On the tail end of the Chinese New Year holiday, I had a few extra days to spare while I waited for all the factory bosses to get back to work after their baijiu binge. Me not being able to sit still, I skedaddled off Nanjing and then Suzhou to see if these cities would be worth saving when I decide to destroy most of the planet.

My first stop, was KALAMAZOO! Errr I mean Nanjing. Once known as Nanking, it was the capital city when the country was known as the Republic of China, before all those pesky People got involved. Regrettably it was also the site of the infamous Massacre, possibly one of the worst atrocities during WWII.

My travel comrade and I first checked in to the hotel so we could leave most of gear while we walked around town. We were in the Sofitel Galaxy, which is code for Sofitel hotel owned by some state enterprise. Usually I loathe anything that has state owned enterprise involvement, because they are large obsolete dinosaurs that do nothing but suck from the teat of the government. By some minor miracle, this hotel and everything about it was pretty solid. But what really smoked the cat’s pajamas was the room. It was bigger than my apartment in Shanghai. And at $120 only a night, it was cheaper too…if I pretended that exchange rates don’t exist.

We hopped on some random bus and headed off into the city. The first area we saw, Nanjing 1912, was a bar district. Stop laughing, it wasn’t my choice. It was supposed to be a collection of old buildings from the republican era, converted into an entertainment district. It was billed as Nanjing’s Xintiandi (egregious bar district of Shanghai). What it was, was a row of new buildings, slapped up to look old, and a bunch of older buildings, worn out and crusty. This whole area bordered along the former Presidential Palace, so we quickly shifted there.

Perhaps because it was late afternoon, perhaps because it was still the holidays or perhaps because I was planning to conquer it and turn it into my personal palace of pleasure, they didn’t let us in. We still got to take some pictures around the outside so that sufficed.

Next stop was the library. No seriously, just look at this monster. There’s gotta be reams of reading going on here. It’s a limitless land of literature. A profuse pile of prose and poetry and never-ending knowledge nimbly knit into a fortress of facts and fiction fearlessly fending off flying monkeys!

We seemed to be in some kind of business district. Since this trip was in leisure, we descended into Nanjing’s subway system to go someplace else. It looks like much of the system is fairly new, the station was all clean, they had these guard people that saluted the trains, and no one could figure out how the turnstiles worked.

All this aimless wandering was working up our appetites, so we rolled on over to Nanjing’s pedestrian area to sample the local fare. All cities in China have these areas, but Nanjing’s is exceptionally large. It’s basically a large outdoor shopping mall, with colourful lights. Lots of street food options though. We scored a few different things, the usual meat kebabs, some fried rice cakes and bunch of other things that were too bland for me to remember. I needed something more authentically Nanjing.

So we went into a food court. Admittedly not what you’d do to find local dishes back home, but this is how it works here. First you need to buy coupons, or a stored value card from a central cashier to get food. Saves the food stalls from having to deal with cash, which is beneficial considering the high volume of customers they serve.

I opted for some xiaolongbao while my co-conspirator tried some glass noodles. Xiaolongbao are little dumplings that are thin skinned, but filled with soup and a meat like crab, pork, or other critters. They are dee-fucking-licious. The glass noodles tasted of glass minus the gl.

One set of xiaolongbao wasn’t enough for me, so we set off to find another establishment. We found this hole in the wall type place by the river and copped another basket, with another bowl of noodles. This time the noodles were better, but they weren’t anything to write home about, despite the fact that I am doing just that.

After all the food and walking around, we felt that the day was a success, so we called it quits before something outrageous could come along and ruin it, like a bunch of hobos having a big gay orgy in our hotel room.

Filed under: tourist shit