Nanjing Day 2

We grabbed breakfast at Cafe 85, it was yummy, they even had coffee! Then Mariel, Katie, and I took a cab to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. The cabs in Nanjing are so much cheaper than in Beijing- it's calculated on time rather than distance, and the traffic is a thousand times better.

The memorial was very intense. It was built where one of the massacres itself happened. They had this whole area which was a mass grave of about 10,000 people. Then they had excavations showing real human skeletons buried in the dirt. 300,000 people were killed in a period of weeks. It was during the China-Japan war, when Japan gained control on the old capital.

The sight of the massacre:

Outside they had fountains and a statue of peace. People kept asking Katie and I for photos, I agreed but felt like it was just such a strange thing to do in such an intense place. There was a whole exhibit inside with first-hand accounts of what happened during that time. I found them so interesting, just hearing the terrible things some people endured and lived through. It made me feel very grateful for my own life.

Notes to the victims:

Lots of records:

We took a cab back to the hotel to meet the others (the sleepy ones who didn't wake up in the morning). Our cab driver dropped us off miles away so we had to wander through Nanjing, guessing our way to the hotel. We were planning on going to DimSum for lunch, but unfortunately that's more of a morning thing and we were a little late back. In the end we ate at this restaurant close by. It was really good! Pumpkin cakes, spring rolls, rice, beef, etc., and only 26 kuai a person!

Lunch:

After eating we wandered along the old streets. I loved Nanjing. It had all these rivers with bridges over them. The buildings were built Chinese style, and the city was just laid out much more practically. It was so much easier to navigate. I bought a bunch of movies. We went back to the hotel around 4pm because we had rented the room until 6pm.

So famous:

At 6pm we checked out and left for the streets again. A guy in our program was sitting in the lobby with a cage of 4 birds? He had just bought them, interesting. We went back to the Cafe 85 for dinner- had a cheese sausage roll- it was delicious. Then I ate Rachel's fries from McDonalds, again. We then wandered around the market for a last time. I was very good and didn't buy any more movies.

The rivers in Nanjing:

At the train station we made lots of friends. We had about an hour to wait. This little Chinese boy was making these loud noises with some wooden toy. JiaHua was very annoyed and made a huge X with his arms telling him to stop. Then the boy used those hole-puncher things- but in the shape of an animal- to give us all paper animals! There were turtles, dinosaurs, frogs. He was so adorable and got so excited another every time we signaled for one. Then these 15-year-old Australian boys on a school trip came over and talked to us. They were so cheeky and totally trying to flirt with us all! So we finally boarded the train, had some wine and went to bed.

Heather, Mariel, and Rachel on the train: