Nanjing (南京) And Its Mountains (中山 And 茅山)
Posted On Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at at 1:54 AM by Alvin
The royal city of Nanjing (南京) had always held a special place in China's history; not only was Nanjing an ancient capital with the beautiful surrounding mountains of Chung Shan and Mau Shan (中山 and 茅山) but the city also suffered horrific war time losses in recent memory and these horrendous human atrocities are solemnly commemorated at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall (南京大屠殺紀念館); we spent over 3 hours pouring over the millions of photographs, records and files on display inside this hall and we were extremely moved by the resilience of the peoples of this great city. But first things first - we arrived in Nanjing just as a rare occurrence of a tri-typhoon system was on its way out of the province of Jiangsu (江蘇). The Xuan Mu Lake (玄武湖) located opposite to where we stayed was moody but at least the colorful music fountain by the lake lightened up our spirit. We spent the good part of a day visiting the mountain of 中山 where our national Father Sun Yat Sen (孫中山) was buried at the 中山陵 Mausoleum. We also spent around 2 hours exploring the nearby area of 靈谷寺 which was located inside welcoming and shady lush green forests - made even more lush by a huge rain storm that lasted half an hour, luckily we took shelter inside the 9 -storey tall 靈谷塔. Of course, during our stay in Nanjing, we also visited the famous area of 秦淮河 and 夫子庙.
The following day we travelled about 60 km East and visited the Taoist holy mountain of Mau Shan (茅山). Since ancient times, Mau Shan had been famous for the Taoist priests (茅山道士) who had attained magical powers to ward off harmful spirits; the priests would normally point a closed first and middle fingers towards the attacking spirits and believe it or not, the spirits would then just subside in a puff of smoke. Yeh, just like that !
