Here’s Xavier lining up a, frankly, ludicrous number of Jägerbombs. You topple one shotglass of Jägermeister into the glass of Red Bull and the rest follow, toppling over like dominoes.
Eli, Xioahan, Carol, Xavier, and Andrea all left Shanghai in the course of eight days. Monday morning will feel like ODW 2.0.
We had the Kung Fu Panda Dubai Ride wrap dinner at a Xinjiang restaurant. We ordered four whole roasted lamb for the crew.
I spent the day hiking around 紫金山 (Zĭjīnshān meaning “Purple-Gold Mountain.”)
Sun Yat-sen is an important figure in the founding of the Republic of China and is considered the “Father of the Nation.” Apparently he loved the Purple Mountain and, after his death, it was chosen as the site of his mausoleum. There is an entrance gateway at the base of the hill.
And then a fucking Rocky movie to get to the top.
Picture taking was not permitted inside.
I walked down and around the mountain to the mausoleum of the first Ming emperor, Hongwu.
The entrance gate seemed Imperial, but modest.
It was only deep inside the complex that it started looking like the Ming built a palace atop a temple on the jungle moon of Yavin 4.
The steep stairway up the center of the building oozed water, making it look particularly spooky and treacherous.
Just look at him! I visited the Confucian Temple in Nanjing.
But, frankly, the thing that drew my attention was this statue of a qilin with a tiny, baby qilin on its back.
Look at him! Just look at him!
This is the Jinghai Temple, seen here nestled in magnolia trees with the the Yuejiang Tower atop Lion Mountain looking down upon it.
The temple, whose name means “Ocean Peace,” was ordered built by the Ming emperor to honor the great sea explorer Zheng He.
Zheng He was a fascinating guy. Sort of the Christopher Columbus of China. He went on seven sea voyages, traveling all around the coasts of Southeast Asia, India, Arabia, and Africa. (His story is so compelling that pseudohistorian Gavin Menzies theorizes that Zheng He discovered North America in 1421 by heading east. A fun idea.)
Everywhere he went, he brought gifts of gold, silver, porcelain, and silk to encourage diplomacy between China and these far-flung lands. He brought exotic gifts back to the emperor, too. Gifts like a motherfucking giraffe.
(It’s worth noting that the Chinese had never seen a giraffe and thought it was the mythic qilin.)
I couldn’t help but read this next sign in a dry Gene Wilder voice. 
Terms of the Treaty of Nanking — the peace treaty which ended the First Opium War between the U.K. and the Qing dynasty — were settled at the temple (before being officially signed on the H.M.S. Cornwallis anchored near the city.) The rear portion of the temple is devoted to a pretty damning museum.
It also had some fascinating early 20th century propaganda regarding all the threats to China. The symbolism is a little too on the nose, if you ask me.
To be perfectly honest, between the Treaty of Nanking and the Rape of Nanking, it isn’t at all surprising to me that China sometimes seems to have a chip on its shoulder when it comes to foreign relations. It spent the better part of a century being shat upon by foreign powers.
I walked the northeast corner of the old Nanjing city walls. I could see my towering hotel building in the distance, looking like a matte painting in a particularly trite science fiction flick.
The city wall offered helpful advice.
That’s fair, that’s fair.
Here’s another shot of the city wall and my hotel in the distance. Atop the wall you can see the Olympic rings from when Nanjing hosted the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics.
In this corner of the city, the city wall skirts along the Xuanwu Lake, a lovely place with islands connected by arched bridges with the Purple Mountain visible in the distance.
I saw this beautiful (smog-free) picture of the lake plastered on a walled off area under construction.
The phrase “一花一木皆是景, 一言一行要文明” translates as something like “Flowers and wood are all King, the words and deeds of civilization.”
Sometimes my brain gets ahead of itself and tries to parse Pīnyīn as English. I couldn’t help but see “of Animal U.” every time I glanced at this subway station’s name. (It’s really Xīn mófàn mǎlù.)
When DreamWorks was toying with the idea of setting up a joint venture in China, we partnered with a company called Original Force in Nanjing to make the “How to Train Your Dragon” TV show. The first wave of DreamWorkers living & working there frequented an ex pat pub called Finnegan’s Wake.
I made a pilgrimage to Finnegan’s Wake in their honor, hoisting several pints of cold Guinness and eating some hearty beef stew.
Harrowing. Absolutely harrowing. Starting with this giant statue of a woman holding the body of her dead son out front, every single thing at Nanjing’s memorial museum commemorating the Japanese atrocities in World War II (sometimes referred to as “the Rape of Nanking“) — is harrowing.
The giant statue is followed by a series of life-sized statues, each horrific and unbearably poignant.
Only then do you pass this giant grotesque and enter the actual museum.
You know things are bad when something called the Red Swastika (a philanthropic group modeled on the Red Cross) is one of the good guys.
I couldn’t bare to take pictures of all artifacts and personal stories recorded in the museum. The Epilogue at the end pulled no punches.
Exiting the museum, there was more grotesque statuary.
It’s not captured in any of these pictures, but the memorial was quite crowded. Especially since I was visiting on a national holiday.
After exiting the museum, off to one side, a mere handful of the visitors broke away from the masses to visit the excavation sites: mass graves unearthed in the 1980s. The buildings were quiet and dark and solemn and broken into two sections. The first was just a mound of jumbled human bones. The second was full of complete skeletons, laid out carefully, heads to one side. So many children. So many children.
The last exit of the memorial ends on a hopeful note. A giant statue of Peace. I didn’t think of it at the time, but the baby in the woman’s arms echoes the one being held by his mother out front.
The city walls of Nanjing may not be as impressive as, say, Xi’an’s. However, this gate through the wall has a train which runs straight through it, which is pretty damn cool.
Looking out of my 70th floor window at the smog blanketing Nanjing, I couldn’t help but think of Shanshui painting, with rows of mountains fading into the mist in the distance.
This was my hotel in Nanjing. The Intercontinental. I stayed on the 70th floor.
To the south, the old Nanjing city wall runs along the Qinhuai River, making a lovely park.
Across the river, you can see the Da Bao’en Temple looming on a hill.
I found these. Obviously, they are Qing-era troll children, turned to stone.
These two seem to have been trying to outrun the rising sun to no avail. 
I also found a regal statue of Li Bai, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty.
Just before arriving in Nanjing, my train stopped at this station. Nothing makes you feel like you’re living Beyond the Wall in Westeros than a seeing a place translates as “Forest of the Eternals.”
(Apologies for the potato quality.)
