The temple was in a historic part of downtown and is very very popular with Chinese tourists. It kind of looked like a China town you would expect to see in Disney or something except it was the real deal. The temple area had a small river running through it where you could take trips on a boat (which I didn't do) but there was these huge golden dragons on one of the walls.
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| Confucius Temple, Nanjing |
The temple itself was very intricate and quite different to the Ming Temple at Purple Mountain. Here is Mr Confucius himself.
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| Confucius at the Confucius Temple |
You could learn how to do all the correct techniques for prayer and worship that seemed to involve putting red ribbons on the trees, bowing, lighting incense and hitting the giant drum, but it was still pretty neat to see everyone doing it without actually doing it myself.
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| Chinese characters carvings |
There were huge intricate pictures inside the temple that were carved out of marble depicting various scenes from the life of Confucius. It would have been nice to spend more time inside the temple and around the whole area but we had a limited amount of time and wanted to see as much as possible!
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| Confucius Temple |
After the temple we took a walk to the main downtown area. Surprisingly, although I don't know why, this was like any downtown in any big city. Giant brand new skyscrapers, malls, Tiffany & Co., Louis Vuitton, all the pricey designer shops are there!!
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| Downtown Nanjing |
I think my favourite moment on the walk around was seeing a guy come out of a random door carrying a cage full of a variety of animals, which he strapped to his moped (there are hundreds and thousands of mopeds everywhere in Nanjing) and drove off. I managed to sneak a picture and it made me smile (although I don't want to think about what is going to happen to these little guys).
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| Where are they going? |
As I mentioned in the food post, we all had dinner at a big restaurant in one of the malls (which was great) and then took a taxi back to the hotel. The next morning I hd breakfast and hit the long road home. This was probably the scariest part of the whole trip as I was doing it along.
Step 1: Get taxi to train station. Should have been simple as the people at the hotel told the driver where to go and I knew roughly the way to get there. Driver turned the wrong way out of the hotel and I had no idea where he was going as I knew we at least had to cross the Yangtze and we went the wrong way for that. After pointing at the Chinese for train station that I had written down he spoke some Chinese and did a "choo choo" sound, so at least I knew we where going to a train station even if it was the wrong one. Anyway, it turned out he was just taking a really long route to the bridge (to get more money I'm sure) and we made it eventually. Unfortunately the detour meant I missed the train I wanted to get.
Step 2: Get a train ticket to Shanghai Hongqiao (SH) train station and get on train. This sounds simple. It was not. I was faced with twenty lines of people all standing in front of ticket windows that were labeled only in Chinese. Which line was I supposed to get in?? I picked a random one and I had my ticket from SH to Nanjing and I pointed at the SH name and the line to try and ask a man if I was in the right place. He seemed to understand, took my 140 yuan and gave it to his friend at the front who bought my ticket. Unfortunately the pointing didn't work as he got a ticket from SH to Nanjing instead of Nanjing to SH. I managed to explain this with pointing and he realised the mistake. We got in another line to get money back, went to a third line to get the right ticket. Unsuccessful again, this time the ticket was from Nanjing to Shanghai instead of SH. A fourth line was required to swap this ticket for the right one. At last!! My train was leaving in about 20-25 mins so the nice man and his friend took me to where you wait for the trains, showed me that I could show my ticket to get free bottled water and where they would display when it was ok to go get on the train. He was very nice and despite our language barrier we figured it out in the end. We even swapped business cards, although his is all in Chinese characters so I have no idea what he does!
Step 3: Take train to SH. Easy and fast.Was entertained by lady with little baby sitting next to me. Also learnt that Chinese babies like peekaboo and don't wear diapers/nappies. One of these was slightly disturbing.
Step 4: Take subway from train station to airport. Easy again! Ticket machine had an English button and I get a seat the whole way. It took about 90 minutes. I decided this was a better option than a taxi as it was a lot cheaper and a lot less scary!
Step 5: Take flight home. Once again I had no one sitting next to me which made the journey a lot nicer and more comfy. Got some sleep. The line in immigration for non-citizens was enormous, and it took forever. Did enjoy some arguments as people tried skipping the line to catch there flights.
Step 6: Home!! Yay. 6 crazy days and the longest 36 hour Friday ever.
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| Me and one the followers of Confucius |
You are a very brave girl!
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