I'm on the night traaaaain

Getting ready to board a night train to Beijing.  Gonna spend the weekend at the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City.  …also gonna compare their Peking Duck to Hong Kong’s, per request of Mr. Chuck Li.  Will post some pics and stories soon. 

Jon

I spotted John Denver’s Chinese doppelganger, spending Sunday afternoon fishing at a lake in Nanjing’s Botanical Gardens (see photo).  This place is located at a base of a small mountain within the city limits of Nanjing.  I spent the afternoon there, feeling blended amongst the masses of visitors, the majority of which were outfitted with cameras to capture gorgeous scenes of the park and it’s variety of plant and animal life….for once in the past month, I felt I could easily blend-in and not be the obvious tourist taking pictures of everything that intrigued him.  It was a shift in perspective, instead of being the guy taking photos of interesting new faces, I ended up being the subject of a bit of photography, people not shy of capturing a photo of the strange and rare American Caucasian wandering through the gardens and woods.  He appeared like he was in his native habitat, only slightly displaced by a geographic detail.  I liked it.  Kindred spirts once again.

This park contained a garden in which nearly 700 Chinese medicinal herbs were cultivated for display.  I included photos of just a few.  :)  It makes the ~300 herb pharmacopeia that we learned at OCOM seem a bit small, even though we spent volumes of time and energy getting familiar with them.  The overall garden also contained a section of bonsai trees that was quite intriguing, and I came across a bonsai replica of the Yellow/Gold Mountain…and oh yes, I will share info and pics about the trip there soon.

Earlier that morning, I visited a flea market along the Nanjing river.  I found some hand painted watercolors of animals that included poetry written in Chinese calligraphy, and some very old Chinese medical textbooks complete with old old diagrams of acupuncture meridians and points.  It was a complete set of ten books wrapped in ribbon.  The seller saw it as junk and sold it to me for a pretty low price.  Blessed.  As I walked away, they were joking about how the foreigner gave up a bunch of money for some crappy old books that he can’t even read.  We both walked away content from the exchange, reinforcing the age-old adage that one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.  Treasure indeed.

Peace,
Jon