Nanjing

We left Hawaii, May 7, took an 11-hour flight to arrive in Shanghai.  But there was no rest for the wicked. After checking into our hotel, and Steve ensuring his nearly 80 Harvard Business School students were settling in, we were off to visit our Useppa friends in Nanjing. The trip begins with a ride on immaculate modern and very inexpensive 50-cent subway ride to Shanghai’s main train station which looks and feels more like a newly built regional air terminal.  The less than 2 hour bullet train trip to Nanjing travels as fast as 220 mph. Another four hours on the white bullett  and we could have been in Beijing.  

As we move from Shanghai to Nanjing, high rises eventually fade to individual homes, to open land and then again  miles of high rises, each punctuated with prescribed green space per capita, schools and everything else that makes high rise living seem completely unlike living in a concrete jungle. Nanjing’s population of 8.3 million  is essentially the same as New York City. 

Nanjing is commonly referred to as the green city, although the direct translation is “Southern Capital”.   Plane trees, with their distinctive mottled bark, arch over the streets in the older part of the city, reminding you of  the shade provided along the boulevards in small French villages.  

Nanjing is an inland port on the Yangtze River Delta and one of China’s Great Ancient Cities. The  older part of the city is still partly defined by deep moats and tall stone walls that date back to the 3rd century Ming Dynasty when  Jiangnan (Nanjing), this area south of the Yangtze River, was the Capital of China and its city wall was the longest in the world.  The inside layout was highly organized and densely built. The Imperial Palace was the archetype for for the Forbidden Palace later built in Beijing.  People fled from the warring north and brought technology and innovation that continued to strengthen the area for centuries.  In fact from 1368 - 1425 it was the largest city in the world with a population of  just under 500,0000.  

The written works, weaving, painting  and ceramics reflect  much of what we still think of as Chinese design. What’s amazing is the technology used to create these gooods was  far beyond what was found in most of the western world.  

For example, the design of this commonly used ceramic oil lamp  utilized animal fat, which was typical at the time, but employed a technology that directed the sooty smoke into the bull’s  belly where it was absorbed into water and prevented the soot from fouling the air. Leonardo da Vinci was the first westerner to “discover” this technology over 1,000 years later.  

We joined a gazillion Chinese school children as we made our way through Nanjing Museum - which really was impressive.  Besides art, the museum told the story of Nanjing from its early Ming Dynasty in the 3rd century, through 1421, when the Capital was moved to Beijing. In 1912 the Manchu Empire fell and Sun Yat-Sen turned China into a Republic and moved its capital back to Nanjing, where it was  reestablished again by Chaing Kai-shek in 1928.   The Captial was moved to Taiwan, with many of its treasures, in 1946  during the Chinese Comunist Revolution and 2nd part of the Chinese Civil War, when the People’s  Liberation Army occupied the Nanjing  Presidential  Palace.   In 1949 Mao Zedong established Beijing as the Capital for People’s Republic of China .  The museum is definitely worth a visit, including its use of interactive technology that would be the envy of almost any  American museum.  

But our REAL reason for visiting Nanjing, was to spend time with our Useppa friends Becki and Michael Carmichael.  Michael is a cardiac surgeon who has been volunteering his time in China for the better part of 20 years, sharing techniques and supporting the exchange of cardiac medical staff between our two countries.  Now, as part of his “retirement” he is spending 6 months at Nanjing First Hospital, which has become a major cardiac resource in the are.  He generously allowed Karen to watch a quadruple bi-pass and several valve replacements.  (Steve took a pass.). Becki is busy assisting in the department. and teaching English.  Yup -sounds like retirement  to us!  We thnak them both for their hospitality and just might come back next year if we can tempt them to take some time off and do some additional exploring.