Chapter 3 - Nanjing

Pre Scriptum: This chapter will present my view and experience of Nanjing as I will be staying in this city for almost two months, July and August. This chapter, the chapter on Shanghai and the future chapter on Beijing will all be subject to updates in the form of chapter add-ons if it is central to the city itself. Normally however, I will post new posts on the subject-matter at hand.

And so, we arrived in Nanjing. Our first encounter with this city of about 6.5 million inhabitants was an impression that have continued to fall down on us, thunder, lightning and rain. I have never in my life heard such loud weather. It was like dynamite and plastic explosives all at once. (The closest I have ever been was probably the nighly sounds of a politician-friend of mine...) Summer here have proved to be humid, rainy and unstable. Every day is warm, which is nice, but it can get too hot, which is not so nice. 35 degrees celcious and really humid is not a good combination. It makes for at least two showers each day, which is not good for your immune-system, so the problem is: to shower, smell good, and potentially get sick, or avoid to many showers and stay healthy but risk sickness?

Anyways, Nanjing is, as Shanghai, a big city. The difference being that Shanghai is a metropolis and Nanjing a big town. Shanghai har buildings downtown build purely show off, Nanjing is more practical and normal. Some might say boring. This is however, I realize is dangerously close to being boring information so I will quickly move on with the story. At the moment of writing I have been in Nanjing for one week and three days.

First of all, the campus, it is quite green, like everything else here. I heard they have planned the planting in the city so as to avoid the breeding of mosqitos which have previously been a great problem here. I do not wuite understand how plants help getting rid of the little buggers, but hey, I belive it has worked, Nanjings musqitos is not as bad as their reputation. The little things do not seem to like me that much though, something of which I am quite happy about. Is the sweet blood thing true? Why have not mythbusters answered this myth for us...or have they?

We live in Mandarin garden Xiyuan hotel. Definately a fitting place of resting for a bunsh of mandarin-students. We have the 16th floor pretty much occupied. Something which helps a lot when deciding where to eat, what to wear(girls only), or where to study new vocabulary. The reception is all right, they know a little english, which helps in emergencies, but is only destructive when it comes to practising Chinese. The mbreakfast however, is not good. And why do they only have one track on their feel-good atmosphere-creating CD-player? After a week of the same salsa-rumba-ish song, it no longer promotes a happy feeling, to say the least. So, eating out is the answer, or skipping breakfast, something which rarely is a very good choice since a reservoir of food is sorely needed when class starts at 8AM.

During my stay here I have allready experienced some things worth blogging about, these will follow in later chapters.