☆About Nanjing☆

Nanjing is a treasure, hotly fought over by regime after regime, not aiming to capture a port or military high ground, but simply because it is a great place to live and particularly harmonious in some ways.

Its feng shui (literally "wind and water") is so wonderful that a Ming emperor, ensconced in Beijing by dynastic tradition, actually sent an army just to disrupt Nanjing's feng shui so that no rival leader could make a competing capital in such a splendid setting. Fortunately that army failed and China is left with a kind of earthly paradise here today. Nanjing calls itself "the city of universal love."

As a home, Nanjing is nourishing and balanced. Nanjing is situated on the eastern coastal plain, it spans the great Yangzi River, but not the Chinese people's favorite, the Yellow River. It hosts one of the great universities, but not the very most prestigious. It is busy, but never choked with traffic like Beijing. Certain silk and stone arts are still refined in their practice here, like nowhere else. The cuisine is varied, delicate and healthful, but doesn't boast very many uniquely outstanding dishes. Nanjing's nightlife is upbeat and friendly, centered in a group of restored buildings from the Republican era -falling neither toward tawdry dive bars nor toward the generic glitz of Las Vegas wanna-bes. It is blessed but not shaken by the economic boom centered in Shanghai and other coastal areas.

Indeed, even in this era of money lust when the late Deng Xiaoping has upstaged all the moral sages of the past, from Chairman Mao back to Confucius and Lao Tse, with his dictum, "It is marvelous to be rich," neither cynicism or hucksterism are evident in Nanjing, where I have never felt the squeeze of a greedy merchant nor worried too much about my bags. Yes, the genuine warmth and civilized spirit of Nanjing is obvious in people-watching while simply walking down the broad, uncluttered sidewalks under the plane trees which line so many of the city's streets. And it is apparent in the city leaders' provision of an astounding 12 sqm per capita of public space.

Only recently has this splendid city been touting itself as the city of universal love. Use of this nickname may at first seem to a foreigner to be disingenuous, given that so much of the history presented to the city's visitors consists of grisly bloodshed and massive efforts to fortify the city. But in fact, the theme of universal love reflects both the temperament of Nanjing's people and the principles of one of their heroes, Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Sun was a charismatic and principled man who helped to form China's short-lived republican government of the early 20 th century and to attract all manner of domestic and foreign support for that effort.

Sun remains much loved, perhaps all the more so because he was not very effective or successful within the resulting short-lived regime. Significantly, in his conception of a democracy with Chinese characteristics, Sun adapted Confucius' principle of loyalty to the family and the emperor, espousing a broader love of each and every person and extended this even to the notion that a proper government should embody such love. This idea suited the Communists as well and survives as a key to his legacy.

Sun worked in Nanjing for only a brief formative period of the republic and at his own request, was later buried here. Visiting his mausoleum takes time -intended to be time for thought about his key ideas -and it is worthwhile with a good guidebook in hand.

Another specific site where the visitor can feel Nanjing's sense of universal love even more profoundly, ironically enough, is a museum of thousands of murders at the Rain Flower Terrace Cemetery for Fallen Heroes. According to today's government, the KMT executed 300,000 activists of opposition groups in the city, predominantly Communists, during the two decades when Nanjing was the KMT capital, and the old quarry for rain flower stones was the killing ground.

While Nanjing's museum of the Japanese's Nanjing massacre emphasizes the "living hell" of those days in 1937 and demonizes the Japanese, the designers of the Stone Flower museum chose a markedly different tone. Here the personal story of each of dozens of victims of the KMT (before and after the Japanese incursion), is recounted individually in a poignant display including photos from earlier in the victim's life and often personal artifacts, many of which were given to another prisoner just before the subject's execution. Perhaps a dozen of the victims are represented in excellent lifesize portraits along with their activist fellows in a modern Chinese figurative style reminiscent, except for the palette, of American portraitist John Singer Sargent and quite divorced from the familiar politicized painting styles of the late 20 th century.

The tone is light; the background music is more melancholy than funereal or patriotic. The KMT is presented as a political entity that was overcome rather than as lot of bad people. Rhetoric is strikingly warmer and more humanitarian than the norm. The focus is compassion and praise for individuals who chose to do their part in a very positive, principled campaign on behalf of their fellow humans and who knowingly risked death and accepted it. It is not too much to say that theirs were acts of universal love, now rewarded with a kind of universal love in this moving memorial.

A careful look around Nanjing is not all fun, but it is touching, unforgettable and uniquely enriching.

Links

travel china guide         Nanjing Tourism Board