Xi'an to Nanjing: A 20 Hour Train Ride
Trip Start
Jun 18, 2008
1
32
46
Trip End
Sep 04, 2008
Nanjing,
Jiangsu,
China
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
First thing in the morning we went to the Great Mosque, which was within walking distance from our hostel. We had actually gotten very close to it the night before when we walked through the night market which was a lot of fun. The streets were crowded with stalls selling street food and the same tourist merchandise in every shop. Highlights included amazing Halal chuar (kebabs), crickets for sale in small cages, and a new pair of jade (of course fake) earrings I had to bargain hard for. Plus, it goes without saying that checking out all the Chinese salespeople and all the different/silly things they were doing to get our attention.
So, the Great Mosque was awesome. I was a little concerned they weren't going to admit me since I wasn't dressed modestly enough; however, they provided me with a shawl to wear. The grounds of the mosque were beautiful and serene and reminded me of many of the temples we've been to but with Chinese and Arabic script. Everyone who worked or hung out there was a gentle old man, and they were very friendly with us. They liked us because we are American and 2/3 of us support Obama. Also, our friend Jason is studying Arabic so his special interest in the mosque excited our hosts. Unlike many overly touristed temples we've been to in China, the mosque was fairly empty (save a bride and groom taking wedding pictures in full Muslim garb), and so it was very peaceful. I found many beautiful things to take pictures of and didn't feel overwhelmed because, for once, I wasn't surrounded by other Chinese people taking pictures of everything.
After the mosque, we headed down a street full of more tourist trap retail stalls. I finally decided to buy the Beijing 2008 t-shirts that were actually difficult to get in Beijing if you didn't want to pay the insanely high prices at the offical licensed stores. Again, we had to bargain hard and at the end when I was arguing over 5 RMB, I had to remind myself it's less than $1. Constantly converting RMB to $ is how you get yourself cheated, but in this case I realized it was time to stop struggling with this woman. Adam says you know you've done well in bargaining if neither party is happy, and I left feeling a little angry with her. For five t-shirts, I'd wanted 50 RMB and finally compromised at 80 RMB.
Next we took a motorized rickshaw across Xi'an to go to the Great Wild Goose Pagoda, which is an old Buddhist temple, that towers outside the city wall. It was one of the best maintained temples I'd seen, so we enjoyed a leisurely walk around the grounds. Definitely the most exciting part of that adventure was the thrilling ride on the rickshaw that could be squashed by the oncoming buses at every turn. Also, outside the city wall, Xi'an is a remarkably different city: cleaner, less grungy, more cosmopolitan. I am glad that the center of Xi'an was not our only impression of the city because it definitely made me wistful for a brighter Beijing.
About 30 hours after we arrived, we said goodbye to the first city (apart from Beijing) on our Asia Adventure to embark on our 20-hour train ride. We scored hard sleeper tickets this time. Thank god. We settled into our berth with six bunkbeds (2 rows, stacked 3 high) and immediately began making friends due to everyone's excitement that a foreigner (Adam) speaks Chinese. We made especially good friends with a xiao peng you Adam named Dylan. He was really cute with the Beijing 7 year-old haircut of a shaved head and bangs that fan up from his forehead. The ride was very long and by the end we were definitely anxious to get off the train. But, surprisingly, 20 hours on a train is not as bad as I might have once thought. Many Chinese people were going even farther than us, and we've met brave travelers who claim to have spent 40 hours in a hard seat.
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So now we are in Nanjing, site of the Rape of Nanking in 1937 and China's former capital. Already I notice how different Nanjing is from Beijing or Xi'an. Outside of our youth hostel, we don't see any foreigners. The city is more commercial like Beijing but without the westernization. However, KFC and McDonald's rule here, but we saw our first Burger King tonight. Nanjing is built on a river, so it is naturally more beautiful than Beijing but the pollution is just as bad.
Today we visited the Rape of Nanking memorial museum, which was strikingly similar to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. I was impressed with how well the museum was designed and organized, which effectively educated and moved me while learning about the atrocities and massacre that occurred.
Tomorrow is the Sun Yat Sen memorial and then we journey to Shanghai, a city whose art museums and shopping I can't wait to see!
