jiayan

On Sunday, we had the day to ourselves. My sister had visited Nanjing in the summer and recommended that I visit the Nanjing Massacre Museum, Confucius Temple (夫子庙), and Xuanwu Lake (玄武湖). Bryan, Taylor, Martin, Peiyi, Colin, Stephanie, and I decided to go visit Nanjing Musuem in the morning, then Residential Palace, and the Lake in the evening.

Nanjing Massacre Museum is by far one of my favorite museum. The architecture of the building is constructed so that it gives the visitors a melancholic feeling. The museum has a rectangular shape and surrounding it are statues that recreates what the Nanjing residents went through. There is a baby lying on top of his mother’s breast, unaware that his mother is already frozen to death. There is a grandfather holding his 3-month old grandson. And these statues are placed in a trench-like structure, made of black marble with a thin layer of water. There is also a giant bell in front of a wall that says 300,000 victims in several different languages.

Inside the museum, I spent a long time looking over every exhibit because the subject interests me and all the displays were portrayed really well. There were two floors, the first floor shows how Japan viewed China during the war. A lot of exhibits had Japanese weapons, texts from Chinese survivors, matrons, etc. The second floor is supposed to represent “victory.” There was also a memorial hall for the victims. According to the statistics, one Nanjing resident died every 12 seconds. Therefore, in this hall you hear time ticking and every 12 seconds there would be a water drop (to represent a tear drop) and a picture on the wall (there were many pictures of the victims) would light up. All in all, it was a very moving experience.

Afterwards, we went to the Presidential Palace (总统府) which has over 600 years of history. It used to be the Office of the President of Republic of China but is now the the China Modern History Museum. This palace used to be the Prince of Han during the Mynasty. In 1853, the Taiping peasant army took over Nanjing and set up “The Kingdom of Heavenly Peace.” Hong Xiuquan claimed the palace and made it even bigger. In 1864, Xeng Guofan took down the Taiping army. In 1912, Dr. Sun Yat-sen was elected the Provincial Palace of the Republic and changed the west garden of the palace into the Presidential Palace. There were two wings in the Presidential Palace: the Executive Council of the Nationalistic Government, and the military authorities. We were able to see the rooms the way they were used before – each room was preserved to maintain its original look. There’s even a room where you can sit at one of the table as if you were of the military authority at that time. There were also several beautiful gardens, ponds, and archways that enhanced the beauty of the Palace.

Afterwards we went to 玄武湖, which is similar to Beida’s Unnamed Lake, but much nicer. You can see the eastern part of the Ming city wall and the temple on the south. Historically, troops were trained near the lake with both demonstrations and battles held here. Therefore, the lake has also been called “Kunming Lake”. You can pay a small fee to take a boat across the river but we decided not to. We just walked around and sat by the lake, enjoying the beautiful scenic shots and peaceful environment.

We headed back to our hotel to eat dinner around there before boarding the bus to the train station back home.