Sunday, May 31st 2009, 1:48 pm (Nanjing, China)

Greetings once again from Nanjing!

Today is Saturday and I think my last post was Tuesday, so I’m afraid a lot of time has passed. Sorry about that! Nonetheless, there really isn’t too much to write home about. Well… I tend to drag everything out, so we’ll see how this goes. Without further ado I present “This Week.”

So as you recall, I was preparing for our field trip. We (16 students, 2 leaders, 2 adult hosts, 1 Chinese student guide, and 1 driver) piled into the 25-passenger van and headed out of Nanjing at 12:30 pm. The first transportation-related landmark we were to analyze was the beautiful expressway that was intended to blend into the landscape. In addition, we pulled off at a service area so we could marvel at how well it fit into its surroundings. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but the Chinese government is all about “going green” and being more environmentally friendly. While this sentiment is far from reaching all walks of life, it has definitely affected the philosophies of every agency we’ve worked with thus far.

A little later down the road, we stopped at another service area. This time, the focus was different. Instead of being green, we admired the building’s architecture: a near replica of London Bridge. Yes, at a service area. We were shocked. Ten minutes later we continued our transportation journey. Finally, by about 3:30 pm, we arrived at Huaxi (pronounced Hwa-she) Village, the self-proclaimed “best village in China.” While I personally question that statement, I found the village to be an excellent study of appearances. It is the first place in China I’ve seen single family homes, but they were aligned in a perfect grid pattern, each identical to its neighbors. In addition, we drove along a nice, touristy store front, but upon climbing an observation tower, we realized that the stores just hid a water treatment plant. Finally, they took us on a tour of the village greenhouses. It turns out that the quantity of vegetables grown there is insufficient for the village, so the greenhouse is merely kept for tourism purposes.

Oh yeah, did I mention the replica Arc d’Triumph, Sacre Coure, Great Wall, and Tiananmen Square? Hmmm… yeah, I thought it was weird too.

Leaving Huaxi, we backtracked slightly to Jiangyin, where we were spending the night. From an adjacent hill, we looked out over the Jiangyin suspension bridge, the 6th longest suspension span in the world. For comparison, the Golden Gate ranks in at 9th. Unfortunately, we did not cross the bridge since people (our hosts) were trying to get us to dinner. Sometimes I think transportation engineers just don’t understand how amazing such structures are. ;-) Maybe one day they’ll learn.

The following day, we rose bright and early to continue our road trip. Leaving Jiangyin at 8:30, we continued eastward. Our first stop was to visit the Sutong cable stayed bridge, the longest such bridge in the world. Because cable stayed bridges place loading directly on each tower, spans longer than 1 km have never been achieved… until the Sutong. Unfortunately, the smoggy sky made it impossible to see the opposite bank from the exhibition center, and consequently the bridge was partially masked by haze. Even still, it was remarkable to see how ridiculously high the towers stretched. Standing on the bank definitely provided a sense of insignificance. For clear pictures, see Wikipedia or Google. Else, you can e-mail me if you’d like a couple of my own pictures from the bridge.

Looking at a map, you will see that the Sutong Bridge is about three-quarters of the way from Nanjing to Shanghai. Thus, we had a long drive ahead of us once again. It was made even longer by the addition of yet one more stop: the Taizhou Suspension Bridge. Currently, the Taizhou Bridge consists of three half-constructed towers. Seeing a suspension tower rise from the earth adjacent to an impoverished community was a sight to behold – another strange technological façade. Upon the bridge’s completion, however, it will essentially be the world’s first double suspension bridge. Each of the identical main spans will stretch 1000m over the Yangtze with a pivot in the middle. Combined with an opening date planned for 2013, the Chinese are clearly on top of their civil engineering game.

Finally, we drove back via the Runyang Bridge. This bridge also features two spans, joined at the center of the river on a small island. The northern span is cable stayed and the southern span is the fourth longest suspension span in the world. We didn’t stop – just drove over and admired. So, in summary, we saw the current longest cable stayed bridge, the world’s 4th and 6th longest suspension spans, and the construction of the world’s first double suspension span (which will be the longest suspension in the world). It was crazy.

Ah Friday. Dragon Boat Festival. As I quickly found out, celebrations and activities are few and far between, sort of like our Columbus Day in the United States. Honestly, if our professors hadn’t told us it was a national holiday, I would have thought Saturday came a day early this week. Still, I tried to find some sort of fun to take part of. Sure enough, I purchased two zongzi- one was zhu rou (pork) and the other was jujube (Chinese date). Unwrapping the bamboo leaves was a challenge because the rice was so incredibly sticky, but the taste made the struggle well worth it. After eating my zongzi, I walked around Xuanwu Lake, the big lake at the foot of Purple Mountain. There weren’t any festivities, but many families and couples were out enjoying the sunny day. Children played on playgrounds and almost every park bench was taken. I guess it was great to see how the people here enjoy their time off, but it turned out to be quite similar to a holiday in the States.

And now, today. I began today by trying to track down a theatre in the center of town. I’ve been hoping to see some kind of musical performance, but nothing is listed online. Sure enough, I found the theatre, but apparently today was a “Cosplay” event – costumed roleplay. Therefore, every teen around the theatre was dressed in an anime-style costume. It was kind of interesting, but I deemed my search for a performance schedule to be impossible.

Continuing on my way, I went to the Zhonghua Gate. This gate was built in the 1430s as part of the Ming Dynasty city wall. The gate (which resembled a small fortress) has three partitioned courtyards and a sort of bunker area in the front. Each partition had an iron gate that could be dropped down at a moment’s notice to limit invaders. But even with multiple gates and a drawbridge, Zhonghua was where Nanjing fell to the Japanese in 1937. Oops!

While spending time at the gate, two pairs of people decided to begin conversations with me. The first pair was two guys who were about my age. I did not catch their names, so I’ll call them Mark and Robert here. Mark did not speak any English, but Robert said he had visited Boston in 2007, so his English was ok. He wanted to know where I was from and what I was doing. We took a few pictures and communicated as best we could. As we walked, we went into a room that displayed a raid siren. I asked them to explain the sign, but Robert’s English was not good enough. Just then, the second pair of people walked up: a guy and girl who also appeared to be my age. I didn’t catch their names either, so I’ll call them Joe and Lauren. Like Mark, Joe didn’t speak any English and Lauren’s English was very limited… so no one ended up explaining the siren. Oh well.

Anyway, Mark and Robert left and Lauren and Joe followed me to some of the other display rooms. I tried to ask questions about what I saw, but her comprehension – and consequently her responses – were confused and scattered. In spite of this, it was surprising that we were able to communicate using small phrases and words in context. I was impressed at both our diligence and patience in attempting to communicate. Best of all, they seemed to enjoy spending time with me, so we saw a couple more rooms and then I had to continue on.

Leaving the gate, I walked to the nearby Confucius Temple, which I heard is also called Fuzimao Street. You may recall that I have visited there already, but I chose to return to do some more shopping. I was quite successful too! As I was looking for postcards, however, yet another guy said hello to me. He introduced himself in Chinese and then said his English name is Luis. Ok, so I was really quite impressed with Luis’s English speaking. He connected his thoughts well and it seemed his only limitation was vocabulary. Even at that, however, his vocabulary was fairly advanced. Of course, he was totally enthralled to be talking to an American, so we wandered all around the temple for about an hour, talking mainly about differences between American and Chinese students. It was really interesting to hear about America from a Chinese student’s perspective. “I heard Americans…” “I heard students in America …” Most of the things he had heard were right on, too. It was clear he was enthralled by the idea of modernity – a very American idea. He even commented that China was too traditional for his liking. He wanted to know if I had been to Miami and New York. “New York is also called the Big Apple. Do you know why that is? I really like New York. It’s very modern.” I have no idea why NYC is the Big Apple. Is that bad?

He said he hopes to come to America some day after he graduates in accounting, perhaps permanently. I told him not to be so hasty because China has a lot of benefits too. Even though he doesn’t like the Chinese education system, I told him that was the reason why China was moving up in the world and America is not.

Well, I could talk a lot more about our discussion, but this is already an exceedingly long blog post. I can share more later if anyone is interested. So we bid each other good bye and exchanged email addresses. I returned to one last store and actually sat around and “talked” with the family that ran it. By “talk,” I mean that we used a calculator to show each of our ages, and then they shared some seeds with me. For my first test, they were curious if I could use chopsticks, so I picked up a seed on my first try! Whew! My second test was actually eating the seeds. These seeds were quite similar to sunflower seeds: oblong shell with almost no flesh. The coating was very tasty, but I was incompetent at cracking the shells open with my teeth. They could all crack the shells perfectly in half – I mangled six or seven and then gave up. We had a good laugh. At last, I bought what I was looking for and they gave me a bracelet as a gift of friendship. They wished me well, but I think they want me to come back again to say hello. Maybe I’ll master my seed eating skills first!

At long last, I returned to the hotel, wiped from walking about 13 miles in two days after spending about 10 hours driving in the two days before that. What a week! Anyway, I have a test coming up and a paper due Wednesday, so time to get back to work. Thanks for reading and I’ll write again soon!!