China: Nanjing

As of 2012 - The one word that comes to mind to describe Nanjing is muddy.  High-rises, shopping malls and upgrades to roads are pervasive everywhere and so downtown is one never-ending construction sight.

I forgive them because they made this future overlord building.

It's also nigh on impossible to catch a taxi in the middle of the day near the city centre.  All the cabs that drive by all have passengers in them, and if you go to a taxi stand there are 100m long queues of people who say they have been waiting for an hour to catch a ride.  Maybe I should become a cabby in Nanjing…

Or a construction worker - a job with a view.

Off to the Ming tomb - it's a nice enough park, but when you finally get to the tomb there's not much there.  The sign says that the tomb is under the hill but hasn't been excavated.  Call me suspicious but I have a sneaky suspicion there's not much under there.

"We were going to take a look at this culturally and historically important site, but then got bored and were like - you know - whatever."

We get a chairlift ride up the mountain which is surprisingly long and takes about 30 minutes each way.  As we were going up the hill (I wouldn't quite call it a mountain) we became shrouded in mist and so may or may not have had to fight off forest zombie hordes.
 

Fine.  There were no zombies.  Only terrifying chair ghosts.

And the Evil Mountain Buddha.

Among other things we also visited the Nanjing war memorial museum.  It contains a very modern exhibition chronicling the events of the rape of nanjing.  Surprisingly it's not overly emotional or patriotic but it rather even handed, and tells the story through a fascinating series of photographs timelining some of the very nasty things that happened there.  The museum concludes at a mausoleum with the bones of victims.  Worth a look...