31 August 2012
No train pictures
Today I moved from Shanghai to Nanjing.
Nanjing was the capital most recently until world war 2, the name literally means southern capital. The Chinese moved the capital to Beijing because Japan murdered every fighting age man in the city, some 300,000, mostly by beheading them with swords to save on bullet costs, and raping every woman of child bearing age.
True story, look it up! Having said that, I havent seen too many Japanese looking people getting about. I will learn more about this at some point, which means boring museum pictures to come! Probably with swords?
I planned to document my train journey, cause I like trains. I dont like old steam trains, those are for small children and old men that have an unnatural liking for small children. Instead I like bullet trains and the massive stations that house them.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, as I got onto the platform with my camera, a police looking man (you cant tell who are cops, who are security, who are parking attendants and who are gardeners), told me NO TRAIN PICTURE!
OK then.
The train journey was nice, my seat was comfortable, and I had plenty of room to lay back and look out the huge windows.
Arriving at Nanjing was hilarious, 3 other bullet trains arrived simultaneously and the crush was ridiculous. Everyone had massive bags, some dragging huge bundles of stuff, and some people pushing sack trolleys. They had sack trolleys on the train with them to, I think they had sacks of potatoes on the trolleys. I guess its important to get the potatoes to Nanjing as fast as possible!
Anyway, once on the subway platform everything was fine, I walked to the very far end beyond all the lazy people crushing for the first carriages and even got a seat.
Nanjing looks like a cross between old and new Shanghai, being a former capital it has wide tree lined streets and its obvious a lot of state money has been spent on things at various points in history.
I havent seen any of the old stuff yet, so the pictures will be of modern Nanjing.
No train pictures, so you get an illustrated explanation of my new fold up cup. I dont buy myself things often so when I do its exciting. This cup gives me hours of joy. I look forward to using it every night when I get back from walking.
This is it in its cup form, for drinking out of or eating things (I will use it for breakfast in Sydney).
Here it is folded, ready to slide into my suitcase. I cant really explain how much I like it. I might name it.
Heres where I came out of the subway, its a few hundred metres to my hotel (in the opposite direction to this photo). The street is very busy and full of computer stores.
Like the rest of China, all computer stores are branded and identical, they go in order, Dell, Lenovo, HP, Samsung, Apple licensed reseller, Asus, repeat 100 times for kilometres.
Here I am, looking lost, trying to figure out which way is east by the sun. I guessed right. Soon I am going to write a series of guides on urban survival.
My hotel room, its very nice. The bed is enormous and theres a strange glass divider that looks like its smashed. Internet works great.
TV is an IP TV streaming box, all in Chinese, menus and everything have zero English. 200 or more channels and the only English language is CCTV News. Luckily I love amateur Chinese opera.
Another view of my room. They lose a point for having a clear glass table that no mouse will work on. Many hotels are guilty of this crime against humanity.
Not my thing lately, but who can pass on cucumber flavoured chips? They were actually great!
Waste management picture of the day. Why recycle when you can burn it. This seems to me like it should be getting attention, its a big pile of plastic and stuff on fire and smells terrible.
Theres a first time for everything. Its late and I dont want real lunch and already had chips. So I finally can say I have been to KFC. For quiche. They had run out of custard tarts or else I would have got one of each.
Example of wide tree lined streets. Both Starbucks and Costa coffee on the right in the restored old buildings. Are they owned by the same company in China I wonder?
The above photo of the tree lined street is deceiving, there is still a lot of tall buildings, many under construction. There is still big holes in the ground where nice old stuff has been torn down to be replaced by monolithic structures.
One such structure is right behind my hotel. A giant supermarket.
This excites me, because I am not wired quite right.
I already spent an hour in here, it was quite an experience. I had already bought apples elsewhere and when entering the supermarket the security guard insisted on putting them in orange zip up bags with sealed tags on them. He also did the same with my camera, NO PICTURES!
So when I got to the register with 6 bottles of water, my hands were full. My wallet was also full of small coins which went everywhere.
This caused a great deal of hilarity amongst the housewives and children. I think the 20 or so coins that went flying were worth about 10 cents in total.