Visiting Zijinshan

With Tom feeling awful from the choices he made at the restaurant yesterday, we decided today would be a great day to climb a ton of steps at the nearby mountain in Nanjing, Zijinshan (Purple-Gold Mountain).


Our day began with 42 dumplings at an establishment on "cheap street" as per Lee's recommendation. They served maybe twenty different kinds of dumplings ranging from egg and leek to beef and carrot, and the rather distasteful pork and seafood. We ordered five different kinds and they all came on the same plate, making each bite a surprise. Nothing like biting into some raunchy seafood when you are hoping for something a little more appetizing, like the typical pork and leek.

After finishing up brunch, we headed to a local pharmacist to get Tom some medication for his intense and periodic stomach pains. It seems they gave him pills of concentrated garlic. So far they appear to be rather ineffective at helping with his stomach pains, but very effective at making his breath smell awful.


To the mountain! For the first time, and certainly not the last, we decided to take a cab. It was as Tom put it, "the most comfortable cab ride I've ever had, aside from the clear violations of traffic laws." The cabbie is surrounded by this plastic cage, as shown in the preceding photograph, and the air conditioning was blasting. The only communication made during the twenty minute trip was when Tom and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows as we continually made left and right lane changes with the right turn signal on for two minutes straight.


When we arrived at our destination, the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, we began preparing our minds for the climb ahead of us. There were 392 steps ahead of us, and we would be walking up each one. Tom had the rather brilliant idea of filming the walk up so we could make a sped-up video of it later, but it turns out Windows Live Movie Maker does not support that feature, so we'll have to make it when we get back.


It turned out the climb wasn't too bad, although we were sweating profusely by the end. The view at the top was pretty awesome, if you ignored all the cheap merchants peddling goods around this man's tomb. It was somewhat surprising to see the lack of courtesy people showed given where we were, as there were people spitting saliva and gum wherever they pleased.


Not feeling completely satisfied with the number of stairs we had currently encountered, we decided it would be best if we went to the top of the 9-story Linggu Pagoda. After reaching the fifth or sixth floor, you stop expecting it to end and accept the grind ahead. We recorded a video of this too, so hopefully that turns out when we get a chance to edit it.


While there wasn't much to see at the top of the pagoda (besides a beautiful mountain view from one side), it was still very nice to be up that high, breathing almost fresh air for the first time in nearly a week (we love you Canada).

By the time we got down, we realized it was time to get back to the city since we had been invited to have homemade Swedish meatballs made by one of Lee's friends. They were tasty and we had a great time hanging out with a bunch of foreigners who hailed from Australia, France, Sweden, Germany and Spain (if I recall correctly). Dinner led to clubbing at the foreigner-favored spot Mazzo, where foreigners drink for free all night.

It was a good day (insert Ice Cube beat).