Last stop in China

Nanjing local time Friday 10:52pm

We arrived in Nanjing this afternoon and had the tour of the Nanjing city wall. This wall was built around 800 years ago and surrounds the city to protect against invaders. Many of its bricks are inscribed with the name and address of its craftsman and in the event the brick failed to hold up, the builder would face execution for his incompetence.

As I listened to the tour guide talk about this city’s history and its people, I couldn’t help noticing the one very tragic irony about this city, which ranks as one of the four great ancient capitals of China. That irony is that Nanjing is famous for two things which completely contradict one another. The first is the Nanjing city wall, which completely surrounds the city. The second is that during World War II, the Japanese successfully penetrated the city wall and proceeded to massacre hundreds of thousands of civilians. The slaughter still has a large impact on Nanjing. Every year on its December 17 anniversary, the city sounds its air defense alarms at 10am for half an hour. Many locals still hold an enormous amount of animosity toward Japanese people.

We are “wheels up” for Hong Kong tomorrow.