Beijing Blog Part 11: A Sense of Adventure

July 4, 2009-(Location Unknown – Nanjing, China )

Our first stop along our study tour landed us in historic Nanjing, China which by far was probably the most ironic and surprising destination out of all of the cities we visited. With the city being one of the oldest cities in China, and along with it, the capital of several dynasties during China’s imperial era, it was a stop that we didn’t want to miss.

But Nanjing is also known for another characteristic that made me kind of sit on the edge of my seat for the days leading up to our flight there: it’s overwhelming hatred of all things Japanese.

Now to be honest, all throughout my time in Beijing and Shanghai, I’ve never been scared of anything safety related. All in all, if you avoid the bad parts of towns like Shanghai, there really isn’t anything to worry about even at 3 a.m. in the morning.

But Nanjing was the first place in China where I felt like, as a citizen of the nation of Japan, my safety and well-being was going to be compromised. In fact, I even ended up telling a bunch of my classmates to watch what they were saying around the locals here, especially about who I am and where I came from. It even got as bad as me actively telling them to tell the locals that I was an “American” and not “Japanese” as most of them had been describing me as.

It didn’t make it any better by the fact that our very first experience with the local guide ended up with her spending 3/4ths of the 2 hour bus ride ranting about the Japanese occupation and how the Japanese had ruined the national treasures of a beloved nation.

Now don’t get me wrong. Everything she said was well substantiated. The Japanese during WWII did do horrible things sometimes to several nations. Wars and nationalistic pride does that to human beings. And sometimes, I even feel like the Japanese government is stupid for not admitting their defeat or apologizing for some of the things they did, worried it would hurt “national pride.”

But at the same time, I think what many Nanjing-ers, especially the elderly, fail to understand is that the Japan of today and

its citizens are a completely different breed from the nationalistic, imperialistic individuals of over a century ago. And that like all people, we generally agree that WWII was not the best of times for any country in the world.

I always hate it when people compare me to a war which I didn’t even get to have a say in. Imagine yourself being compared to the elimination of the Native Americans of the Great Plains, or the attempted genocide of the Jewish race, or the slavery of Africans.

I guess I just want to say that what’s done, is done, every country has done its fair share of harm for the world, and there’s no use holding a grudge against one country forever when that country has undergone transformation to try to make itself better since that one day.
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In addition to the above though, all throughout my time in Beijing blogging, I’ve always told you to watch out for China’s cities, because they all tend to operate with a ying and yang, or a push and pull, if you will.

In this case, the city of Nanjing replaced my fear of safety and my constant annoyance at the mention of “occupation” and “Japanese” in one word, with quite possibly, the greatest urban adventure I’ve had thus far.

And it all happened with a glass of bubble milk tea.

On our full day in Nanjing, our teacher decided to give us the afternoon off as the first of many “free time” periods throughout the entire study tour. This particular afternoon, a bunch of our fellow classmates decided to go back to the Confucius temple district and to wander around the shops and, in honor of Independence Day, eat at a KFC or McDonalds nearby.

However, me and a couple of other people had different ideas in mind…

It’s what I’d like to say, but the truth is, these people left before we could even ask them where they were going. So instead of following the crowd back to where we’d already been that day, we decided to head towards the largest lake in Nanjing which was, according to the map, about 10 blocks away.

But sometimes, the map can be misleading, and this map was most definitely NOT to scale. So we ended up walking almost two hours with no avail. In fact, we were almost to the point of giving up and getting a taxi back to our hotel, when one of us spotted a small bubble tea store.

By then, we were kind of tired and our feet were sore, so we decided to take a break and order the 5 RMB ($0.70 US) glass of bubble tea to go. And by god, it was probably the best bubble tea that we’d ever tasted since we arrived in China. And whether it was magic, or luck, or something, we don’t know, but after drinking the tea, everything began to get better.

At 10 minutes elapsed, we came across the park where people were ballroom dancing to some traditional Chinese music. Mike and Jeni, and later Kevin, decided to show us their cotillion skills, much to the surprise, but good laughs, of many of the Chinese people nearby.

At 15 minutes elapsed, we came across the lake. And wow, it was probably the biggest lake that we had ever seen. And then we heard….music…

At 20 minutes elapsed, we found out that this music was actually a karaoke stand that had been set up on the lakeside, and for 1 RMB ($0.20 US) per song, you could sing songs while watching the boats and the waves hit upon the shore. And so of course, some of us stopped for a second, I mean, who passes by outdoor karaoke by a lake?

At first, Aaron, Kevin, and Mike sang us Black or White, in honor of Michael Jackson’s death. Secondly, Andrew, Jeni and I decided to sing Stand By Me, which Andrew and I had been singing acapella for some time, much to the hatred and glares of many of the people on our bus… By then, we had attracted a lot of attention from the Chinese people nearby, since; I guess they don’t hear English songs sung that often, at least not by actual Americans. One of the people actually came up to ask us who we were. Little did we know that she was actually a graduate of the university that we’re currently studying at! And little did we know that for about an hour, she thought that I was actually either a tour guide or a teacher for these “foreigners” that were now belting out Black and White. I get that a lot around here, I hope it’s not a growing trend.

So at 40 minutes elapsed, we befriended this one lady who officially became our first friend in Nanjing. The kind lady actually offered us some tea at her place in Nanjing, but seeing as how we had a deadline to fulfill and several other adventures to undergo, we kindly refused and went on our way.

Our next adventure came when we reached a fork in the road when deciding what to do for dinner. We had the hotel’s card in our wallets, just in case we got lost in Nanjing and had to take the taxi back, so after a while, we decided that we would walk in a random direction, and walk in the first restaurant we saw, regardless of sketchy-ness, regardless of what kind of food it served.

Well, at 50 minutes elapsed, the random direction took us to the campus of Southwest University, and the first restaurant we saw was a family owned restaurant where we found our waiter to be a 6-year old boy. There must not be a lot of foreigners who go to Southwest University since we also attracted the stares of pretty much everyone there when we walked in, sat down and attempted to read the (of course) Chinese menu.

After a while, we got fed up with being able to read some of the dishes, but not knowing the meaning at all, so we decided to leave the ordering up to the 6-year old, who subsequently ordered us probably some of the best home-cooked  style dishes we’ve had in a while. We had actual, genuine Chinese kung pao chicken (yea, the ones they serve in Chinese restaurants back home). But I especially liked their fried rice, a type which my Mom often speaks of, which uses no soy sauce to make it.

By the time we finished, we found that we had 15 minutes to get back to the hotel, so we spent the last couple minutes hailing down a cab (which was unusually hard to do there), and speeding back to the hotel before our other classmates left.

This adventure and the story behind it slowly became famous as the trip wore on. And from now on, my friends and I have this saying if you’re feeling down on your luck, “go find some bubble tea, and all will be well.”