Last year, government offered foreigners a free trip to Nanjing as long as we attended a job fair. The trip included food, lodging and sight-seeing for two days and a few of us teachers decided to go including me, Sean, Peter, Jordan and our supervisor, Teddy.
Nanjing is a really cool city and just happens to be the city where Max, our Chinese teacher, is from. He decided to come on the trip as well to hang out and act as our personal tour guide. Nanjing is a really neat city; it used to be the capital of China in in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and also in the early years of the 20th century. The city is cool because it is still enclosed by a wall, it has a lot of beautiful parks, it's on the river and it is a prosperous economy with a lot of high-ranking universities.
After a very early start and about a two hour drive, we made a brief appearance at "The 4th Yangtze River Delta Job Fair for Foreign Professionals." After lunch we went to the Botanic gardens and walked around for awhile enjoying the blooming trees, great views of the river and even got to observe some wedding photo shoots in action.
We finished up the day by visiting Yuejing tower which involved a bit of a climb up to the top of a hill for some hazy panoramas of the city. Unfortunately, the tower is not authentic - it has been redone extensively and looked a little chintzy, but it was fun anyways and free so we couldn't really complain.
After dinner, Max wanted to take us to his favorite German bakery near his high school. We were more than willing to join him for a cup of real coffee and some blueberry cheesecake - delicious. Following dessert, we headed to the bar district - called 1912 for some drinks and dancing. It was a really fun and particularly late night. As you can see, Jordan was having an especially good time as well as Peter who spent a lot of the time dancing on the elevated platforms.
We all missed some of the activities the next day due to sleeping in late but joined the rest of the group at lunch for a quick bite to eat and then another excursion to Zhonghua gate castle - part of the original wall. The wall was outfitted with plenty of not-so-real-looking guards for our touristy viewing pleasure. Peter and Max spent most of the time doing kung fu at the top.
All in all it was a really fun trip packed full of activities and good times. I think the best part of the trip for everyone was just the chance to get away from campus and explore a new place together. Here's hoping that the government decides to take us to another city this year!
That's really cool, and an interesting way to boost tourism!