Journey into China: Day 4: Modern Schools, Ancient Schools: Exploring Nanjing

Monday, December 8th

I snap to attention in the 5:30 AM darkness.  Sunrise is coming.  I send some e-mails, dress, and ascend to the rooftop restaurant for sunrise brunch.  This is supremely elegant.  An omelette buffet, a homemade yogurt station (mango, strawberry, natural), shots of fermented bean curd: Let the feasting begin.  I join Andreas for breakfast and together we watch the sunlight cut through, illuminate, and then fade into the morning smog.  The smog wins, especially at this vantage point, choking out the view of the buildings around us.

We meet in the lobby for a morning excursion to the newest and one of the most prestigious middle schools in Nanjing city.  We drive thirty minutes through the urban jungle until we reach the banks of the mightiest Yangtze River.  I’ve been looking for this river!  Cutting some 4,000 miles from the Himalaya to Shanghai, this river irrigates land that supports some 350 million people.  It is the most important river in China, and maybe the world in terms of its sustenance of human life.  It’s brackish, brown,  chilly, and surprisingly empty of boats. Ni Hao, Chiang Jiang River.

This gleaming new campus contains auditoriums, Olympic-size swimming pools, artificial turf fields, high rise classrooms, a security detail, a river pedestrian path, and more.  It serves 2,200 students!  It’s affiliated with Nanjing Normal University, and it sends some 100 students each summer to Australia and America for study and enrichment travel.  A clever and energetic woman named Gu (Gloria) is the Vice Principal, and she serves as tour guide for us and translator for all the Chinese men (Principal, Headmaster, entourage).  

As she chooses sophisticated and original words, and flies through her Mandarin speech, she strikes me as the smartest person in the room.

During our tour, Chinese boys stick their heads out the window and compete to say “Welcome to our school!” the loudest.

We finish the tour in a conference room with 25 seats and microphones around an oval, mahogany table.  As we are served green tea, we exchange ideas about pedagogy, course suggestions, supporting student exchanges, and sister school relationships.  We finish, as always, with ceremonial photos together at the school gate.  What will come of this visit?  Time will tell, but for certain, the relationship will require watering and care if we want it to grow.

Mid-day we taxi to Nanjing old city.  I peel off on my own, as seems to be my modus operandi, as I like to do just what I choose to and not inconvenience others.  

After swimming like a small fish through an ocean of urbanization, it’s relieving to enter the historical section of Nanjing.  Wooden buildings, tea-houses, canal-side walks, temples, dragon boats, low-rise old homes: this isn’t an artificial culture park, but a well-preserved historical district.  Indeed, as Nanjing served as national capital at various moments in Chinese history, the importance of this neighborhood cannot be understated.

I begin in the National Examination Museum.  One of the keys to China’s longevity, efficiency, and cohesion was its ability to absorb its most talented citizens into government administration.  For centuries upon centuries China chose its officials according to the results of an unforgiving exam, testing knowledge of history, language, literature, geography, and the Classics.  The exam was high-stakes, in a way the SAT has never been, in its absolute influence on the future course of a life.  This riverside museum displays the tools (calligraphy pen, portable lamp, writer’s desk) of the learned officials, and it also shows metal sculptures of the most revered and remembered Nanjing officials.

As I walk through the museum, a smiling Buddhist monk tricks me into donating money to burn some incense for good luck on my next exams.

I drift back into a plaza with a reflecting pool beneath soaring columns and a traditional Chinese roofline with up-curved edges and terraced roof lines.  I circle back to the canal and enter the Confucius Temple, the anchor building of the old city.

Confucius, China’s most famous philosopher who was active about five hundred years before Jesus, was deified for much of Chinese history.  Miracles, mythology, and idolatry sprung up around a man who preached order, duty, and virtue.  It’s not hard to understand why Emperors and governments would have an interest in promoting and preserving such conformist ideology.  In the outer courtyard, I peruse stone statutes of Confucius’ contemporaries and disciples, a band of wise and virtuous men.  Entering the main temple up a staircase adorned in red carpet, bands of Chinese museum girls (employees) gossip, smile, and try to sell me little red ribbons where I can write my wishes.  I decline.  

This temple doubles as a biographical museum, as it tells the story of Confucius’ life through a series of fifty ornate murals.  I read and watch as Confucius works the fields, carouses with royalty, rejects carnal sensuality, immerses himself in study, wanders the country, retreats to a sanctuary, and prays to something called “the Big Diaper.”  I feel for a moment that maybe I’ve been mis-directing my prayers.  I’ll see if the Big Diaper can help me in the future.

After the temple I walk over the canal to see the historical home of an official.  It’s a strange experience.  The stone building is cold, empty, and cavernous.  A few Chinese people seem to be hanging out and playing string instruments in unusual corners of the home.  I walk into one room that has an unexpected exhibit of marauding invaders with drawn weapons, and bones and bodies on the ground.  I have no idea why it’s here.

I stop for a zhen zhu nai cha (pearl milk tea), which isn’t very good, but it’s the only drink I know how to say in Chinese.  Next time I’ll learn a new phrase.

I stroll to my fourth and final museum, a bourgeoisie household fronting the canal.  This house emanates life.  I pass through an interior courtyard abundant with greenery.  On the second floor is a private room for music, chess, and relaxing.  Next door is the bedchamber, with an ornately wrought wooden bed-frame and canopy where the resident couple spent their first night together.  Down a stairwell into the basement leads to an outdoor patio with boat access to the canal under the bridge.  Had I lived in Nanjing in the 1800’s, this is the house I would have desired.

I stop by a food-stand and purchase something sweet and strange.  It seems to be sweet red bean curd in a glutinous paste inside of fried dough topped with a cherry.  In Chinese we say, “Hao Chi!”

It is now 2 PM.  The next four hours involve a taxi, another taxi, a speed train, and a taxi, in order to travel from Old Town Nanjing to Shanghai central.  Back at the Majesty Shanghai Plaza we settle in to a Cantonese dinner, which means lots of seafood and a animal parts.  I enjoy eels, shrimps, fish, pork, and more.  The feasting knows no end.

After dinner I send follow up e-mails to all of the teachers and students I’ve met so far.  Relationships are the name of this game, and I’m doing my best to build them.

At 9 PM I set out on a two hour city walk, down Nanjing Lu to the Bund.  I can’t resist the Shanghai waterfront at night.  The architectural light show is world-beating.  I wave hello to the statue of Chun Yi, the well-regarded long serving mayor of Shanghai, as I stroll.  Lots of people speak to me as I walk, and I feel my Chinese flowing more naturally with every interaction.

The evening walk (replete with thermal undergarments, a beanie, a gator, gloves, three layers of clothing, and a feather jacket) settles me down for a welcome sleep.