I hadn’t been to Nanjing for years and as I am running down my time in China, and as it was May holiday, it was an ideal opportunity to go to see the old place again.
The crowds are only to be expected and the Chinese are good at moving arge numbers of people around so it was bearable.
In any case, if you walk to the right of the Ming tombs, you will find a path which takes you up to the Purple Cloud Lake, and up there, it’s not at all crowded. It’s a place I used to love going for the 4.5 years I was in the city and was the top of my list to visit on my return this time.
At the lake, there were the usual swimmers, dragging their little floats behind them, people sitting in groups having picnics, people playing cards and ambling around the lakeside. The plum blossom had passed but there were still lots of colour all around the lake, natural and planted. You could hear birds singing and people chatting and laughing. It was really lovely and I was pleased I’d made the trek to MuXuYuan metro, paid my 100rmb and walked up through the plu blossom garden to the stone animals.
The stone animals are still a big draw for me. I have always loved them and of course, on a sunny public holiday the poor beasts were being ridden by children up and down the avenue. To get onto the tallest, the camels, children were being heaved up, pulled and pushed until the could grab a hump and pull themselves up.
I have never really understood the attraction of the actual Ming tombs, you can’t really see much of them and there are always a lot of people there so it’s hard to move. But the lake is a much more peaceful place and as I walked around it remembered the first time I went there, only a few days after I had arrived when I was staying with a Chinese family. I had walked on and my chaperone lost me. But because there are so few foreigners in Nanjing, she only had to ask the people around the lake whether they had seen a lauwai and she found me easily.
Walking down the mountain, past the stone guardians of the Ming tombs, I wondered when or if I will ever be on the mountain again.
They have been there for hundreds of years, looking silently at the people filing past, me only one of them. They look patient and tolerant of all the touching, photographing, selfies, children clambering over them. They are like many Chinese in this respect.
The Purple Mountain will be an enduring memory of Nanjing, one of the finest cities in China.