Two of These Things Are Not Like the Others

In China, it is very common for companies to take the whole company on a weekend trip. From what I've heard from my co-workers, the main qualifiers of a company trip are: A) It must be a 48 hour trip on the weekend to a location in China. B) The food must be terrible. C) The attendees must spent lots of time on a bus and surrender themselves to a flag-wielding, fast walking, history spouting guide. Fortunately for me (but probably unfortunately for Zach), I got to bring him along to experience my first company outing to Nanjing. With Zach in tow, the two of us represented the only two people of the 200-person group that were not fluent in Chinese, which always makes for an interesting time.

Nanjing, a former capital of China, has a population of 5M people, a mere fraction of Shanghai's. Yet, we were shocked to find the Nanjing train station just as packed as the one we had left. This once again proves that China is no place for the claustrophobic.....

First stop on the itinerary, Sun Yat-Sen's sacred memorial. We climbed exactly 392 steps to get to the purple-roofed building that housed the tomb of the founding father of modern China.

Once inside the purple topped tomb, signs in English were everywhere stating that photos were forbidden. In every relationship, there always has to be a rule-breaker. This photo firmly clarifies that this title does not belong to me......

...fortunately for blog readers, my stealth hand gestures and strong verbal warnings were not strong enough to dissuade my camera aggressive partner.

Since the tours were given in Chinese, 99% of the tour guide's insights were lost on Zach and I, so we took to amusing ourselves by taking entertaining pictures. In this photo, I'm putting bunny ears on my assistant, Elian. Some of you may remember the 'one piece of watermelon' entry from last spring. This is, in fact, the girl that wanted 'one more piece of watermelon' and was 'shamed by the cafeteria worker' who withheld the beloved chinese fruit from her. I couldn't totally understand what she was saying to this guy during the time of the picture, but I do vaguely remember something being said about the lack of cantaloupe at lunch.......

Turtles were popular in Nanjing. I'm sure our guide explained this in detail, but unfortunately, we haven't gotten to the amphibian unit of our Chinese classes yet. So again, reverting to junior high, we go back to entertaining ourselves with the classic 'this turtle's got my head' shot.

Randy the rulebreaker strikes again, as Zach talked me into illegally sitting on what is probably some sacred shrine to the Head Turtle of Nanjing........

Here's a shot of Zach looking stately in front of yet another turtle.

Here is a picture of me and some of my co-workers at the Ming Tombs................

While we neither learned as much detail about Nanjing's history as the rest of the group nor figured out the mystery of the turtles, Zach and I still did have fun hanging out with my co-workers and seeing cool things such as the president's former residence and Ming Tombs. This weekend, we look forward to a visit from our DC friends (and faithful blog readers) Amanda and Andrew.