Here is your Chinese lesson for today: Bei means North, Nan means South. Jing means city. In the middle of the last century, when a more standardised Pinyin* was promoted by Mao Ze Dong, the modern spellings of Nanjing and Beijing replaced Nanking and Peking. China’s ruling dynasties, and later the Nationalists and Republicans, all chose their own site for their capital. Nanjing was the Southern Capital for the Tang, Song and Ming dynasties as well as for the Nationalists. Mao and the Republicans favoured Beijing, and there it has stayed. The battle between North and South is not just a UK thing, and in China’s case, the north won.
The battle of the capitals has been political, economic and climatic. Nanjing occupies a classic trading and bridging site on the mighty Yangtze River, on the major north south route and at a halfway house between north and south China. It has four quite distinct seasons: tropical summers under the influence of the Asian monsoon with exhausting humidity and the odd risk of typhoons, and very cold and often snowy winters, brought on the Siberian winds. These are separated by the eagerly awaited autumn and spring with warm clear days and welcome breezes. Whilst numbingly cold in winter, Beijing escapes the sub tropical humidity and heat and is reckoned by some to enjoy a more tolerable climate. In both cities, tap water has to be boiled for drinking. Beijing benefits from community winter heating systems installed in residential areas, Nanjing does not and despite the freezing winters, central heating is a rarity and those who can afford it rely on reversing the air cons to blow hot air. Says Ran “that’s good, it reduces the air pollution from coal fired power stations which we get in Beijing”. So why live here?
History shadows you as you navigate the city by foot or bus even though the eradication of the past has been the usual story with every change of dynasty or shade of government. In spite of the CBD American inspired malls, road grid system, and high rise residential blocks built in the last 40 years (much of poor quality) which replaced the huddles of equally poor low rise housing communities, Nanking’s non capital status since 1949 has saved it from the worst excesses of planning and politics. Mao’s Republic destroyed Beijing’s city walls, but here they remain as the longest and most ancient in the world and they have also been rebuilt in parts, to the consternation of UNESCO who disapprove of such ‘improvements’. They date from 1300 and you can touch the maker’s name engraved on the tiles, which ensured compensation in case of breakages. It is possible to calculate population size given Nanjing’s historical records of number of households, and at the end of the first millennium Nanjing was the largest city in the world at nearly half a million people.
We walk home to our district, Taiping Men (Taiping City Gate), one of six gates set in the city wall that has been renovated on a grand scale. Our community is located on the site of one of the worst single atrocities of the Nanking Massacre of 1937: 1300 soldiers and civilians were murdered here by an out of control Japanese 16th Division in acts of unimaginable cruelty and depravity. Japan’s persistent denials as to the total numbers of murders involved (estimated, over a period of six weeks as between 40,000 and 300,000), or even that these atrocities took place at all, are a mystery to most, including the Japanese economist I saw interviewed on CCTV on National Day last week. Full documentary evidence exists by foreigners in the form of German John Rabe’s exhaustive diaries, Jinling College School Head Minnie Vautrin’s ‘at the time’ written accounts, the testimonies freely offered by (elderly and offloading?) surviving Japanese soldiers in 1984, and irrefutably, Miner Bates’ gruesome cinefilms, taken (unsuccessfully) to alert the west and elicit their help.
Nanjing’s Imperial Palace, dating originally from the Ming Dynasty, is the model for the later Forbidden City in Beijing but with its classical gardens and pavilions it’s prettier and more human in scale. Elsewhere there are top museums, many of the best schools in China, three Universities and various Research Institutions, Military Academies, Buddhist Temples and a National Library. The pagodas largely survived the Cultural Revolution and if not, modern replicas have been built, although it is often difficult to tell the difference. There are 6; one we can walk to in the long lunch break. The Folk Museum is housed in a beautiful classical Chinese single storey house with internal gardens and lovely vistas through the main doors; not a stick of it is original, destroyed as it was in the early 1950s and later rebuilt using photographic evidence provided by the ousted family. Out of the CBD the most naturally beautiful part of the city is to the northeast. Nanjing’s mausoleums, including that of Dr Sun Yatsen, over thrower of the Qing Dynasty and ‘Father of Modern China’ and that of the founding Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Xiaoing, are set in lake and canal dotted woodlands as scenic as the New Forest. The French-influenced wife of Chang Kai Chek planted long avenues of plane trees in the 1920s as an approach to these historic sites: you could be in Van Gogh’s Arles. China has in fact planted more trees than any other country in the world in the last 10 years arguably creating a carbon sink far beyond the west’s efforts. Xuanwe Lake and Purple Mountain are in walking distance from us, the Yangtze River waterfront is being developed as a landscaped esplanade… check out wiki for pictures.
Back to that Chinese lesson...... the Pinyin* for Yangtze is Chang Jiang.
*(The system of transcribing the “word picture” Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet for simplification and easier learning by westerners, plus Chinese typewriter operators!)
The battle of the capitals has been political, economic and climatic. Nanjing occupies a classic trading and bridging site on the mighty Yangtze River, on the major north south route and at a halfway house between north and south China. It has four quite distinct seasons: tropical summers under the influence of the Asian monsoon with exhausting humidity and the odd risk of typhoons, and very cold and often snowy winters, brought on the Siberian winds. These are separated by the eagerly awaited autumn and spring with warm clear days and welcome breezes. Whilst numbingly cold in winter, Beijing escapes the sub tropical humidity and heat and is reckoned by some to enjoy a more tolerable climate. In both cities, tap water has to be boiled for drinking. Beijing benefits from community winter heating systems installed in residential areas, Nanjing does not and despite the freezing winters, central heating is a rarity and those who can afford it rely on reversing the air cons to blow hot air. Says Ran “that’s good, it reduces the air pollution from coal fired power stations which we get in Beijing”. So why live here?
History shadows you as you navigate the city by foot or bus even though the eradication of the past has been the usual story with every change of dynasty or shade of government. In spite of the CBD American inspired malls, road grid system, and high rise residential blocks built in the last 40 years (much of poor quality) which replaced the huddles of equally poor low rise housing communities, Nanking’s non capital status since 1949 has saved it from the worst excesses of planning and politics. Mao’s Republic destroyed Beijing’s city walls, but here they remain as the longest and most ancient in the world and they have also been rebuilt in parts, to the consternation of UNESCO who disapprove of such ‘improvements’. They date from 1300 and you can touch the maker’s name engraved on the tiles, which ensured compensation in case of breakages. It is possible to calculate population size given Nanjing’s historical records of number of households, and at the end of the first millennium Nanjing was the largest city in the world at nearly half a million people.
We walk home to our district, Taiping Men (Taiping City Gate), one of six gates set in the city wall that has been renovated on a grand scale. Our community is located on the site of one of the worst single atrocities of the Nanking Massacre of 1937: 1300 soldiers and civilians were murdered here by an out of control Japanese 16th Division in acts of unimaginable cruelty and depravity. Japan’s persistent denials as to the total numbers of murders involved (estimated, over a period of six weeks as between 40,000 and 300,000), or even that these atrocities took place at all, are a mystery to most, including the Japanese economist I saw interviewed on CCTV on National Day last week. Full documentary evidence exists by foreigners in the form of German John Rabe’s exhaustive diaries, Jinling College School Head Minnie Vautrin’s ‘at the time’ written accounts, the testimonies freely offered by (elderly and offloading?) surviving Japanese soldiers in 1984, and irrefutably, Miner Bates’ gruesome cinefilms, taken (unsuccessfully) to alert the west and elicit their help.
Nanjing’s Imperial Palace, dating originally from the Ming Dynasty, is the model for the later Forbidden City in Beijing but with its classical gardens and pavilions it’s prettier and more human in scale. Elsewhere there are top museums, many of the best schools in China, three Universities and various Research Institutions, Military Academies, Buddhist Temples and a National Library. The pagodas largely survived the Cultural Revolution and if not, modern replicas have been built, although it is often difficult to tell the difference. There are 6; one we can walk to in the long lunch break. The Folk Museum is housed in a beautiful classical Chinese single storey house with internal gardens and lovely vistas through the main doors; not a stick of it is original, destroyed as it was in the early 1950s and later rebuilt using photographic evidence provided by the ousted family. Out of the CBD the most naturally beautiful part of the city is to the northeast. Nanjing’s mausoleums, including that of Dr Sun Yatsen, over thrower of the Qing Dynasty and ‘Father of Modern China’ and that of the founding Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Xiaoing, are set in lake and canal dotted woodlands as scenic as the New Forest. The French-influenced wife of Chang Kai Chek planted long avenues of plane trees in the 1920s as an approach to these historic sites: you could be in Van Gogh’s Arles. China has in fact planted more trees than any other country in the world in the last 10 years arguably creating a carbon sink far beyond the west’s efforts. Xuanwe Lake and Purple Mountain are in walking distance from us, the Yangtze River waterfront is being developed as a landscaped esplanade… check out wiki for pictures.
Back to that Chinese lesson...... the Pinyin* for Yangtze is Chang Jiang.
*(The system of transcribing the “word picture” Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet for simplification and easier learning by westerners, plus Chinese typewriter operators!)