The view on an early morning run

I go running in Nanjing almost every morning, except the weekends, usually leaving my apartment at 7:00 or 7:30 am. This is actually a little late to be running because rush hour has already started so the roads are crowded. By the time I get to the park around 8:00, almost everyone is already gone. I cannot for the life of me get up before 6:30 am though, so 7:00 am runs it is. It is still a fun experience. I run to a couple different parks in the city and it is always an interesting experience just to run through different neighborhoods in Nanjing. It's a very genuinely "Chinese experience", one could say. It's fun just to watch the hustle and bustle of everyone getting breakfast, buying groceries, waiting for the bus, dodging traffic, weaving in and out of motobikers, ect, ect, ect... At Xuanwu Lake, one of the parks near my place, my favorite thing to do is to stop and watch these professional-looking (they wear this really awesome Tai Chi garb) Tai Chi/Taijiquan Club. They are at Xuanwu Lake every time I run.

If I need to do research in the early morning, I run on the track in the evening, after sunset sometimes, and that is an experience in and of itself because the track is crazy crowded (I mean, I'm dodging in and out of people walking on the track the entire time) and there are no lights. So it is an experience I cannot capture on camera, but you can imagine, pitch black, really crowded, me trying to run. Anyway, here are some pictures from one Thursday morning run around the Xuanwu Lake about a mile from my apartment.

My street "Gold Silver Street" at 7:00 am, quiet before the morning rush, right before I set out.

Road Block. Always the road blockages.....

My route to the lake, I run in the bike lane :-)

I have to wait 72 seconds. Not cool.

I have arrived! 到了! Old guy just chilling with his big red thermos.

Morning socialization for the retirees

Big dogs are all the rage these days... retirees showing off their status symbols.

You can't see too clearly, but these guys are playing with spinning tops on strings that they twirl around like hula hoops

Lake entrance at one of the gates in the Nanjing City Wall

This morning, there happened to be some sort of "health fair" going on right inside the gate, sponsored by a the calcium supplement, Caltrate, encouraging "old people" that they should take this medicine for their health and to prevent osteoporosis.

All the drug reps wore these yellow vests, the pink billboard is a big ad for the calcium supplement

Dancing to hip hop music: SO CUTE

The lake

The City Wall

Tai Chi masters

A random seemingly abandoned crane in the lake

Chinese word of the day:

金融- jin1 rong2 - literally "to circulate gold", aka finance.