shanghai pt. 2

On the third day of our Shanghai tour, we headed to Nanjing, which was about 3 hours away from Shanghai. We visited the Sun Yat Sen Memorial, where Sun Yat Sen himself is buried but we didn't get to see his tomb. It was blocked off from the public.

Sun Yat Sen is known as "The Father of The Nation" in China and he was a revolutionist. He was also the founding father of the Republic of China and was China's first president. He played a big role in overthrowing the Qing dynasty.

Entrance to the Memorial.

The design of the Memorial was actually the result of a competition. Over 40 proposals were received and each proposal had to follow several rules, which I was never told what they were.

The Memorial had a lot of layers if you could call it that. The way the memorial was designed is really cool. When you reach the top and you look downwards, you don't see the steps that you climbed.

The Memorial at a distance.

Getting closer.

Top of the Memorial.

Sun Yat Sen Memorial statue.

Our next stop was the bridge where the Rape of Nanjing/Nanking (also known as The Nanking Massacre) started. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the event, the Japanese invaded China and brutally murdered (and)or raped the residents of Nanjing. This occurred over a six week period. It's not surprising that the people of Nanjing (and some other Chinese) hate the Japanese.

Since this is a really touchy subject and I'm not 100% of the facts, don't take what I've written at face value. There are always two sides to every story but from what I've understood and read in history class (although history was never my strong point), it was a horrific event and it was wholly unnecessary.

Entrance to the bridge

Beautiful scenery

Part of the bridge that was blown apart by the Japanese

Part of the blown bridge

Finally, here are some pictures of the hotel that we stayed in. It looks beautiful but in reality, it was pretty bad. There was a huge patch of mold right outside our bathroom and the wallpaper looked extremely old. It was a government-owned hotel and what you notice about China very quickly, is that everything looks very grand when it's new, but they don't spend any money in maintaining everything so it deteriorates very quickly.

Lobby.

The pictures of the lobby actually look better than it did in real life -_-.

You can see the mold match outside the bathroom. Eeeeeeew!

The beds were rock hard. I know I sound like such a complainer, but the travel agent kept rambling on and on about how the hotels were 5 stars but this seriously was not a 5 star. A 5 star would have comfy beds, no mold and an AC that actually cools the room down. It would also have free internet, this place needed us to pay >:|