"Do you want to do anything else while we are in Nanjing?" Josie asked.
"Oh, I don't know. I haven't planned anything yet."
"Do you want to go shopping?"
"No."
Not only do I have very little interest in shopping, I have very little money.
"Can we go see that memorial with all the stone soldiers? I don't know what its called but I think it's in Nanjing."
"Ahhh, I know what you are talking about."
After almost getting in a few more car accidents, we drove to a part of the Ming City Wall. Josie offered to pay for my ticket, and then complained about the tickets high price.
I'm not great at history or names or time periods so I apologize for my amateur explanation of a Chinese landmark, but basically during this one emperor's rule he built three gates at the entrance to the city walls. When being attacked, the emperor would leave the first gate open and close it after letting the first batch of soldiers had entered. The gates had hidden tunnels in them, so the emperors army could attack the oncoming soldiers from behind after trapping them between two gates. Then there was another third gate, just to be safe. Seemed like a pretty good strategy to me, but I'm not a military strategist. (I usually get to go home early when I play risk.)
There was a nearby tour in Chinese which I guess had a very good narrator, because Josie went off and started following them. I was thankful for this because Josie is a little boring and was just slowing me down.
Inside the gates, everything was tourism prices. I wanted a cup of coffee, but I wasn't going to spend 30 yuan. There was an archery area where you could fire a few arrows into the targets for 60 yuan. The man who ran the archery section was walking back and forth and consistently shooting arrows into the red and blue parts of the target. At first I was impressed, and then I remembered this is what this guy does everyday. Then I was unimpressed. He should be better by now.
Inside of the tunnels, they have installed some quite bizarre light exhibits. One tunnel has a stack of light blocks that change colors depending on what song you put on in the room, sort of like an old windows visualizer. Another tunnel had a funny statute and a thin chandelier that changed colors (pictured above). Yet another had a few motorbikes that had their wheels removed (no idea). The other tunnels were boarded up.
Afterwards, I went outside and meet an old stone Chinese man. He was very kind to me and asked if we could take a selfie together. I, of course, obliged.
Josie's tour began to move upstairs so I ran up after them. I think Josie had completely forgotten I was there.
Upstairs there are a few exhibits that are, sadly, mostly in Chinese. I read everything that is written in English, which isn't much. Most of the exhibits are empty as well, just with a few pictures on the wall.
At the end of one exhibit was a small model of the three gates. Like a fountain in America, people had thrown their change in, I assume for good luck. I was pretty impressed that the model could handle having metal coins thrown at it.
Another exhibit showed some bricks from the walls of the gate, that had Chinese characters engraved on the sides. Apparently, the bricks from the gate are the longest historical text the Chinese have from this period. (This was written on the wall in English, thank god. That's a pretty cool fact!)
The last exhibit, which was the largest, seemed to be a collection of antiques, but was actually a gift shop. They sold bracelets, tea sets, coins with zodiac signs, this funny guy riding a bull (pictured above), ceramics, elaborate glass bowls, and water bottles that look like minions.
As we leave the exhibits, I start to walk up to look off the top of the wall. Josie, meanwhile, sits down on a bench.
"Aren't you going to come up?"
"No, no. I'm tired."
I walk up the very small flight of stairs and look off the top of the wall. It looks kind of cool, but its not as epic as I hoped. (Am I spoiled?) There were a few catapults that were pretty cool, but we weren't allowed to shoot anything out of them. We weren't even allowed to throw or spit over the walls. (Those no throwing signs were translated in English.)
There were also a few signs at the top showing the distance to the other landmarks on the city wall (all between 15 to 30 minutes in either direction.) The wall goes all the way around the city, which sounds like an awesome little walking adventure, but Josie was still waiting for me at the bottom of the wall, panting. So we left. I don't know if I'll ever get to see that stuff.
As we were leaving, Josie said, "I remember there used to be a stone soldier here." I doubt there ever was, but let's give her the benefit of the doubt. It definitely wasn't the exhibit I was talking about, but I maybe should have known what it was called instead of just saying stone soldiers.
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