried. the geomacy of this place is very good and it benefit their decendants.
the weather was very sunny and clear similar to that of yesterday. first we visited the Zhong Shan Mountain (中山陵) where Dr Sun Yat-Sen was buried.
can you see the characters? 天下为公 is what sun yat-sen was trying to tell that the "world belong to all"
we saw many groups of the students from one primary. they are so lively and playful. dashing up the steps, chatting among themselves, enjoying their lunch... woh, i love these kids.
the kids are here to learn history about china, who was the so called "president" of china, when was the place built? etc.
next we took an internal bus service to ling gu scenic area. this place is where the Koumingtang rebellion dead were buried.
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the external of "no pillar building"
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the internal of it. there is no pillar and it exhibits wax statues of various history.
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this is ling gu temple. we did not climbed up as the stairs are steep.
after this stop, we proceed to yangtze bridge. the bridge was on the other side of the nanjing. we were on the east and we need to travel to the west. the guide did not know how to get there by public buses so we took a taxi to nearby the bridge and took a public bus on to the bridge since taxis are not allow to stop on the bridge.
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this is a dual decks bridge. the lower deck is the rail deck and upper is for vehicles and people. the bridge was built from 1960 and completed by 1968 with a span of 1577m and a width of 19.5m. this was totally designed and contructed by the chinese with chinese self-developed material.
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another view of the bridge.
after the bridge, we headed back to our hotel and parted our guide who provided the service for the last two days at a daily rate of 150rmb. we will be all alone by ourselves that we have chosen to be.
after resting for a while in the room, we took a subway to hunan jie for dinner.
those chips on my palm are used to enter/exit of the subway station. this is for single trip. the subway was not crowded. we travelled for 4 stations that cost us 2rmb each.
there is a street of restaurants with many different types of food from various parts of china as well as international food such as thai, korean, japanese, etc. we wanted to try thai food as it looks good from the menu but we had to wait for 30mins so we decided to go somewhere else.
korean food is our next choice and we had. actually, this is the right choice, the korean food was very good indeed.
we had quite a few dishes, korean noodle, bbq port, bbq chicken, korean chicken soup, korean fried rice and fruit salad and a bottle of beer to go with. the food was good and we really love it.
Day 3 - nanjing massacre (南京大屠杀), home sweet home
today for us would be an easy day, we planned to visit nanjing massacre.
from wikipedia
The Nanking Massacre, commonly known as the Rape of Nanking, was an infamous war crime committed by the Japanese military in Nanjing (Nanking), then the capital of the Republic of China, after it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on December 13, 1937. The duration of the massacre is not clearly defined, although the violence lasted well into the next six weeks, until early February 1938. Japanese officials lied about civilian death figures and still refuse to reveal them properly today. During the occupation of Nanking, the Japanese army committed numerous atrocities, such as rape, looting, arson and the execution of prisoners of war and civilians. The executions began under the pretext of eliminating Chinese soldiers disguised as civilians, and a large number of innocent men were intentionally misidentified as enemy combatants and executed as the massacre gathered momentum. A large number of women and children were also killed, as rape and murder became more widespread. A total of 300,000 victims during this massacre.
we took a 4:25pm train home to suzhou. overall, this short trip enable us to understand some of the china history about the republic of china. I had heard about sun yat-sens and chiang kai-shek but i do not know actually that they are the founders of republic of china.
overall damage was 338rmb (S$70) but very well spent. i would definitely go back to deep blue singapore seafood.
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