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1997
Route in China (Nanjing - Nanjing)
Bec2004-09-19 16:12:04
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Nanjing
I had taken the train from Shanghai to Suzhou so I took the bus to Nanjing for a change. It was a comfortable bus running on time on a good road. No problem, the gas station was almost like back home except for the brands!
At first the Nanjing University Foreign Students Hotel would not accept me because my visa was expiring on that day at midnight. It was Sunday and the PSB (Public Security Bureau read tourist police) was closed so it took some negotiation to get in but I finally got a bed in one of the dorms.
On the first night there, I had a quarrel with a very aggressive japanese student who kept the TV blaring until past midnight and screamed at me in Japanese when I complained. Maybe he was drunk, maybe he wanted the place all for himself, I didn't care but the next day I changed dorm and that solved the problem. This is the view from that first room.
The first thing I did on Monday was to visit the PSB where I got a 20 day extension without any difficulty even though my visa had expired the night before!
With that step behind me I called my internet friend George Dong who did not hesitate to take the afternoon off from work to show me around. Yesterday had been a bad day but today more than made up for it. He treated me like a long lost uncle and went out of his way to make me feel welcome. Here we stand in front of Nanjing's Drum Tower.
All ancient Chinese cities had a Drum Tower and a Bell tower. They were used to signal a variety of important information to the population, alerts, curfews, celebrations etc... This is Nanjing's Bell tower.
George and I visited the ancient Jiming temple on our way to the Ming Dynasty Ramparts shown here next to Xuanwu Lake in the north.
These fortifications completely encircled the ancient capital in the 14th century. The gigantic 33 km wall, 12 meter high and 7 meters wide at the top, was built in
...
See photographs from:
China Gallery
