CK Link - Theatre of Dreams for Calvin

The Feeling to Nanjing

Over the last weekend, another one was added to my list of Chinese cities visited. It was the bewaited Nanjing.

Before the trip, Nanjing is an ancient city, a pretty large city in China and it should reflect the wealth of the Jiangsu Province (among the richest top 3 provinces in China), as it is the capital of the province. A little about Chinese history, Nanjing is called, "Capital of 6 Dynasties" in Chinese; it was the capital of East Wu in the three Kingdoms period, Ming Dynasty, Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (rebellion group in Qing Dynasty) and the Republic of China. This is the place where Dr. Sun Yat-sen proclaimed the establishment of the first ever republic on the Chinese soil).

Frankly, our impression to the city was not so nice on the first day. To me, the city was smaller than I would have expected; it was not so clean and the traffic was horrible. However, I like our visit to the Old Presidential House where Dr. Sun used to work at. Surprisingly and not, it was the first place with a lot of KMT (Nationalist party) information and artifacts I visited in China. However, the night came and the second day's visit changed my ratings to Nanjing from 5 out of 10 to 7 in the end. We went to the 1912 bar street in downtown Nanjing on Saturday night and met the Boyz Band there and we had some good music. Then on Sunday, the exercises and touring we took at two famous tombs in the National Park was great. The view was great and I learned more about the dynasties, plus I enjoyed the walk/exercises we had there.

As a whole, I think there were also four other positive factors contributed to my final ratings:
- Cheap and great location for our hotel
- Very low taxi fares
- Great weather (provided that Nanjing is regarded as an "Oven" in China for its hot summer)
- Most important all, my tour buddies

Having said the above, I would still recommend anyone who has not been to Nanjing to do a weekend trip there. It is still worth my visit, though it is not the destination where I am looking at - I am still looking for my dream city in China where I can reside in...

posted by CalvinCK @ 8:46 AM