The Old Emperor and the New Emperor

This one is going to be mostly pictures. 

The Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum

Nanjing is a very important city in Chinese history. It was the Capital of the Empire about 10 times, although each time only for rather short periods. But as such a capital, many emperors had their palaces here and were buried here as well. Nanjing is one of China's so-called ancient capitals, together with Beijing, Luoyang and Xi'an. Living and studying in such a capital is a special privilege, and as Flagship students we get to participate in a number of field trips to certain special destinations. Thus, on a warm late-september saturday, we went to visit the Sun Yat-sen mausoleum and the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum.


I don't want to get bogged down in history here, as I don't quite understand all of it myself. But here is something interesting. The Ming Xiaoling tomb (the smaller one, does not have as many stairs) was built for an old emperor, whereas the Sun Yat-sen memorial was built in the 1920's for nation builder Sun Yat-sen, or Sun Zhongshan. Even though Sun Yat-sen was not an emperor (the last emperor's reign in China ended in 1911), he is basically seen and treated as an emperor, in a good way. His tomb is modeled in style and architecture after the old Ming Xiaoling mausoleum in many ways. The people in China hold Sun Yat-sen in the highest regard and see him as a father figure for the whole nation. This is especially interesting since Sun Yat-sen had championed a political ideology that is very different from current China politics. He talked about the "Three principles of the people", specifically Minzu, Minquan and Minsheng, which translates roughly into People's government, democracy and government for the people. These three ideas are inscribed in big gold lettering on the gate of the Sun Yat-sen memorial. Sun got these ideas from Abraham Lincoln, specifically from the famous line "government of the people, by the people and for the people". It is easy to see that these principles are not exactly front and center in recent Chinese politics and frankly, Chinese people don't like to talk about these principles. They love Sun Yat-sen, but they don't like to talk about his political ideas and acknowledge the conflict with the status quo.

White babies are incredible people magnets here!

Stairs to the mausoleum. 

The gold lettering above the three doors says, in essence:
"Of the people, by the people, for the people"

Cousin Jonny and wife Amy

Life sized Sun Yat-sen

This blue and white emblem is now the major part of the
Taiwanese flag.

Everyone who walked by these heads, rubbed them. So did I.

Map of the Ming Xiaoling mausoleum

Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum

These characters say: This is the tomb of the Hongwu emperor. One of the
characters has been tampered with, as a disrespect by a following dynasty.

Ceiling in the Ming Xiaoling mausoleum

Museum depicting an ancient battle

To celebrate this rich Chinese history, we decided, naturally, to treat ourselves to some great American hamburgers afterwards. We had eyed a restaurant across the street from the university for a while and decided it was time. The burgers were very impressive, a truly great hamburger, even by American standards. The best part was that the waiter passed out little plastic gloves, to protect the customers from the juice of the hamburgers. This seemed to be just another little sign of a culture working to adapt elements from another as its own.

It was a very nice day and the sites were quite impressive. China truly has an incredibly rich history and we are just barely scratching the surface. But we will keep scratching.

Conference in the Paris of the East

Nowadays, when people think and talk about China, a lot of that talk is about Shanghai. And rightfully so, Shanghai is a very international city and the business center of China's fast growing economy. When Jenn and I landed in China, we did so in Shanghai. But the airport is outside of the city center and did not actually get to see Shanghai's Glory. Wanting to go back and make up for that missed opportunity, the District Conference was just what the doctor ordered. We had a church meeting scheduled for all branches around Shanghai and it was to be held in the big city itself. 

The meeting itself was nice. Church members (non-Chinese passport holders) from all around China had gathered together and we had a great conference with only a few technological microphone difficulties. Among the members of the congregation were members of the well known Piano Guys, including the Cellist. After the meeting, most Flagship students, naturally including us, decided to spend the Sunday afternoon exploring the city center of Shanghai, specifically an area called "The Bund". The pictures will show you exactly what the bund is. In essence, it is a long boardwalk along the river that divides Shanghai into two parts, the Pudong and Puxi sides. This set-up allows visitors to enjoy a breathtakingly beautiful sight on the business center of Shanghai and enjoy seeing buildings like "the bottle opener" and the pearl tower. I remember being in awe seeing Taipei 101 in Taiwan, but Shanghai is in a totally different league. The "bottle opener" is just about as big as Taipei 101, but in Shanghai's skyline, the building seems just like any other. 

The weather was perfect, a cool sea breeze made for the perfect walking temperature. All kinds of people were treasuring this moment. Jenn and I talked to a scientist from France and we saw a couple taking wedding pictures. About that couple I have to note, that they might in fact be models. They both were very attractive people and when taking pictures, they posed in ways that seemed rather studied and unusual for normal wedding pictures. Also, when no pictures were taken, the couple did not act like you would expect an engaged couple to act; they didn't seem particularly interested in each other.

Not much longer after that we caught our train back home to Nanjing. We like our quaint Nanjing city, a small village of 8 million compared to Shanghai, but Shanghai was truly impressive!