Adventures in China II

I arrived late on Saturday (part I is here) and had all of Sunday to myself to go and see the city. I was a bit nervous about exploring by myself after seeing the language barrier but luckily I found an Ozzie/German in the hotel lobby that was also there for the workshop and we teamed up to take on Nanjing. Thanks Aurel!!

We decided to head towards Purple Mountain, a huge park area that is part of the city and just across the Yangtze (where the main city is). First stop was the World Culture Heritage site Xiaoling Tomb of the Ming Dynasty. I will first point out that is was drizzly and cloudy all day, which meant that photos were not as good as they could be.

One of the coolest parts of the tomb was the pathway that was lined with huge stone sculptures of animals. They were massive and very impressive. I believe they were supposed to show the stature of those who the tomb was honoring, as well as protect them.

Elephants!

See, I was really there

It wouldn't be right if there wasn't a lion

The whole tomb was in a scenic area and after walking along the animal path (and still not finding the actual tomb) we walked all around the gardens. I imagine they would be much nicer when all the trees and plants were flowering (and it wasn't raining) but it was still very pretty with lots of trees and plants that I couldn't identify.

Avenue of trees in the park

When we still hadn't found the tomb (this place was massive) we strolled up plum blossom hill (where there were no plum blossoms as it was September) and came across this beautiful structure. There was also a man on a bike at the top with a caged bird strapped on to the back. It seemed random!

The colors were amazing, especially the blue

After eventually finding the tomb (and all the people), it was very cool to see. I can't tell you a lot of stories about the tomb but I'm sure you can find more information online if you want!

Stonework inside the tomb area

The main part of the tomb and me. More wonderful colors that the cloud and camera don't do justice

The next part of the journey was the fun part. We wanted to go to a different area on the mountain but it was going to be a longish walk and there were no taxis so the bus it was. I'm pretty sure the driver took pity on us tourists pointing at a map and let us on without paying and told us when to get off. It turned out the bus didn't quite go where we thought and we still had to walk a way, but hey, I took the bus!

The Linggu Temple Scenic Area was the next stop as the map told us there was a pagoda there. This part of purple mountain was more deserted, but it still contained huge stone buildings and temples, as well as the pagoda at the top of the hill.

Pagoda 101

You could walk up to the top of the pagoda up a spiral staircase that successfully made me dizzy! Due to the low clouds (and pollution) there wasn't a very good view. You could faintly make out the central business district but you can get some idea of the scale from this pic at least.

View from Purple Mountain

There were a lot of other things to do in the area, including taking a gondola to the top but it was getting lateish and we had a workshop paid for dinner at 6 so we eventually found a taxi and got back to the hotel. Dinner was in the hotel and I had a whole steamed sea bass which was AMAZING. It was also pretty huge but totally worth it.