NanJing 3 - NanJing Presidential Residence

It was our last day in NanJing and early in the morning, small rain drops were falling which eventually turned into heavy rain. Our initial plan of visiting another ancient park was forced to change. The presidential residence was built during the Qing Dynasty for a government officer. During era of Emperor Dao-Guang, a significant historical event made its way into history. A man named Hong-Xiu-Quan (洪秀全) by the name of God launched a revolution against the Qing government. He and his comrade successfully influenced alot of man following their path and they conquered quite a large area include NanJing which he made his capital city. However, soon after his death, the Qing government uprooted their force pretty quickly. After the revolution lead by Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen succeeded, he was sworn in as the temporary president in this place.

It was raining, and quite soaked by the time we reached here from the MRT

It was now a museum with multiple exhibitions

Student rate 50% off~

Dr. Sun's writing

Thanks to the rain, visitors are less~

But then, not a very suitable weather to walk around touring~

The officers who successfully pacify the rebels of Hong-Xiu-Quan~ (The right front figure is my great great great grandfather~ Awesome right?~ =P)

An exhibition hall showing the rebels and whole story of Hong-Xiu-Quan

Tai-Ping which means peace and secure~

A statue of Hong.....quite some man eh?~ Too bad he died before bringing down the corrupted Qing's government~ His body was digged out and burnt by the Qing's soldier~ What a barbaric era~

The original view of this place~ After they eliminates the rebels, they burnt down this place and later rebuilt it for some other government officers~

On the way to meeting room~

This is where the president meets their guest~

Waiting room

Few exhibition room depicting the modern history of China. This picture showed Cheang-Kai-Sek returned to NanJing after Japanese surrendered~

The administrative building

This is whole of the presidential residence

Lift~

Air-raid Shelter?~

It goes very very deep down~

Kinda cooling down here~

Another exhibition hall showing the temporary government after revolution

Wax figure showing the sworn in~

The original document showing Dr. Sun's sworn oath 

After that, we took the high speed train leaving NanJing to Beijing. Thats all for JiangNan and we started our 5 days Beijing Trip and so stay tune for more~!
For more illustration on NanJing, kindly log on to my Facebook picture~

Abraham Lincoln - The Vampire Hunters

Lets have a break from all these travel experiences and back to business~Alright, it was kinda weird to relate Lincoln with vampires~ But then, for the sake of entertainment, the fighting scene was kinda thrilling, the plot was lame though~ ha! The plot was written on the basis of liberation of the blacks of course(what else can Lincoln do~), but on top of that, they add in the so called myths together with history. The story was about Vampires who occupy the southern America used slaves as their sources of blood. Lincoln as the vampire hunter used to be hunting down all these vampires only to find that they are in very large numbers. In the end, he decided to use the democratic way to liberate the blacks and put an end to the vampire's colony in the south. The civil war sees the crash between the union and vampires(The Confederacy)~

I admit the plot was rather lame and far fetched~ 

Dinner in Nando's~

Just mild hot~

To be honest, Kenny Roger's side dishes are better, but I love Nando's chicken~

Baked sweet potatoes

Some sort of rice~ tasted like Nasi Beriani though~

NanJing 2 - The Ming's Mausoleum (明孝陵)

Like I mentioned in the previous post, NanJing was the Capital for 6 Dynasties in history of China. Sadly, alot of these valuable historic site and relics were destroyed in years of war and changes in leadership. There are still a few important sites which are worth visiting. I did mentioned about Emperor Zhu-Yuan-Zhang in my previous post (Here). He gained power after defeating the Mongolian Empire and his competitors, then he built the capital city of Ming's Dynasty here in NanJing as the first emperor of Ming's Dynasty.

The old Ming's Palace was of course in ruin after all these years, but Emperor Zhu's Mausoleum is pretty much still well preserved. It is just located next to Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen's Mausoleum. In fact, the whole scenic area was collectively known as Zhong-Shan Scenic Area (钟山景区). Along side with the Mausoleum, there were alot of other scenic areas, which I will just skip as the main focus here would be Ming's Mausoleum!

So that day we finished touring Dr. Sun's Mausoleum, just a 10 minutes walk to reach Ming's Mausoleum.

Here is the ticket, quite expensive without the student rate~ Ha! Good to be a student~

Take a look at how vast is the area~

Here is the original look of the Mausoleum. In olden days, Emperor used to built their Mausoleum hidden for fear of being raided. In fact, there were no known emperor before the Ming's Dynasty who has a clear Mausoleum. Most of them just built it somewhere secluded and killed all involved engineers and workers.

However, Emperor Zhu was the first to built his Mausoleum openly with huge buildings on the ground. Hence, after him all other emperors of Ming and Qing's Dynasty started to built their Mausoleum this way. Zhu was a very arrogant man who thinks that his Empire will exist for eternal. Perhaps thats the reason he dared to built his Mausoleum on the ground.

Here we were infront of the first building. As you can see from the recovered drawing, there are a total of 3 buildings in Ming's Mausoleum. The first was the temple, second was Queen's palace and third one belongs to the King~

Here is the temple

As a sign of friendship towards the Chinese, the Manchurian Emperor built this after they conquered China and begun the reign of Qing's Dynasty.

The Queen's Palace

What was left were quite a ruin though~

Here was the path towards the King's Palace

Huge~~~

Although they built all these Mausoleum on the ground, the real underground palace was behind these buildings~ As for the opening to the underground palace, still a mystery~ 

Go all the way up~

Reached the top finally~

If I were not mistaken, this is the biggest King's Palace among all the Ming's Mausoleum. Perhaps as a sign of respect to the first emperor of Ming's Dynasty. 

The Mausoleum of the rest of the emperor were located in Beijing~ Which I will introduce in my subsequent post~

Infront of the Mausoleum was this Heaven Path (神道) where there were alot of guardian statues and animals statue to safe guard the Mausoleum and the path to heaven. Their usual beliefs that they will rule in the other side of the world~

The animal path

All Sorts of animals~

The whole length of this heaven path was more than 2 km~

Just a 15 minutes walk away from the Mausoleum was this Plum flower garden. On this exact site was the old tomb of King Wu during the period of Three Kingdom.

Now the whole parameters were just full with Plum flowers~

At night we went to the largest night market in NanJing - Fu-Zi Temple (夫子庙)

Lotza food and lotza cheap stuff to shop~

Yummy dumpling!

10 Ren-Min-Bi

For more illustration on NanJing, kindly log on to my Facebook picture~