Tourism and a moment of silence ...

Since I have been feeling a little annoyed with China, and sad that I'm not really going to get to travel anymore until the big trip to Thailand right before I leave, I decided that my remaining Mondays will be spent touring the sites in Nanjing. Nanjing is a very historic city and there is actually a lot to do here. I just haven't really bothered to see it all since I live here and have felt like there was plenty of time to go to some of the tourism sites, but time is starting to run, and touring makes me realize how much I love being in China.

I started my tourism Mondays by going to see the Presidential Palace. I decided to walk, since you can get there in less than 30 minutes, and it wasn't unbearably hot today. The walk also conveniently took me by Starbucks, where I bought a low-fat mocha frappaccino.

The Presidential Palace has a lot of history, and a lot of very important people in China's history worked or lived there. It served as a palace during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and in 1853, was occupied by Taiping Revolution forces after they captured Nanjing. After the revolution of 1911, Sun Yat-sen (the father of modern China) was sworn in there as the provincial President of the Republic of China. In 1927, the Kuomintang captured Nanjing and used the Presidential Palace for office buildings for the Nationalist Government, and during the Japanese occupation, after the Nationalist Government fled the city, the palace was occupied by Japanese collaborators.

After the Japanese surrender, the palace was reoccupied by the Nationalist Government and was named the Office of the President until the Chinese Civil War, when Mao Zedong’s communist forces captured Nanjing and moved the capital of the People’s Republic of China to Beijing.

Since I love history, I found all of this really fascinating. The palace was also really beautiful, and since it was a random Monday morning, it was almost empty, which rarely happens at a Chinese tourist attraction.

They also had the rooms where the government met, and Sun Yat-sen's residence, as well as some pretty gardens.

While I was there, there was a moment of silence (sort of) for the victims of the earthquake. At 2:28pm, the time when the earthquake struck, everyone all over China stopped what they were doing (even if they were driving) and all the horns, sirens, etc., in the country went off. It was actually really eerie and very moving. Everyone in the palace stopped moving, and you could hear all the alarms and car horns outside the palace going off.

After I left the palace, I walked back home and bought some bootlegs DVDs. Overall, I had a really lovely day. It's nice to pretend to be a tourist sometimes - touring is my favorite thing to do, and it makes me feel a renewed appreciation for my city whenever it starts to annoy me!