I did not take any pictures of the food and in hindsight, I regret it because some of it was amazing.
On Thursday, I had a nice sub sandwich WITH CHEESE. Despite not being the best sandwich in the world, I did not care and I ate it like a little kid who had been given ice cream for the first time. After that, I decided to check out the Presidential Palace. Since Nanjing was the capitol of China for a really long time the homes of the emperors were there. Parts of the Presidential Palace were over 600 years old. Most of the signs were in Chinese only, so I mostly just walked around and took photos of things that were either interesting or pretty.
The next day, I went to the Nanjing Massacre Museum and Peace Park. That was a very strange experience. Although my family has no connection to the massacre that happened in December 1938 to January 1939, I felt a little guilty and responsible for some of the things that happened during that time. Not completely rational, but not totally insane either. The museum was very nice and had a lot of information. Depressing, biased information. I understood that those who created the museum exhibits wanted to get a point across, and it was definitely clear who was at fault for why the museum existed in the first place. But there were some signs and captions that I felt pushed the boundaries a little too far. I only wondered if the Japanese translations of those captions were the same. I tried to read them, but sadly, most of my Japanese language abilities have been lost.
I think the most difficult part of the museum was the mass graves. Seeing the remains of the victims was rather difficult and reading some of the stories was also a touching experience. I seriously think the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. has a contender for "Most Depressing Museum." But speaking of the Holocaust, there was a temporary exhibit on Auschwitz in the museum. I had just gotten done with the museum and then I am confronted with the Auschwitz exhibit. It was not nearly as well done as the massacre exhibits, but it did have some interesting information about those who tried to escape or the medical experiments done on prisoners. Yet, the tones of the massacre exhibits and this Auschwitz one were very different. To me, it felt like the curators of the Auschwitz exhibit thought that Auschwitz was not nearly as bad as what western culture has made it out to be and that it was not nearly as traumatizing for those involved as the Nanjing massacre. But, that is my opinion, I am sure there are reasons for the different tones. The last part of the museum was the Peace Park. There were doves that lived in the park and they flew around the gardens looking for food. It was a nice, uplifting end to a very heavy experience.
Since I had basically been walking around for three days straight, I thought it was alright to sleep in a little bit. After I got up, I went to the Western food store. Yes, I went to a store that sold food from home. I basically went crazy and bought half a month's budget of food. And cheese. I bought a packet of cheese...it did not make it the five minutes back. I was a little hungry after shopping, so I dropped everything off and got another sub sandwich. About an hour after that, I went for a duck lunch. We ordered duck, tofu, squid, a delicious watermelon juice, and this soup that had dumplings in it. All of it was very good and relatively inexpensive.
After lunch, I went to the Confucian temple in Nanjing. It was 30 yuan to get in and again I underestimated how large it was. I thought I could get through it in a couple hours, but I do not even think I got a third of the way into it before I had to meet up with friends for dinner. It was all very beautiful and I was pleasantly surprised to find an exhibit about the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Taiping Rebellion. In short, the Rebellion was from 1850 - 1864 and the Kingdom was an oppositional state against the Qing dynasty with its capital being Nanjing. The Kingdom existed from 1851 to 1864, when the Qing army, with the help of France and Britain, defeated the revolutionary forces and ended the Rebellion. The exhibits were mainly in Chinese, so I just took pictures of whatever I thought was cool.
I feel like although I did do a few things in Nanjing, there is a lot more to see and do there. I would really like to go back and go to Zhongshan, or Purple Mountain. It is where Sun Yat-sen's mausoleum is located and there is a lot more history within the city that I would like to see. Below are just some random pictures of the city.