Author: admin6

When Chinese people decide to make a memorial, they don’t mess around…this place is BIG.

This is fair enough, considering the reasons this place exists. Yuhuatai is a massive memorial park, in a nutshell, because this area became a mass execution ground during the anti-communist revolution starting in 1927. The actual historical details of this uprising, and the political reasons and results of it, have far too large a scope for this article. But this place – along with the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum – are sombre reminders of the violence that this city has witnessed in its past. Thousands of communist leaders, thinkers and believers died up on this mountain. Remember that Nanjing was the capital until 1950, and so, unfortunately, its logical that violence would be centred here.

So what’s here now? Well, there’s a lot to see, especially if you’re interested in Chinese political history – this place is ALL about politics, propaganda and Chinese patriotism. It’s known as a national base for patriotic education. There’s even a museum seemingly dedicated to Chinese party members through history…I’m not entirely sure, because there’s a sign in Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean telling you that you can’t come in unless you’re Chinese. Curious, eh?

There’s also Mao Ze Dong (Chairman Mao) exhibition hall, which is everything and anything Mao. This place will strike many foreigners as rather odd, but hey the Chinese love this guy. You can get your photo taken with a life-sized bronze statue of Mao for 25 yuan. You can also leave a cigarette for him by placing it on a table in front of him – it sounds odd, but people are doing it. You can also buy Mao statues, posters, trinkets, books, DVDs, hats….well, anything basically. The most curious thing about this exhibition room, to me, is that there’s not ONE WORD of English in it.

There’s also an eternal flame on top of the hill that was only made last year for the PRC’s 60th anniversary. And as you walk around and take in the scale of this whole place, you walk towards the “Memorial of Revolutionary Martyrs”, which is a massive exhibition building, telling of the lives of those killed for their communist involvements and beliefs here on this mountain. It wasn’t just one or two people, it was thousands. Something that I noted in this particular exhibition is that it’s the most Chinglish-free place I’ve seen in China. They really put effort into this, and it shows. This is open from 8am to 5.30pm.

There’s also many other places to see here (including a pagoda that’s currently wrapped in scaffolding, so you can’t see that at the moment), in fact so much that there’s no way you can see it in just one day. There’s also recreational areas, including a BBQ area (apparently). It’s really big, and really nice…it’s so strange that a mass execution ground has become a world-class park.

There’s no official website (well not in English), and actually not too much info online apart from a few “sightseeing” sites.

Open from 8am. Free entry.

The western side of Purple Mountain, one of the area’s highest peak, is home to one of China’s oldest astronomical observatories. This area features not one but a few telescopes, as well as some ancient Chinese astronomical instruments, and some great bushwalks that will surely test the unfit person.

If you catch the number 20 bus (for example from Hankou Xi Lu), as soon as you get off, there’s a fork in the road – to the right takes you to the cable-car up the mountain, and to the left takes you up the walking path. For the more adventurous, you’ll see a good number of people taking a shortcut up a steep goat track in the hill to your right, after only a few minute’s walk up the road. If you like bushwalking with a bit of a challenge, this is the route you want to take. You can climb up to the top of a huge boulder on top of the hill (after maybe half an hour’s climb), which gives a great view of Xuanwu Hu (Xuanwu Lake). At regular intervals on the way, there’s people selling bottles of water and cucumbers (yep, cucumbers). Once you’re up there, you pay 12 yuan to get into the observatory (or only 8 if you have a student card).

There’s only a few things to see inside, but some are damn impressive – for instance the “Abridged Armilla”, a large cast-metal astronomical measuring tool, which looks like a Chinese version of something from a David Cronenberg film, with slender metal dragons gracing the legs of an archway which houses what could be called star-tracking rings. There’s two of them, and they’re impressively odd enough to warrant being stolen by foreign armies during the second Opium War circa 1900, and thus they lived for some years in Germany and France. They date back to 1437, and if you’ve been to a Chinese museum or two, you’ll know how incredibly advanced metalworking skills were in ancient China. These are no exception.

After seeing this, then you have the option of walking to the top of the taller mountain (this is another 30 to 50 minute walk, depending how fit you are and how fast you usually walk). However, there’s not much to see up there, unless you go very early in the morning (around 6am), at which time you can see groups of locals singing, dancing and sometimes painting. It’s very popular, since walking up here regularly will be enough to keep you fit. If you don’t want to walk, then the cable-car from the bottom is 60 yuan return, or 35 yuan one way (or if you are a “child under 1.3 metres”, it’s 25/15 yuan). You can also catch buses 3 and 315 to the same bus stop, or bus 91, which goes to the taller mountain. Alternatively, most taxi drivers know it. There’s also a Yosmite Chinese/western restaurant just outside the observatory gates.

The Drum Tower/Gulou (鼓楼) is the traditional centre of a Chinese city, and Nanjing’s is no exception. However, in contrast to drum towers in cities like Xi’an and Beijing, Nanjing’s is much smaller and not as large a tourist draw. This can be somewhat explained by the location: the Drum Tower is the middle of a traffic circle. This is not a quiet, out of the way park; it is on the intersection of five major roads. However, the gardens around the Drum Tower are quite pleasant if very small, and the upstairs of the tower itself has some interesting historic objects on display. Entry into the park is free, but entry into the tower is 5 RMB. Additionally, tea is served upstairs in the spring and summer, so visitors can relax and take in the history.

Nanjing University is one of the top universities in China, and its campus in downtown Nanjing is a very pleasant place to visit. Though this is just a university campus, there are plenty of areas with many trees and plants. The campus itself is relatively free of motor vehicle traffic, so visitors can come here for a quiet walk. Most of the garden areas of campus are relatively close to Hankou Road, with everything south of that bejing just dormitories. Farther north is a running track and basketball courts which open to the public every afternoon. Many people go there to play football (soccer), basketball, run, or even play Ultimate Frisbee.