Jan. 9, Nanchang

One of my friends at work thought it was a good idea to visit Taipei because it would help acclimate us culturally. She wasn’t kidding. From the looks we got today, we were the first white people ever seen in some quarters of this city—population 2 million or so. Being in Taipei first helped I think.

More and more foreigners adopt babies from Jiangxi province, and the children are all brought to Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi. We flew in a week early, to scope out and document the area that our daughter is from.

Our guide, Susan, met us at the airport. She proudly told us how new the airport was, to serve the growing city of Nanchang. It was, however, smaller than the airport in Syracuse, NY, a city one tenth the size. There was one baggage carousel, and, happily, all of our luggage was available by the time we got through customs.

The city was quite hazy from pollution. It was a little better than I feared, but not by a lot. The air had a slight tinge of what I assume is burning coal, and visibility was not as good as you would expect on a sunny day. Our throats dried up quickly.

After checking in and washing up, Susan took us around the town. We saw the Nanchang Cultural Museum, at the former site of General He Long’s headquarters (he led the August 1 Uprising, the first revolt by Communists to overthrow the Kuomintang). There was a room dedicated to his life, a model of Nanchang in the year 300 AD, an interesting display on traditional weddings, and no heat. Details were lost in translation, and in shivering.

Much of Nanchang’s cultural pride centers around the August 1 uprising. There’s a large plaza and a suspension bridge named after it. At the far end of the plaza, the second largest in China, is a familiar store—Wal-Mart.

We also went to Shengjin Pagoda, a wooden tower that was built and rebuilt many times over, and was the tallest building in Nanchang for hundreds of years. The stairs were steep, the view was excellent. There were artifacts and a Buddhist temple on the ground floor.

Dinner was in a smoky lobby of a neighboring hotel. We had duck that I think was stuffed with cabbage (with hard-boiled duck eggs and mushrooms and fake crab leg as fixings), and a whole fish that was steamed with a pickled cucumber sauce. Very tasty.

Photos from January 9