Nanjing was a really wonderful trip. The city has a long history as an on-again off-again capital of China during many different dynasties and periods for the last few thousand years. Maybe most famously during the Ming dynasty and then in the early 20th Century during the rule of the Kuomintang.
My hosts were Nanjing Normal University and the students of Professor Chen Zhen, who had invited me. Below are the identical twins Xu Bei and Xu Ting - both studying philosophy in the MA program here.
And it was even their birthday while I was there! They were a little surprised that I could easily tell them apart - but I've had practice at Canisius distinguishing identical twins.
The student below is Wu Zhen Yu. He will begin graduate work in Hong Kong next fall. He applied to two universities and two programs. He's accepted for anthropology but he got wait listed for philosophy. He is hoping the philosophy spot opens, but if not he has a position.
My advantage was having him as a guide at Nanjing Museum because he was a museum studies major as an undergraduate. Very handy! His knowledge was quite deep, and when he wasn't explaining some intricacies of Chinese history and artifacts to me ... well, then we argued philosophy [John Searle's Chinese Room Experiment was a hot topic for a while].
I have only given you a few of the many amazing features of the museum. Below is a suit of jade [that's correct - a suit made out of jade] to bury the emperor. The emperor has been taken out, but the suit is still here.
You can see that the pieces of jade are sewn together. The thread is made out of silver. As we Americans might say, "very cool".
One reason that I was on a jade theme is that I bought a jade bracelet for Ann on our anniversary last week. The bracelets below, however, are a little more pricey. These bracelets are actually 5000 years old [that's 3000 BC] and come from the ancient culture that occupied Jiangsu Province back in the day.
That evening I was taken to Fuzi Miao - or, the Confucian Temple. Below is the gate leading into the area of town containing the main buildings.
Below is the temple lit up at night. Seems a little kitschy for a Confucian, but I didn't plan it. That's Kongzi [Confucius] in the front of the shrine.
This is the shrine area to make sacrifices to Kongzi and all the other famous scholars of the past. Down a few streets is the hall where the examinations were given. Scholars from all over the surrounding areas would come for these major examinations and how well they did on the exams would determine their level in the official bureaucracy. This is one of the highest level temples in the country, so it would be for higher level examinations.
Below is a recent scholar whose exams are only a little less harrowing. This is Qiao Chu [and Kongzi], another MA student at Nanjing Normal U.
Qiao Chu was most helpful to me during the whole trip. He rarely left my side and kept up a running discussion of philosophy and history, both western and Chinese.
The next day we headed out to Zijin Shan - the mountain on the city's eastern side. The most prominent site on the mountain is the mausoleum of Sun Yatsen [which I discovered is a Cantonese name - in Mandarin his name is Sun Zhongshan; this is why almost every city in China has a main street named Zhongshan Lu].
The usual phrase used for Sun is "the father of modern China" and he is revered by people of every political stripe. Below is statue of the seated Sun.
Inside was his crypt with a large marble figure of Sun laying over it. No pictures allowed out of respect, but Qiao Chu and I had our photos taken when we came out.
Here is shot of the steps up to the monument from our perch by the mausoleum. It was quite impressive.
By the way, the blue tiles all over the roofs of the gates and structures stand for the Kuomintang - Sun's party. Although they became the enemy of the CPC , it is all tolerated here because it can be considered Sun's party. In that aspect, it is accepted.
We then moved over to another part of the mountain to a museum dedicated to Sun Yat-Sen. There was a lot of information about his life, with documents, photographs and various artifacts of interest. I learned a lot and was able to fill in some of the massive gaps that take up most of the area in my brain called "Chinese history".
Above is the desk, chair and books that Sun used.
After the Sun Museum, we moved further across the mountain to Linggu Temple, a Buddhist monastery that was being completely redone. Maybe the temple is old, but it seemed as if every brick that I saw was new. We climbed to the top of the pagoda you see below.
The mountain was quite nice, and the view was good, but unfortunately ... Nanjing has much of the common Chinese disease of massive air pollution and the whole area was in a kind of gray haze.
I took this photo for Ann especially. I knew that she would have loved it. She always checks out the Guanyin monuments as Guanyin looks out for the misfortunate, including the orphaned girls of the land.
In this altar she is standing in front of a kind of diorama with tiny figures mounting up the wall - most of which are old people and small children seeking help.
Finally a shot of some philosophers. My final dinner in Nanjing with my host - on the right - Professor Chen Zhen. He got his PhD at Wayne State University, so we had some Detroit chats.
On the left is Professor Chen Ya-jun, of Nanjing University, who not only researches in my area of American philosophy, but was both a student and professor at Xiamen University for many years.
This was one of my best visits in China. My hosts - both students and professors - were lively, interesting and very hospitable. It was an honor to be their guest.
No comments:
Post a Comment