Free Day

On Saturday I woke up early and hit the streets with our IT guy Stephen and two designers from our UK office Kirk and Andy.  We had two excellent guides for the day, Leon who works for Chervon and his wife Catherine who works for Ford (which is across the street from our factory).  First stop was the Nanjing Museum where we saw this interesting statue.

We also saw priceless works of art.  There were artifacts there over 5,000 years old that had been found inside the city walls.

EZ Rider in China?

We drove to the top of Purple Mountain, it was much too hot to hike said our guides.  If you stare at this picture long enough the city will start to emerge from behind the smog.  I hear this is quite a view, but not so much in the summer.

This billboard depicts the mountain on a clearer day.  I never saw evidence of a chair lift.

Congealed Duck Blood Soup anyone?

This was lunch.  It was a bit strange but tasty.  Many dumplings.  On the left was our driver, next to him is Leon.

After lunch we walked into the Confucius Temple Market.  It was a really cool place.  I visited later in the week at 10pm and it was busier than this.  The lights were amazing but my camera was dead.

There are many little corridors branching off the main street.  These lead you back into a narrow market surrounding the Confucius Temple.

This is a large public square along a river in front of the Temple.  Very cool place at night.

You can see the yellow tops of the little boats that take you up and down the river.

Making our way into the Temple which goes on and on through many small buildings.

Tempting... but no thanks.

We then headed to a mall in the center of the city which seems to be one endless mall.  This one is underground and goes on forever.  There is a whole world under all the streets.  Catherine said this mall was the popular one with the teenage girls and she was right.  I felt a bit out of place.

We were looking at handbags when the store girl dragged us into a creepy back hall with a freight elevator.  We rode that up to the 11th floor and ended up in the room below.  The picture above is the view from the hidden store.

Our group spent lots of RMB here over the trip.  The girls that worked here were hilarious.  It is quite hard to negotiate when neither party speaks the other's language.

This is the plaza above the underground mall.  By the time we got out of there we were exhausted.  Thanks to Leon and Catherine for a super day.