China 2nd site: Nanjing

Presidential Palace. Zhongshan Mountain Park, tomb of Zhu Yuanzhang, first Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. 

Okay, quibbler's. I will concede that Nanjing is not Shanghai, but for us it was part of our visit to Shanghai. Nanjing is, of course, an important city in its own right. Historically, it is much more important than Shanghai. In China's past Nanjing was the southern capital and hence, for centuries it was the Imperial and then the Republican seat of power. As a result Nanjing retains the artifacts of this glorious past.

RoC flag.  Banned in most places

The first that we visited was the Presidential Palace. The space, originally built for imperial purposes, was the site of Sun Yat-sen's inauguration in 1911 at the beginning of the republican era. That era was as short-lived as it was chaotic and so the buildings significance is perhaps more symbolic than historic. Nonetheless it is a monument to China's ‘intervening era’ between the emperor and communism. It was a surprise to me to see the prominence afforded Chang Kai-shek, the Communists archrival in the 50s, 60s and 70s. From Taiwan (RoC), he claimed sovereignty over all of China. Today, Taiwan and China get along much better, so I guess it's okay to allow that he might have made some contribution to China's independence.

Nanjing’s other important historic site reflects its other moment of glory - when the city was the emperor’s home. The Ming Dynasty's first Emperor built his mausoleum into the hills surrounding the city. For me it was my first experience of the scale on which the emperors operated. After Xi’an and Beijing's Forbidden City that scale may be commonplace, but the first time you see it, it blows you away. Walls dozens of feet high and wide and entry ways, hundreds of feet long with dozens of larger-than-life statues. Temples built for a single person. Nothing is done to what I would call a ‘human scale’. The expense, the manpower, the desire/need to impress - all extraordinary and then, all repeated by the next guy…