During my stay in Nanjing, I’ll be living with a Chinese host family and all of my classes are taught in Chinese. A few of the classes I'll be taking are Readings in Chinese, Spoken Chinese, Contemporary Chinese Studies, History of Chinese Film, and Ancient History of China. Nanjing University, founded in 1902, has over 40,000 students and is best known for its liberal arts and social science disciplines, which is perfect for me. Nanjing has a population of 7.5 million (New York City has 8 million) and prides itself on maintaining a traditional Chinese city atmosphere, while also welcoming urban development in designated parts. It is located at the same latitude as Charleston, South Carolina at 32 degrees North and has similar weather patterns, described by Wikipedia as a "humid subtropical" climate. I'm very excited about this because I hate the cold weather. Nanjing is 12 hours ahead of
Eastern Standard Time but they don't observe daylight savings time.南京 are the characters for Nanjing, which means Southern Capital (Beijing means Northern Capital). It first became the capital of China in 229 CE and was the capital for a series of historical periods after that. In 1912, the Nationalists declared Nanjing the capital of China, where it remained the capital of China until they were overthrown by the Communists in 1949. The
massacre of Nanjing occurred during an invasion of Japanese troops during World War II where an estimated 300,000 civilians were murdered and 80,000 women were raped.I can't think of any more facts about Nanjing that people are usually curious about, so comment on this post if you have questions about what exactly I'll be doing while I'm in China.
p.s. the picture above is the most famous building/tower on Nanjing University's campus. The other picture above is of Nanjing's skyline.
I'm interested to hear that Nanjing is similarly climate-d to South Carolina! I'm glad you'll be warm while you're away. And you're missing their summer, which would be too hot hot hot.
ReplyDeleteIs Nanjing as polluted as Beijing?
Even more so, actually! According to China's air pollution index, Nanjing is the second most polluted city in China, after Wuhan. Even though Nanjing is small compared to Beijing's 17 million people, Nanjing leads the country in top export production-- meaning that they have high rates of industrial emissions. This surprised me because I just assumed that Beijing would be more polluted. I think that's due to all the media coverage on the Olympics-- which also means that the government puts a lot more money into cleaning up Beijing instead of cleaning up Nanjing.
ReplyDeleteIs there anyway you can protect yourself against the pollution or is it what is it? like, is it bad enough to be a danger to your health for the time period you will be living there?
ReplyDeleteHm, I am not concerned. I live dangerously. I could wear a face mask but I really don't want to do that. I'll probably just have to wear my glasses more often instead of my contacts, etc. I figure if 7 million people will live there their whole lives, than I can do it for 10 months. I don't think it will be that damaging-- there are much worse things that I could be doing for my health that I don't do, like smoking for example.
ReplyDeleteNanjing has lots of lovely tree lined streets relatively near the university. Less hectic than Shanghai (which is an easy train ride away) and on a more human scale than Beijing, Nanjing is a great place for an extended stay.
ReplyDeleteI loved it and hope you will too!
I'll be watching your blog eagerly.