John Z. spent a year in Nanjing after undergrad, at the Hopkins Nanjing University Center. It was a certificate program where he studied Chinese language and culture, and he dragged us up there to check it out and see his energetic program director friend Jonathan (pictured).
If Shanghai is the fast-paced business town, Nanjing is nerdville.
Walking around the Nanjing University campus, Heidi and I breathed a sigh of relief. I guess there's something about college campuses anywhere, but the landscaping and the seriousness and the quiet were remarkably different from the feeling you got in Shanghai. Nanjing has a sort of ivory tower reputation, the ancient capital of the first Ming Emperor and a haven of scholars and traditionophiles.
As luck would have it, the Hopking Nanjing center was having its annual walk around the ancient city wall, a towering (in places) legacy of the Ming emperor 23 miles in circumference. About half of it is gone now, but plans are afoot to rebuild long stretches. Because what little part you can actually walk on charges admission, we mostly walked alongside. It was a tidy group of mostly Chinese economics and political science students and some faculty members, and us. Seems that most of the American students couldn't motivate to get up that early. We met the group at 5:15 am and started the walk, getting about 12 miles before we ducked out to return to Shanghai by train that afternoon.
Because it was Saturday morning there were tons of people out doing exercises and activities: tai chi with swords and fans and just plain hands, yo yo spinning, kite flying, dog haircutting, you name it. Lots of old guys taking their pet songbirds out of the house to socialize.
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