Nanjing Foreigners

So I visited Nanjing with another FT (foreign teacher) last weekend. That's him next to me in one pic. We took a 12 hour overnight train and were able to get a sleeper so that was great. You go to bed on the train, wake up in the morning and you've arrived. Nanjing (literally: "southern capital") is the capital city of Jiansu province and is the former capital of China. It has many historic places though we only had 2 days to spend there so did not get too see many places. We did go to the Japanese Invasion museum, a huge free museum which focuses on the Japanese invasion of Nanjing in 1937, known as the Nanjing Massacre. One pic with a cross shows the front of the museum. Over a period of 6 weeks the Japanese invaders killed about 300,000 Nanjing residents, burned down many parts of Nanjing, raped over 20,000 women, etc. This museum was rough, it's entirely black in color, has the most forboding music and lighting possible and has absolutely grotesque exhibits. There are pictures people being cut up and shot, women being raped and there are some mass graves that have been opened and the decomposed bodies are now on display. All in all, I am not sure I would recommend going to this museum. There are many beautiful places in Nanjing though. There's a huge lake in the middle of the city with many very old buildings and to the east part of town there is a large scenic mountain to climb. The thing I did not like about Nanjing is how many foreigners there are. It's very similar to Beijing, everywhere you go you see at least 1-2 foreigners. There are many foreign stores and restaurants, we went to an Irish pub and there were at least 50 Europeans, Australians and Americans there--I felt like I was not in China. It was cool being able to drink Guiness which was as good as it was in London (better than in the US) and cost about as much as it did in London. We also went to a 50% foreign nightclub and that was pretty cool (see pic), but overall I wasn't digging it. I have gotten used to being the only foreigner everywhere I go, so this was all a little strange. It also seems that when you are around foreigners in China who are large enough in number to have their own community they are more likely to be complaining. That seems to be the main topic of conversation--bitching about China in one way or another: "the Chinese spit on the floor...the Chinese are stupid...the air is bad...the weather is bad...blah blah blah". It's really rather annoying, you gotta wonder why they left their homeland to begin with. I like China so much I definitely couldn't get into the complaining spirit. But overall it was an interesting and fun short trip, and I successfully was able to find the cga card for my computer that I had a tough time finding in Nanchang :-)