Jamie Doom...

answers his own rhetorical questions.

I have neglected my blog. It's true. It's not that I don't care about my blog; it's just that I don't really care about the people that read it. I told you I would write something about Nanjing and Suzhou. Here's something brief. Nanjing was cool. I stayed at the Nanjing University Foreign Student's Dormitory. The rooms were nice and clean and only a 200 yuan a night. The best thing I saw in Nanjing was the Nanjing Memorial to the Massacre by the Japanese. It's the best exhibits/museums I have seen in China. It bothered me that the English translations were full of mistakes, but that didn't take away from it too badly. The attrocities commited by the Japanese are etched deep into the Chinese mind. It's a sobering place to visit. After we visited the memorial we met a couple of Japanese students at Nanjing University. They were really cool and provided a good balance to what Liang Bing and I had seen earlier that day.

Suzhou, which is supposed to be the "Venice of China," didn't impress me that much. We did pay some cash and see some of the famous Suzhou gardens which were quite beautiful, but when not in those parks the town was quite depressing. Now I think of East St. Louis as the "Suzhou of America."

Shanghai was big and flashy and smelled a lot like San Francisco. The subways are stupid crowded. I saw one guy get his arm mangled by a subway door. But the women are really pretty so that image didn't stay in my mind long. I had a good time hanging out with John Pasden from Sinosplice.com. He's a cool dude despite what all the guys as ZUCC say about him now.

Hangzhou is my home now and will be for the next several months. West Lake, despite being poluted, is really a beautiful and relaxing place to take a stroll and a boat ride. Hangzhou has a lot more conveniences than Haikou, but I miss the clean air in Hainan and the warm weather.

I am sorry this is a lame post. I have cold, and I lost my new phone, and realized today I was probably going to die broke and alone...and hating Allen Ginsburg (like Jack Kerouac). So this post is lame.

posted by: jmedoom at March 01, 2004 13:02 | link | comments (15) |