Other Scenic Spots 其它景点

Mochou Lake 莫愁湖

The lake covers an area of about 47 hectares (117.5 acres), and 5 kilometers in perimeter. Legend relates that in the Qi Dynasty (479-502), a talented and beautiful girl called Mo Chou from Luoyang, Henan who traveled afar and married to Lu family in South China and lived by the lakeside, hence the name of the lake. It was opened as a public park in 1929. In the park there are Yujin Hall, the Mid-Lake Pavilion, Lotus-Enjoying Pavilion, and Victory-at-Chess Pavilion.

Confucius Temple 夫子庙

In the south of Nanjing, near a stretch of the Qinhuai River (located in the southwestern part of Jiangsu Province, and an 110-kilometer-long tributary of the Yangtze River), is a newly developed area with Qing-style buildings, house shops and restaurants and is also a tourist attraction. The city government has created the bustling bazaar that clustered round the Song-dynasty Confucius Temple standing here. The temple, destroyed by the Japanese aggressors in the 1940s, has been reconstructed. Imperial examinations were held at the capital every three years during the early Ming Dynasty (1368-1644); even when the capital was moved to Beijing in 1421, candidates for high office traveled to Nanjing from nearby provinces. The Examination Hall comprised 20,600 tiny cubicles in which candidates were locked and kept guarded during the three-day examinations. Food was passed in daily to sustain the candidates through the trying ordeal.

A stone bridge and a square tower are all that remain of this huge establishment. Inside the tower are stelae inscribed with the rules of conduct for the examinations and the history of the history of the hall itself.

Plum Blossom Villa 梅园新村

Led by Zhou Enlai (1898-1976) and Dong Biwu (1886-1975), the Communist Party of China Delegation was moved to Meiyuanxincun, close to the center of Nanjing from Chongqing on May 3rd, 1946, and continued the peace talks with the Kuomintang until March 1947. The Communists made their headquarters at No 17, No 30, and No35 Meiyuanxincun. Zhou Enlai and his wife Deng Yingchao (1904-1992) lived at No 30, and the charming house and garden remain just as the couple left them, with jackets hanging from a hat-stand, and a battered leather briefcase on the chest of drawers in the bedroom. A doorway knocked into the eastern garden wall connects No 30 to No 31; this short cut enabled the communists to evade constant surveillance by Kuomintang secret agents posted in the streets outside. At No 17 is a small conference room where Zhou Enlai met the press during negotiations. Upstairs is the secret radio equipment used for communicating directly with Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976) in Yan’an, Shaanxi Province. All the furnishings are as they were at that time.

The City Wall in Nanjing 南京城墙

With a circumference of 33.676 kilometers, the city wall of Nanjing built in the period 1366 to 1386 in the beginning of the Ming Dynasty is 12 meters in average height, providing 13,616 crenels and 200 shelters for soldiers. The foundation of the city wall is mostly granite or lime stones. The outer and inner walls are built with bricks and in between the walls broken brick pieces, gravel and loess, compacted layer upon layer. The gaps between bricks were filled with “crevice paste” made of the mixture of lime, knot weed or knot grass (a creeping grass “papsalum distichum” growing in wet places) extract蓼草汁and tung oil (used for the caulking, oiling and vanishing of junks and sampans), and drainage hoes were constructed at intervals. In order to build the city wall of Nanjing, Zhu Yuanzhang mobilized 200,000 craftsmen of 125 counties in five provinces to participate in the construction of the city wall. Each brick was stamped with details of the brick-maker and overseer. The city wall of Nanjing broke the rule of previous generations of building square cities. It was built according to the run of terrain. Being an elliptical city built in line with the terrain, it is 10 kilometers long south-north and 6 kilometers wide east-west. In the Ming Dynasty, Nanjing boasted 13 city fates and today Zhonghuaman Gate (formerly known as Jubaomen Gate) has been preserved fairly well. The gate is of the type of a fortress, having four layers of city walls with enclosures in between. Three enclosures in the walls are 129 meters long south north and 128 meters wide east-west, containing 27 shelters to hold hiding soldiers to a total number of 3,000 men. Such facilities were really rare in the ancient times and are valuable to the research on the military history of ancient times. Other gates have been constructed in the 20th century to facilitate traffic flow in the city.

The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge 南京长江大桥

The waters of the Yangtze River become tidal in Nanjing. As the city landmark, the bridge provides a vital link between North China and the fertile fields of South China. Construction of the bridge began on January 18, 1960 and completed and put into use on December 29, 1968, lasting 9 years. Before its completion, all traffic had to cross the river by ferry.

At each side of the bridge stand four towers. In one of these is housed the visitors’ briefing room and a fine model of the Yangtze River Bridge. The 1.6-kilometer-long bridge is two-tiered with the top level for vehicles (4.598 meters long and 19.5 meters wide) and the lower one for trains (6,722 meters long, double deck and 14 meters wide). A trip to the railway deck to look along the great grey tunnel of steel is awe-inspiring, especially if a train thunders past. The bridge itself totals 1,577 meters with 10 arch steel beams, spanning 160 meters except the first arch 128 meters in the north of the river. A pair of bridge heads, over 70 meters high, stands on either side.

Totally, 100,000 tons of steel and one million tons of cement were used for the construction of the bridge.

The Second Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge 南京长江二桥

The Second Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, with a 628-meter main span, the second longest cable bridge 斜拉桥in China, was completed seven months ahead of schedule and opened to traffic on March 26, 2001 after three and half years of construction. The 21.2-kilometer-long project actually consists of two bridges (Nancha Bridge and Beicha Bridge南汊桥和北汊桥,) with an expressway across the Bagua 八卦洲Island in the Yangtze River connecting the two. The southernmost of the two bridges, with a span of 628 meters, is the longest in China and the third longest in the world. The bridge was designed by the Construction Designing Institute of the Transportation Department of China, and was built by the Hunan Road and Bridge Corporation. The Baguo Bridge, started in July 1997, is 11 kilometers downstream from the First Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge built in 1968. The 32-meter-wide with six lanes new bridge, with a capacity to take 60,000 vehicles per day, was built to relieve the pressure on the old one. The old bridge was only designed to the 15,000 vehicles per day, 40,000 less than the actual volume in 2000 and more than 20,000 square meters of road surface is now damaged on the bridge as a result. Strong measures have been taken against possible corruption during the bridge’s construction process, which involves a total investment of 3 billion yuan (US $ 362.3 million). Major universities in East China, including the Southeast, Tongji and Zhejiang universities, together with foreign consultation firms, have been invited to play watchdog roles for the project. The half-built bridge was completely undamaged in the flood of 1998. Nanjing’s two economic development zones, located at either end of the new bridge, have benefited most from the new bridge.

Xuanwu Lake 玄武湖

The Xuanwu (the Black Warrior---the guardian spirit of the north in Daoism) Lake encompasses 444 hectares (1,110 acres), of which land occupies 49 hectares (122.5 acres), one ninth of the water in size. The lake is 15 kilometers in circumference. In the lake there are five islets, which are linked by causeways and bridges. A dragon is made from more than 80,000 stoneware bowls, cups, plates and scoops, which were erected on September 12, 2001 beside the Xuanwu Lake in Nanjing. Over 30 local artists helped created the 163-meter-long statue. The dragon is thought to be the world’s largest statue to be built with traditional handicrafts.

Zijinshan (Purple and Gold) Observatory 紫金山天文台

Situated on one peak of Zijinshan, this third largest of China’s observatories was built in 1934. This is a small but fascinating collection on display of magnificent Ming reproductions of early astrological instruments: a celestial globe, an armillary sphere for detecting solar bodies, a gnomon (a sun and seasons dial) and an earthquake detector first made over 2,000 years ago. The last two instruments had had a disturbed history. In 1900, Germans absconded with the earthquake detector (which was then in the Beijing Observatory) but it was returned, along with the other instruments taken as spoils of war in 1919. In the early 1930s the Japanese tried unsuccessfully to remove the gnomon; they even cut the base in half. How greedy the Japanese were!

If you climb onto the platform of one of the observatory domes you will find yourselves above the tree lines, and unfurling below you, a magnificent view of the entire city of Nanjing and the Yangtze River in a fine day.

Amazing Jade Sculpture completed a white-jade Buddhist sculpture, the largest of its kind in China, was completed in the first half of 2000 in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. The sculpture, named “Pilgrimage to Buddhist Heaven.” Weighs about 500 kilograms and is 78 centimeters high, 84 centimeters wide and 56 centimeters thick. It took Gu Yongjun, a famous Chinese sculptor and a master craftsman, five years to complete. He worked on it in the city’s Jade Article Factory. The sculpture features 88 carvings of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and arhats. The factory was also responsible for the major jade sculpture “The Boundless Buddhist World” in 1990, which was collected as a national treasure by the China Gallery of Arts and Crafts.

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