Ignorance Is Bliss

I've been kicking around Nanjing the past couple days, enjoying the nice weather. I'm sure it was obvious in my last post that I'm starting to get a little fed up with Chinese people. It was exacerbated even more on the train ride up here, when one of the train salespeople (employees on the train that demonstrate and sell junk) was selling something, giving a demonstration to the car over her microphone. When time came to offer the junk product to me, I declined, and she proceeded to say something in Chinese that made the whole car laugh. It's pretty obvious she's making fun of me in Chinese, and it's pretty obvious that I'm now very annoyed. Early in the trip I was good at ignoring this sort of thing, but after seven weeks in China I can't stand this blatant ignorance anymore. It took a lot for me to keep from standing up and telling her off. And this one is an easily explainable situation. This kind of shit happens EVERY DAY.

Now that I'm done venting, let me tell you about Nanjing. Upon arriving here I had a moment that reinforced the fact that I am a veteran traveler that's not easily scammed: I laughed in the face of a cab driver that tried to give me a price five times the meter rate to get to my hostel. That in itself is a little revenge for me, I now longer have any qualms about being rude to other people here, it's an eye for an eye at this point. I did manage to get to the hostel for much cheaper, and this place has a relaxed feel to it, with plenty of tables and chairs outside to enjoy the beautiful weather.

Yesterday I headed to the Nanjing Massacre Museum where the history of the Rape of Nanjing is showcased. Basically the museum is built around one of the mass graves that was excavated, and supposedly held twenty thousand people! It's pretty morbid, you walk a path that snakes around half-unearthed skeletons of adults and children. The most morbid thing about the place is that unlike the Killing Fields in Cambodia, this place has lots of local tourists that visit it. It really gives it a different feel when it's possible that some of these people may have relatives buried in those pits. The museum itself is very well put together, and really gives the message of learning from our mistakes. The best touch of all is the giant peace monument at the end of the tour.

Today I had quite an adventure trying to search for a gym to go work out at, hopefully to put back on some of the large amount of weight I've lost. One of the hostel staff told me of one to go to, which seemed straightforward enough, but I couldn't find it. After asking a couple more staff of various hotels, I followed one's advice and tried the university. I should have been smart enough to think that simply showing up at a Chinese university and trying to find a gym was not going to be easy. And it wasn't, I didn't find it. I then spotted a Ramada Hotel in distance, and proceeded there. The front desk staff had a hard time understanding my inquiries until a random hotel patron told me where it was. Expecting to pay, I got to the gym to find it unstaffed, and worked out anyways. The free workout made up for the amount of walking I had to do.