Nanjing 2018
In 2018 we visited China to see my sister, her husband, and their three kids. She was teaching at the British School of Nanjing. We spent two weekends with them (as it was term time) and the week in between traveling China by rail and air, visiting Beijing and Yangshuo.
This is just a bunch of random recollections and things that interested me. For everyone’s privacy, I’m only using photos with me in them.
A typical apartment complex
A lot of the housing in big Chinese cities is in these cookie-cutter complexes. Get a good idea from this YouTube short. They’re gated, with several apartment towers, each with hundreds of units.
The complex is a mini neighbourhood: green spaces, playgrounds, a plaza, food places, a minimarket, day care, coffee shop, etc.
It feels very safe, and the kids (5-11) wandered around together freely within the limits of the community. The paths smelled of sweet, peachy detergent. The bins were collected every 30-60 mins by smartly dressed elderly men with bicycle trailers.
You could say it was surreal, but really it was just sur-usual for us. One man’s ideal walkable neighbourhood and another man’s capito-communist prison.
The family kept two electric mopeds in the underground parking (see linked video) to get to the school or Jiulonghu metro station. We had to order a DiDi for the longer journey to church.
Vanke, that runs this chain of apartments, are in big financial trouble nowadays.
I don’t really know anything about these allotments. As I remember, you walk down Qingshuiting road a little from where we lived, and you could see these from a short road bridge. The contrast is kind of striking.
To go on the subway, you paid for one of these blue tokens at a machine. It was very cheap (I think 20-50p). You pass the token through the turnstile at your entry station, and at your exit station it’s reclaimed into the system. I think they have RFID in them which would let the turnstiles log a journey length.
It’s Burger
We went to “It’s Burger” - a restaurant that serves novelty burgers in the style of Pokémon and Sailor Moon characters (plushies provided to your table for photos). It sure was burger. Out of all of the burgers I’ve ever eaten, this one was Charmander.
Xuanwu
We went to Xuanwu lake and shrine and it was nice.
Sometimes, local students would stop us and ask to take a picture with us. It was kind of fun being the novelty westerners.
Speaking of which, some stereotypes hold, like as a 6’2” person I felt very tall in public places, and particularly when I could see the top of every head on the subway.
We also went to Fuzimiao, a local tourist trap.
Misc
There are these street cleaning vans which can shoot their water down at the ground or up into the air, at overhead traffic signs. They play a 1-bit rendition of “It’s a small world after all” and hearing one in the early hours of the morning is dreamlike.
There seems to be a little cottage industry in competing icons for “general waste” in China. I liked these two examples. I particularly like that we’re given examples of “Other waste” such as “Peel, Leaf, Dust, Food”. Dust goes in the dustbin, kids, that’s why we call em that.
This post isn’t really finished finished but I can’t stand having the draft any more, so here you go world, enjoy my random trivial thoughts about Nanjing.
I have more about Beijing and Yangshuo but this was hard work writing!! Believe it or not!!
See you next times 🌏♻