Nanjing

First stop....Zhongshan

And the memorial to Sun Yat-Sen, the leader of the Kuomingdang and first post Qing Dynasty leader of China.  He's China's George Washington.

Walking through the arch at the bottom of the hill, there is then a 700 meter walk to the next building in the memorial.

The portal the the main part of the memorial

Inscribed above the main arch it says (the words of Sun Yat-Sen), "Everything Under the Sky is for the People". Chinese is such an efficient language.

The KMT of China.  Prime Minister Sun was here.  The 18th year, Sixth Month and first Day.

After climbing 350 or so stairs, a view back down the the memorial.

The memorial building is inscribed with, from the left, "Nationalism", "People's Rights" and "Righteousness of the World"

The ceiling above the statue of Sun Yat-Sen is the flag of the KMT which is now the flag of Taiwan where the KMT fled after the Communists took over mainland China.

Second stop on Zhongshan was the tomb of the first Ming Emperor.  It was this tomb that became the blueprint for the rest of the tombs of the Ming emperors when they started building their tombs up near Beijing.

A front doof with three arches.

A series of buildings in a straight line leading to the main tomb building itself.

I like this picture because you can't really tell if you are going up or down unless you look closely.

A key feature of the Ming Emperor tombs is a spirit way, which actually follows a crooked path to confuse evil spirits.  Here we we first have animals that line the spirit way.

There are a pair of all kinds of animals.

But this first section is called the Stone Elephant spirit way!!!

Or course I approve!!!

The path takes a turn and we are now on the Wenzhong Path.  We start with some pillars.

And the path is lined with servants, guards and other protectors of the emperor.

After Zhongshan we visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial but I'll save that for a separate post.  That evening we went to the Confucius Temple area, which is the heart of Nanjing.

It's interesting how the area around a solemn and quiet Confucius Temple can be a complete jangle of commercialism.

We were walking around looking for a restaurant but then found this long line.  So Dad got in line for....

Pot stickers!!!

After 20 minutes....we've got them.

They were ok, but somewhat greasy.  But that started us on a dinner of random street food.

Mom then got us some BBQ squid, I got us some gelatinous dessert.  Here Mom is eating some rice thing.  Along the way there was, of course, stinky tofu.

And cutest of all, Dad going for coconut milk.