Presidential Palace

Salvation, thy name is breakfast. Diego and I were immensely relieved this morning on discovering that the hotel breakfast which USC has arranged for us every morning is quite to our liking. It is huge, and offers everything two foreigners could ask for. I mean, they even had banana bread. And considering that hardly any breakfast places in America will even serve you banana bread, you should have some idea what this place is like. It is buffet-style. We were curious how much we would have to pay for lunch and dinner at this restaurant: 120 and 180 yuan, respectively, or roughly 18 and 26 dollars. That's a lot of money, especially over here. But we get breakfast for free, so we'll just load our pockets with pork fried rice and go on our merry way.

I'm pretty tired. But I want to share some pictures from the Presidential Palace, which we toured today with our guides, Cheryl and Vicky. (Those aren't their real names. We can't pronounce their real names.) Nanjing is famous for two things, as I've ascertained: most notably, as the site of the worst aggression during the Japanese occupation of the Second World War, and secondly, as the birthplace of capitalism in China. Born in 1912, capitalism grew happily into its mid-thirties before being put to bed by Mao Tse-tung in 1949. Nanjing was the capital of China until that point, when Mao moved the capital to Beijing. Anyway, the Presidential Palace was the main government place when Nanjing was the cat's pajamas in China. No dogs allowed. Even cute cartoon dogs.

The palace was nice. Still very few foreigners though. It seems strange to see a Chinese tourist location filled with Chinese people, though I can't figure out why. It's their country. And it's huge, with tons of people. At any rate, the Presidential Palace contained one Westerner, other than Diego and myself, today.

There were ladies in rubber gloves rubbing insecticide on individual clovers in the grass. I found it a bit strange, and so did the Chinese tourists.


We got some more Chinese food after going to the Presidential Palace. All four of us shared some soup, dumplings, chicken, pork, vegetables and rice, and most of it was very delicious. I suppose I can survive here after all. We paid under 20 dollars for everything, and had plenty of food left over.

On our way back to the hotel, I talked to Cheryl and tried to learn some more Chinese. She taught me yes (shida, pronounced like a bad word, but with da at the end), no (boo) and how much is it (duosho qian. qian sounds kinda like tsien. Cheryl kept telling me to use my nose to say it, which confused me until we figured out she meant teeth.) Coupled with some basic things USC taught us before we left, I...still have absolutely no idea how to speak Chinese.

Bedtime. Work tomorrow.