1st December: Nanjing, China

We had a slow start today. It was a tricky balance as Kaja wasn’t well but still wanted to get out for a bit and I had very itchy feet to properly explore the city on foot. My burnt-out brain needed to drift and be active. Ordinarily in a place as safe as this, we’d have done our own things for a few hours but only being able to get back into the room using Bluetooth from my phone complicated things. In the end, we did neither very well.

We tried to find a way into the Sun Yat-sen mausoleum from the nearest metro to avoid too much walking but instead got hopelessly lost on the forested hillside of the Purple Mountain Observatory. Dr Sun was post-imperial China’s first leader and is respected by both communists and nationalists alike, despite his party allegiance to the Kuomintang, for his role in overthrowing the Qing dynasty. We abandoned our attempts to find the giant mausoleum and instead found a branch of our favourite buffet to get some energy back. Sichuan peppers seem to be as popular in the lower Yangtze as in its mid reaches. Occasionally, you’ll be surprised by a numb tongue and mouth and immediately know there was a peppercorn hiding somewhere!

In addition to under dynasties, Nanjing served as the capital for the Nationalist government from 1928-1949, a period which included the very dark episode of Japanese occupation. In late 1937 as the Japanese advanced, preceded by stories of brutality, the government and those who had means fled the city. 500,000 people remained when the army led by Japanese Prince Asaka took the city. The Imperial Japanese Army massacred half of those human beings over the course of a month or so. Disgracefully, Asaka, as a member of the emperor’s family, was given immunity from prosecution for war crimes.

After lunch, we tried a different park instead at Mufushan. Somehow, yet again from the nearest metro we couldn’t find a way into this park either. Eventually, unable to do the physical activity or be the in the flow state my brain demanded and confined to repeated busy metros and shopping centres, I had a panic attack. Kaja, despite needing the exact opposite of me, got us a taxi to a park entrance. We climbed the hill behind Dharma ancient cave, where legend has it that Bodhidharma rested on his way to Shaolin monastery before crossing the Yangtze on a leaf. For us, the leaves were golden and so was the sun as it began to set over the broad silvery river. Before it dropped entirely, we got back down to the bank. The noise of cargo ships was somehow soothing, like that of a distant freight train. The red orb sunk slowly between distant towers, as if they’d been built there precisely for this purpose. The power of nature in these moments is astonishing and I cried at the beauty and fragility of it all.

After what I was saying yesterday about kids saying hello most days, it happened 7 (seven) times today! Each one made me smile and brightened my day in a lovely way that I really needed. On the way back in, we stopped at the supermarket for treats. Kaja had been fancying a mini watermelon for days and it was a great choice. The flesh was yellow, not pink, and had a flavour somewhere between a usual watermelon and a cantaloupe.