All posts by richristow

Wuxi’s President Clinton Monument

 

Yes, you read that correctly. Wuxi has a monument to American President William Jefferson Clinton. This is not the first time that American Presidents have shown up in local Chinese culture. Presidents Lincoln and Jefferson can be found in Changzhou. Lincoln is at the Changzhou Revolutionary Martyr’s Memorial in Tianning; his face is on a plaque with an inspirational quote translated into Chinese.

 

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He’s also surrounded by other plaques for people like Shakespeare,  Gandhi,  Mark Twain and others. Jefferson is over in Zhonglou’s Wuxing Park. He’s near Socrates and a few Chinese intellectuals. The park has a law theme. Both Lincoln and Jefferson are included among others, and the focus is not particularly on them. That’s where Wuxi’s Clinton thing is markedly different. It really is about him, directly.

 

 

Before I explain what this about, I really need to explain where it is. It’s part of the reason why this stone honors America’s 42nd commander in chief.  This rock sits at the entrance of a huge park dedicated to Wu culture. Basically, Wu is the part of China that Wuxi, Changzhou, and Suzhou once belonged to. Several kingdoms over thousands of years used Wu as it’s name. Plus, it’s also the variant of the Chinese language that forms the basis of a number of local dialects in the southern Jiangsu region. This park essentially celebrates a local culture that is rich, full of tradition, and stretches back a long, long way into history.

 

 

In this picture, Clinton can be found under the roof on the right side of this picture. The Wu Cultural Park is located in Wuxi’s northern Huishan District. It’s a rather lengthy walk from The Yanqiao subway station, which is also the northern terminus for Wuxi’s Line 1. Huishan’s Wanda Plaza is also not that far away.  Okay, so I am dragging this out. Why is Bill Clinton at a place dedicated to local Jiangnan culture? Let’s zoom in on the memorial stone itself.

 

 

This whole display commemorates a postcard Clinton sent somebody via airmail. “Thank you so much for your kind gift.  I appreciate your thoughtfulness and generosity.” Okay, so it’s a thank you card. Why was Clinton sending one to somebody in Wuxi? I had to enlist one my trusted Chinese friends, because my ability with reading Chinese still sucks. And the translator on my phone can’t read engraved text all that well. What I was told was this: the Wu Cultural Park sent Clinton two art books. One was on traditional Wu architecture, the other was  about idols. President Clinton acknowledged the gift with a signed thank you card. That’s the whole story.  Nothing more to say.

Before anybody sarcastically screams “big deal,” think about this. Parts of America are filled “Washington slept here!” historical attractions.   Locals love it when global luminaries give their homes and neighborhoods extra meaning. For instance, Changzhou has a memorial hall for when Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat-Sen) did a whistle stop and waved at people. This was on his way to Nanjing to create a new government after the Qing Dynasty fell.  That’s a memorial for five to twenty minutes (I am guessing here) of face time with a huge, adoring crowd.

Also, take my home state of New Jersey. Long Branch has “Seven Presidents Parks.” It’s a beachfront location on the Atlantic Ocean. Long Branch also has a cool skatepark here. But why does it has the name “Seven Presidents?” That’s simple. Over the course of American history, seven commanders in chief stayed or vacationed in Long Branch. People will embrace anything that gives their home extra meaning. That’s not a bad thing, either — especially when it crosses oceans and national borders, as is the case with Clinton and Huishan, Wuxi.

The Buffet at Marco Polo

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As hotels go, The Marco Polo is not an imposing or a large structure. This is by design, as the management hopes for a more intimate, personable atmosphere. A smaller scale of operation means more time staff can focus and giving quality customer service and care. Like other western hotels in Changzhou, there is a self service dinner buffet.

The management knows this, and they have tried to figure out what can make their restaurant stand out. The answer was a recently added iron skillet barbecue. This is personalized to each table with a heating element. Diners are served raw cuts of beef, chicken, and more to cook themselves. The concept is very similar to local paper BBQ places, but the ingredients are of higher quality.

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In truth, it’s best to treat the new personal BBQ as an appetizer to the buffet itself.  There are tried and true elements that you can find in other hotels around Changzhou. For example, there is a hot grill with a choice of meat and gourmet sauces. The quality here is what you would expect from a luxury hotel.

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There is another similarity: sushi and sashimi. The cook here is a professional trained in Japan, and the sashimi is freshly cut to order. This is not a “buffet” aspect of the dining experience. You tell the guy what you want from what’s chilled and on display, and he delivers. There are also freshly made rolls to pick and choose from — along with the standard condiments of pickled ginger, soy sauce, and wasabi.

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There are hot food service stations for both western and Chinese cuisines. However, there was one I found myself wanting to return to, and quite often. Without proper discipline, I would have made myself an outright pig with heaping plates. I really, really liked Marco Polo’s chicken curry. There is a reason for this; Changzhou only has two Indian restaurants: Kaffa in Wujin, and Indian Kitchen in Xinbei. There is also a Pakistani meal delivery service based off of Wechat called “CHILL MaRo.” Marco Polo’s buffet is not a South Asian restaurant, but they do offer a delicious curry dish in a town that doesn’t not have a lot of options when it comes to this sort of food.

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The Marco Polo Hotel is located very close to Dinosaur Park. This is the time of year where the Spring Festival lanterns are full on display there. A family could easily pair visiting these colorful sights with having a delicious dinner nearby. This is especially true for those in Wujin who need an excuse to go north for an evening.

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Suzhou Has a Train to Hogwarts?

Can you take a train from Suzhou to Hogwarts? Of course you cannot. Hogwarts and the Hogwarts Express exists only in the pages of J.K. Rowling’s wonderful Harry Potter novels. However, there is “Platform Nine and Three Quarters”  at Guangjinan Station in Suzhou. This would be on Line 2 as part of Suzhou’s subway system.

Nine and Three Quarters is not the most magical or inspiring place in the Potterverse. After all, you have to pass through a solid concrete pillar to get to it. Not much happens there either. Parents put their kids on a train to wizarding school there. Even in magical world of J.K. Rowling’s fiction, train stations fail to be truly inspiring. However, think of how important the place is in Harry Potter’s life. It is here he departs for Hogwarts and a new life for the first time, and here is where the seven-novel series ends after he defeats Voldamort and the Death Eaters. He sends his youngest son off for magical training for the first time. Incidentally, this is where the new Harry Potter Broadway play also begins. So, while not inspiring, it is still an important place.

“Nine and Three Quarters Platform” in Suzhou can just be chalked up as another bit of seemingly random Chinese weirdness. Here, you can find two wall displays related to Potter’s world. Everything else looked shuttered and shut down. This could be because Spring Festival holidays are gearing up in Suzhou and around China. But, in the end, it’s just a strange and tiny underground shopping area.

 

Ni Hao, Yangzhong

Usually, my first visits to a new city are not all that exciting in terms of adventure. I usually do no planning other than, “Hmm? I have a day off. Where to go?” I arrive at places blind, sometimes, and that’s because sometimes walking into the sheer unknown sounds exciting. That sounds good in theory, but in my experience, it hardly works out. My recent foray into Yangzhong was no different.

This is a city that takes up a one very large island in the Yangtze river, and it technically part of Zhenjiang. It is not as industrialized as other nerby cities like Changzhou or Yangzhou. As some cities go, this one has a a less developed and small town feel. Then again, that’s just an impression based only on a few hours of walking.  Here are some photos from that walk.

 

 

This is the long distance bus depot. I live and work in Changzhou, and the ride was an hour and twenty minutes.

 

I have a trick when I go to a new city for the first time. I pull up Baidu Maps and see if the area has a Starbucks. If so, I make it my mission to find it. Yes, I like coffee, but the practicality is that Starbucks is an expensive luxury for many Chinese people. So, these coffee shops are usually in built up, commercialized areas. Yangzhong, according to Baidu Maps, has only one Starbucks, and so here is what I saw in my trek to that Starbucks.

 

Eventually, I had to get back to Changzhou because of business / dinner arrangements. I had misjudged how long the ride to this place was. I needed to give myself ample time to get back.

 

Yangzhong is mostly a rural place, and one of the major industries here, historically, has been farming. When you live in a Chinese city, sometimes you are not used to the wide open spaces that surround place like Yangzhong.

While I didn’t see anything too exciting this time around,  I left saying to myself, “I missed out on something there.” So, I need to go back and find out what that “something” was.

A Surreal and Ambient Place in Zhonglou

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Imagine you are eating a chicken dinner drinking red wine. Above you, clouds move, but they are not exactly white. They seem more of a soft yellow, and they are swirling in a way that normal sky clouds wouldn’t. Eventually, these whisps fade and change into abstract and gradually shifting gradients of red. You’re not really paying close attention to this at first. After all, you are eating chicken and sipping on a glass of wine. In front of you, there is also a stage. A woman is singing with a band. You are also idly chatting with a friend sitting next to you. The next time you look upwards, the red gradients are gone. They have been replaced by images of rippling water — which eventually morphs into a cityscape.

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All of this is supposed to sound like an otherworldly dream. However, such a surreal place exists in Changzhou. It’s a special events venue in Zhonglou on the grounds of the Dusit Thani Hotel near Qingfeng park. This space is as avant garde as it sounds. The structure consists of interlocking inflatable domes. A network of lighting equipment and video projectors creates a 360 degree multimedia environment. Images and patterns of smoke, fire, clouds, and a lot more are projected onto the curved walls and ceiling. The technology involved is advanced to the point where video with sound can also be played — a commercial for a automotive company, for example.

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All of this is the product Oracle Projects, an international entertainment and special events production company. Before coming to Changzhou, Oracle has helped host events at the Beijing Olympics and other places around the world. Essentially, it is a high-end venue space for hire. While Oracle is working and consulting on this project, it is actually locally owned by the Shanghai Aviation Future Cultural Development Company 上海中航未来文化发展有限公司.

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The event I attended was sponsored by Borgward. This is a German automotive company with a long history dating back nearly a hundred years. For a long time, this car brand was dormant, but Chinese investors helped relaunch the company recently. The evening consisted of a catered dinner, live music, dancers, a fashion show and more. To celebrate their relaunch, Borgward screened a new commercial on the venue’s curved walls. This was not a one-off event, either. Oracle Projects and its local partner have long term plans in Changzhou with other events to come.

A Newb’s Introduction to Dining and Nightlife in Jiangyin

img_20161211_193844While visiting Jiangyin either on business or as a tourist, there are a few western restaurants to consider eating at. While the city is smaller than Changzhou and belongs to Wuxi, Jiangyin is highly developed and quite modernized. There is one spot in the downtown area that seems to be central to dining and nightlife. Yijian Road has a lot of bars and restaurants.

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The biggest draw in the area seems to be a German establishment, Hofbrauhaus and a few others.

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While Yijian Road seems to be a culinary hub, these are not the only places to eat when visiting Jiangyin. Take, for example, St. Marco. This European eatery is just down Chaoyang Road from Huangshanhu Park. That park, and the others near in close proximity, are the more well known Jiangyin attractions. People on a day trip from Changzhou could pair visiting those parks with eating at St. Marco. As stated earlier, these are likely not the only decent places to eat in this city, but this was only my third visit, and I’m still figuring out where things are there.

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Cross posted from Real Changzhou. 

Searching for Wuxi’s City God

Other than Taoism or Buddhism, there was one other faith indigenous to China: Chinese folk religion. This is what predates even Taoism and it has shaped and influenced the Chinese variety of Buddhism as well. The pantheon of deities here is tremendous, and it even stretches down onto the local level. Each town and city is said to have their own god who safeguards the land and the people. Finding out further information on these local legends has not been an easy task. Not all city god temples survived the Cultural Revolution.

Part’s of Wuxi’s local god shrine still stands, and it can be easily found downtown and not that far from the Sanyang Plaza subway station. It’s behind the Center 66 恒隆广场 shopping center. In a way, there really isn’t much to see here. There is no statue or image of who Wuxi’s city god was. There are three separate structures, and they are empty and almost devoid almost anything cultural. One of the buildings has a second floor, but the twin staircases to that level are blocked off. There are some things historical, here, however, and if you don’t look carefully, they are easy to miss. Six stone tablets are embedded in the wall, and they are filled with Chinese characters. These can be sometimes hard to read, even if a visitor is fluent in Chinese. The engraved writing is so worn and faded in some spots, it’s hard to make anything out.  So, in terms of trying to figure out the story behind Wuxi’s local god, this seems like a place to start looking, but it certainly isn’t the end of the search.

An Artistic Prelude to Real Horror

Art does not exist solely to make people happy. It’s there to evoke emotion, and by doing that, make people think.  This is definitely the case with the statues outside the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum.  There, a series of sculptures help set a somber and sobering tone before a visitor even steps onto the premises. This is especially effective if a visitor comes on a busy national travel day. The line can be long to get in, and a visitor is forced to stare at these metal figures and the bilingual captions that came with them. That said, even though it does the proper mood, nothing can actually prepares you for the horror of historical relics and displays of the Japanese slaughtering 300,000 people.

Ni Hao, Danyang

Danyang is a small little city on the periphery and under the jurisdiction of Zhenjiang. The most prevalent industry here is the carving of lenses and the manufacture of eyeglasses.  As of this writing, I have only visited Danyang twice, and the areas I have seen seem bisected by the high speed rail line.  The amount of construction going on here seems to be equal on both sides. This is a city that is steadily expanding and upgrading and growing.

The Shanghai-Nanjing line runs north to south here, and sometimes trains pass through here without stopping as they hurtle towards Zhenjiang or Changzhou (the two stops before and after the city when travelling from Nanjing to Shanghai).

The Western part of the city seems to be home to the downtown. A large city square can be found here with a subterranean supermarket. Also, there are a lot more department stores, boutique shops and more.

The eastern part of the city is home to a large radio tower, and unlike others throughout China, this one is not rigged to light up at night. East of the train tracks is also home to Injoy Plaza. There are Starbucks to be found on both sides of the rail line. So, far, I think the city has four total.

This is just an initial impression of the city. As I said, I have only been here twice, and Danyang does have a northern high speed rail station on the line connecting to Shanghai to Beijing. So, I get the feeling that I am missing out on something here, and that’s why I plan to return a little more often.

Park Emergencies!

Xinbei’s central park is filled with lots of absurd Chinglish, but that is not the only weird thing to be see. The park is filled with lots of trully strange signs detailing EMERGENCY! situations. These seem out of place. For example, one talks about water, and there is no sign of publicly available water. For a time, I thought it was just unique to Xinbei’s central park. However, I started seeing similar signs over in Xuejia’s park. I also saw similar things in Hongmei, downtown. Then, I started seeing in other city’s parks — like in Jiangyin last sunday. So, naturally, I started taking pictures.

For a laugh, I showed the pictures to a friend while we were having coffee. She laughed at them just as I had, but then she pointed out something I hadn’t thought of. Maybe these signs are not just randomly placed? Maybe some parks are designated as places to go if a real emergency did happen? After all, Sichuan has had earthquakes. Cities in the south of China have seen flooding. Typhoons seem to be getting stronger every year. Maybe this signs are set purposefully to denote where stations for water, garbage, toilets, and more should be set up should the park actually be needed in an emergency. Given the Chinese zeal for urban planning, it seems plausible to me. I tried Googling an answer, based on this theory, and I didn’t find one. At any rate, here are some of those park emergencies.

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Emergency Fire Extinguisher
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Emergency Management District
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Emergency Parking
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Emergency Shelters
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Emergency Rubbish
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Emergency Water Supply
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Emergency Medical Treatment
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Emergency Toilets

 

This has been cross posted from Real Changzhou.