Shanghai and Nanjing

View of Pudong from the Bund in Shanghai.

April 12, 2026

I've fallen behind because all Google products are not allowed in China. My VPN was not crafty enough to allow me to easily use them, and Karl's travel plans have kept us moving quickly. We took the train from Beijing to Shanghai. 

View of the Bund on the Huangpu River in Shanghai.

The Bund is the famous waterfront promenade in Shanghai that is sometimes referred to as a museum of world architecture. The buildings are colonial-era banks, hotels and consulates with the famous Fairmont Peace Hotel and the Customs House. This area's heyday was between the 1860s and the 1930s. The buildings all have plaques on them describing who built them. I could have spent all my time wandering around looking at them.

Outside the Shanghai History Museum.

We saw two museums for Karl's course. The Shanghai History Museum was a new museum to us located in the former Shanghai Race Club building, another historical colonial relic. The bottom two floors contained bronzes and jades, which were not what we were there to see. The upper floors' museum collection tells the story of Shanghai's history through the utilitarian lens of the Communist Party. The students were tasked to find examples of "top-down" and "bottom-up" popular Chinese nationalism.

Painting at the entrance to the Memorial Hall to the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.

The first time we came to this location in 1992, there was just a historical marker on the wall of the building. When we came nine years ago, the government had created a museum of a few rooms with artifacts and pictures. We were surprised to see the Party has rebuilt it on an even grander scale. And there were lots of Chinese tourists educating themselves on the Party's glorious beginnings. This painting is interesting because it is a grouping of key communist historical sites. We have been to most of these buildings on this trip. The pagoda on the hill was the one we saw in Yan'an.

We walked back to our hotel from the museum through the French Concession. We talked with this Uyghur man selling fruit from a cart. He doesn't look theyway you might expect a Chinese citizen to look. He is from Xinjiang in Northwest China and that population has Turkish roots.

We climbed 382 steps to get to the top of the Sun Yat-sen mausoleum.

We took an overnight trip and backtracked toward Beijing to spend a day in yet another former capital of China: Nanjing. Through China's 5,000 year history, they claim to have had four ancient capital cities: Beijing, Xi'an, Nanjing and Luoyang. We are visiting three of the four. Nanjing was the capital for six dynasties including the Ming. We came to see Sun Yat-sen's (China's George Washington) mausoleum, the Ming tombs, the Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders (that really is the name) and to see where the Treaty of Nanking was signed that ended the First Opium War. The building at the head of the stairs contains a seated statue of Sun looking very much like the Lincoln Memorial

Grove of trees covering the burial mound of the Emperor Zhu Yuangzhang and his wife.

We also visited the Ming tombs in Nanjing which immortalize the founder of the Ming Dynasty and his Empress wife. There is another set of stairs to climb to see a large building, but we learned that he was buried with his wife on a hill behind the building that is covered with trees. After seeing the Taj Mahal and many grand memorials over these past few months, I liked the contrast to this simple yet equally beautiful burial mound.

This is not to say the Ming tombs are not ostentatious. This is the Stone Elephant road that leads to the mausoleum. It has 12 pairs of massive stone animal statues. The first pair is standing, the second pair is seated. They represent a procession leading the emperor from the material world to the afterlife. They represent the emperor's power and the vastness of his empire.

Statue in front of the Nanjing Massacre Museum of a mother and two children running from a bomb.

Like the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC or the Hiroshima Peace Museum in Japan, the Nanjing Massacre Museum is another museum with a tough topic to cover. The purpose of this museum is to document the truth, educate the public, honor the victims and promote peace. It has the feel of a patriotic education site. The displays are mostly pictures and descriptive narrative. The numbers stated of those harmed are not agreed upon by scholars. It is a sobering experience nonetheless.

This photo is in the museum educating the public on the end of the First Opium War. The treaty was signed in August of 1842 on board a British warship docked in the Yangtze River in Nanjing. This event seems like it should be old news! But the Party has memorialized it with a new museum declaring how China's century of humiliation was overcome by the Party. 

We had some free time before we needed to catch our train back to Shanghai, so we went on our own to the Fuzimiao Temple. The temple grounds hold the Confucian Examination Hall, one of two sites where students could sit to take the Imperial Examination. They sat through nine days of examinations in order to qualify for elite government positions.

This picture shows a sock a student wrote notes on to take into the examination. Cheating on tests has been a problem for centuries! 

 

 

Summer Palaces, New and Old

 

The New Summer Palace

April 4, 2026

The New Summer Palace was the luxurious summer retreat for the Qing Emperors. It was also Empress Dowager Cixi's home away from her Forbidden City home. 

Notice the bats on the Summer Palace windows. In Chinese, the word for bat is a homophone for the word for fortune or blessing. So, bats are a recuring motif in the architecture of the palace.

The Long Corridor was built to allow the Empress Dowager to enjoy strolling in the garden in rain or sunshine. It has over 14,000 paintings depicting scenes from classical literature, historical figures and birds and flowers.

This one portrays a scene from Journey to the West, but it was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Our guide said it was done by "crazy teenagers."

Fortunately, many of the paintings survived.

The first Marble Boat was built by Emperor Qianlong. It was destroyed by Lord Elgin during the Second Opium War. The Empress Dowager rebuilt it ironically using money that was earmarked for the navy. Although both boats were described as marble, they were both made of stone painted to look like marble and neither boat could float!

There were plenty of boats that could float on the man-made lake. The first time we came, we took a boat ride. This time, we enjoyed the flowering trees.

This map depicts the Old Summer Palace or Yuangmingyuan. We have not been to this historical site and thought it was just a collection of ruins. We were surprised to find the 350 square hectare park filled with local tourists. We learned it is an important national symbol for China. It represents the peak of Qing Dynasty architecture contrasted with the peak of the Century of Humiliation China endured. 

The Old Summer Palace was a collection of Western-style Baroque buildings and traditional Chinese style architecture. It was known as the "Garden of Gardens." The buildings held the greatest collection of China's 5,000 years of treasures ever concentrated in one location. During the Second Opium War, it was burned and looted by an Anglo-French Army. Victor Hugo famously wrote, "one day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned." His was a rare voice of conscience for the time.

For a long time, the remnants of the buildings were removed by locals who repurposed them for their own needs. The CCP, has preserved the Palace Grounds as an important patriotic education site. 

There were plenty of visitors taking in the historical education! Karl assigned his students to talk with two local visitors to find out why they were there and what they learned from their visit.

These statues are not the originals. The originals were looted, five of which are still not located while the others are in various places around the world. The statues are Chinese zodiac heads on human bodies, and they formed a "hydraulic clock." Each hour the corresponding head would spout water to tell the time. They are one example of many looted objects around the world. Of the estimated 1.6 million Chinese artifacts now located in 47 museums outside of China, roughly one million of them came from the Yuanmingyuan. Should they be returned to their original owners or allowed to remain where they are now?

This wall is the remains of a mosque Emperor Qianlong built for his favorite Uyghur concubine, Xiang Fei in hopes of easing her homesickness.

This Wanhua Maze was commissioned by Emperor Qianlong and designed and built by Jesuit missionaries in 1749. The Emperor and his concubines enjoyed the maze. Eunuch's would hold lanterns and it was a popular Mid-Autumn festival tradition. It too was destroyed but rebuilt in the 1980s.

Finally, we got to go to the US Embassy and receive a briefing from one of Karl's former students and former Pacrimmer! 

The Great Wall and Temple of Heaven

 April 1, 2026

We took a day trip to the Great Wall on Monday. We came to this same Mutianyu access point nine years ago, and it has expanded and become even more touristy. The hike up to the wall is a fairly moderate hike with lots of steep steps. Last time we had no crowds, but this time we were in a steady train of people. It was certainly an easier climb than the steps we took in the high elevation of Tibet!

It was cloudy and overcast when we left Beijing, so we were happy to have blue skies. It was  mid 60's, perfect hiking temperature. 

This is the view from one of the guard towers. There are 23 restored watchtowers on this section of the Wall. We only walked to about six of them. When it was time to head down, there were three options. You could take a gondola, ride in a toboggan or hike back down.

Since Karl is "too old" to toboggan (those over 65 are not allowed to), we opted for the gondola. The students all wanted to toboggan, but ended up using the gondola because there was a two-hour wait to ride in a toboggan.

One of Karl's students from his first semester he taught at UPS in 1990 lives and works in Beijing. Karl invited him to come speak to his class one morning. 

Entrance to the Temple of Heaven.

The next day we visited the Temple of Heaven, a 15th century imperial sacrificial complex on the central axis (the fengshui-inspired layout of imperial buildings in central Beijing). It was the sacred space where the emperor, as the Son of Heaven, would go to communicate with heaven, offer animal sacrifices, and pray for a good harvest. One of the buildings is called the Hall of Abstinence, where the emperor would fast and purify himself before he performed the rituals.

The Imperial Vault of Heaven

The Imperial Vault of Heaven contained the ancestral tablets of the emperor. The ancestors were thought to help maintain the balance between the celestial and the human worlds.

The Temple of Heaven.

In the Forbidden City, all the roof tiles are yellow to signify they are imperial buildings. The roof tiles are blue at the Temple of Heaven to symbolize the heavens. The round-shaped building is also reminiscent of the earth.  

Can you spot Karl in this picture?

The entire population of Taiwan is the same as the population of Beijing! Fighting the crowd is just part of the experience of traveling in China. If you get close enough to look inside the building, you can see a gilded dragon painted on the ceiling.

The full color spectrum of a tomato! These are all tomatoes of various hues.

Yan'an and Beijing

 Founding members of the CCP with Mao in the center.

March 29, 2026

Before we left Xi'an, we took a long day trip by fast train to see the patriotic site of Yan'an. Yan'an served as the headquarters for the Communist party from 1935 to 1947. Mao and his associates lived in cave-like dwellings while they formed the ideology that would shape the Party in the years to come. It was also the location of the end of the Long March.

Entrances to some of the homes where the CCP leaders lived.

These cave-like homes are called yaodong. They are dug into the side of the hills and provide excellent insulation. They are cool in the summer and retain heat in the winter. They include big, arched ceilings that make the small square footage feel spacious. They are inexpensive to build and require local materials that made them suitable to the area.

A bed inside one of the homes.

We are seeing many "red tourism" sites because Karl is teaching a course on Chinese nationalism. The government has put a lot of energy into creating a "usable history" to tell the Party's story in a way that fosters national identity and serves as a way of instructing the population in their ideology. There were many Chinese tourists and no foreign tourists. Interestingly, all of the signage was in English and Russian.

The entrance to the Yan'an Revolutionary Memorial Museum.

The museum is short on artifacts and long on narrative. There was very little English, but we had two guides: one who spoke in Mandarin and another who translated for her. Our English guide has been with us for much of our time in Xi'an. The most interesting thing about him was learning that he idolizes Mao. On the bus coming home, Karl talked with him about how we have heard that most Chinese say Mao was "70 percent right and 30 percent wrong" in the choices he made and the policies he implemented. However, our guide feels that Mao was 100 percent correct. Karl tried to persuade him that if Mao had resigned before the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution, that could have been a true statement. However, the guide feels that the Cultural Revolution was a necessary party of China's modernization and needed to happen. 

Entrance to the Great Mosque of Xi'an

Our final excursion in Xi'an was to see the Great Mosque. It was founded in 742 AD in the Muslim Quarter. It was such an interesting blend of traditional Chinese architecture and Muslim characteristics. The magnolias were in full bloom too!

Example: this gate has Arabic writing with lotus flower embellishments.

This bride and groom were taking photos and allowed us to take a picture of them.

We met this family in the mosque. The son and his parents were visiting from Xining (where we got on the train to Tibet). They were very interested in hearing that we had been to Xining and went to the mosque there too.

We took the high-speed train from Xi'an to Beijing. It took over four hours to make the trip, and it was a crowded train where we were not all sitting together. Karl traded with someone to sit across the aisle from me but it turned out the person he traded with was only on a short part of the leg. He ended up having to move several different seats before the journey was done.

We got up early the next morning and had a full day visiting Tiananmen and the Forbidden City. We had hopes of seeing Mao in his mausoleum but they recently closed it for renovation. This was our third visit to Tiananmen and the one with the most heightened security yet. We had to make an online reservation before we came, and pass through at least three security checks. The first time Karl visited, there was no security. There was a small patch of lawn surrounding a statue and the local tourists were more interested in looking at a lawn mower.

The Forbidden City was a very busy place. It is not the height of tourist season yet, but there were sure lots of people. Each time we have visited, more of the Palace has been restored and open.

New to us this visit, was the jade, jewelry and treasure exhibits. It took a while to make our way up to view the items. The collection has 2 million objects with only 10,000 items typically on display. We did not have the time to see even a fraction of of them.

Crown jewels of an empress.

After touring the palace, we hiked up to the top of a hill in an adjacent park to look down on the complex. No wonder it is called a city. It has over 980 buildings and is the largest collection of ancient wooden buildings.

On our way back home, we stumbled upon the site commemorating the May 4th movement. It re-energized Karl. The rest of us were ready to find dinner and rest our feet!