Massacre of Nanjing

The trip from Hangzhou to Nanjing took us only 4 hours. But finding the hostel took us relatively long time. We had read that the hostel is located close to the station. So we started walking, and walking and walking. We found the right street but the numbers didn't seem to get smaller. We had walked for 100 house numbers for half an hour and there were still some 150 to go. We continued for a while but in the end decided to take a taxi. And then the numbers started running - we drove past and needed to come back and the taxi cost us only 1 euro.

The first day we visited the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre. Was one of the best museums in China, so far. It had a large collection of pictures and materia from the time of Nanjing Massacre that took place in Nanjing in the 30's. 300 000 victims in a short period. The pictures weren't even so shocking to the stories you could read. Most of Chinese museums have a lot of information in Chinese and little in English, but this museum had good, correct translations and said it all. I recommend if You ever visit Nanjing!

The day after I put my sneakers on and had a small hike through a park and to a mountain/hill. The walk to the hill wasn't the easiest cause it was all time up hill. First I walked on a road and afterwards there were paths or steps to climb. Coming down took me 1 hour so I suppose the going up must have taken some 2 hours. The place was called Zilin Shan and the peak was 448m above sea level. I really was expecting to find some peace and nice views. But there were so many people, some walking up, some taking the cable car. There were all kind of people: young, old, fat, thin, children, youngsters... and the best was that some women were climbing up wearing their high heels - and I was feeling exhousted only in sneakers. I wonder how much time it took for the ladies. The view from up was misty and I couldn't see that much. I started coming down quite quickly after getting up cause the people were so many. Young people mostly shouting and screaming around - and the trash all over stinked quite heavily. The hike itself was great (17km) but didn't give the nice things I was expecting (peace and quiet).

Tiina and Suvi have different experiences from Nanjing. Suvi visited Yangtze River bridge and Tiina was ill at the hostel.

Erika