“The purple headed mountain,
the river running by…”

As a kid I used to sing these words from the hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful” with some bafflement. I hadn’t seen many mountains, but I was pretty sure they weren’t usually purple. And I’m not any the wiser as to why Nanjing’s Purple Mountain is so called. Its Chinese name, Zĭjīn Shān, means an even more improbable “Purple Gold Mountain.” Wikipedia has two different explanations in its brief entry, neither of them wholly convincing.

Whatever the reason, it’s a pleasant place to stroll, a forested haven right in the heart of China’s former capital. And after our moving but grueling visit to the Memorial to the Nanjing Massacre, we needed something to soothe our souls. At one point we stumbled on a lake, where a few hardy locals were swimming, in defiance of signs forbidding it and the general Chinese attitude that while safety precautions on construction sites are an optional extra, any water more than ankle deep is a deadly peril from which people must be protected at all costs.

It’s also the site of Ming Tombs: not as extensive as Beijing’s complex, but scattered through the forest so that you come across 14th century carvings wherever you wander.

This dog guards the tomb of a Ming dynasty general, but seemed friendly

Because we were enjoying our ramble, and had badly underestimated the size of the mountain, it was past midday when we arrived at the park’s main attraction: the Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum. (We ended up taking the bus to cut short a lengthy walk.) Sun Yat-Sen, or Zhongshan as he is usually known in Chinese, is regarded as the father of the modern nation, a figure perhaps uniquely revered both on the mainland and in Taiwan. Every town in China has a road named after him, and after his death in 1925 he was interred in a vast hall at the top of a stairway nearly half a kilometer long.

However disappointment awaited us. Access to the tomb is by appointment only, and the first slot available to us was not until 4pm, by which time we were due to be on the train heading for home. If you’re visiting Nanjing I strongly recommend that you pre-book online, or at the very least arrive early in the morning.

So instead we opted for one of the park’s lesser attractions, the cable car ride to the mountain peak, undeterred by the rather alarming signs:

We were sort of hoping that we could rely on the cable car door, to be honest

Tickets cost RMB 100 for a return trip, or RMB 60 if you fancy walking all the way down again. (Kids between 1.2m and 1.4m pay RMB 50/30, and for those under 1.2m it’s just RMB 10/5.) There’s a stop halfway up, and at the top a couple of viewing platforms, some rock carvings, and, surprisingly, a small KFC. You can also walk along a path to a military fort which appears long abandoned, but is still protected by barbed wire and video cameras. Most importantly though, there are spectacular views of the city.

At the top of Purple Mountain, viewing platforms offer spectacular views of Nanjing

We found Nanjing unexpectedly charming. It’s less grid-like than most Chinese cities, with rambling, tree-lined streets and attractive buildings. The high-speed gaotie railway network can whisk you there from Beijing in under three and a half hours, making it an appealing destination for a weekend getaway.

Photos: Andrew Killeen

As we prepare for leaving China next summer, my family and I have been trying to tick off the remaining sights that we want to see before we go. It was in that spirit that we headed off for a couple of days in Nanjing, and we were pleasantly surprised. The city which was China’s capital in the early years of the Ming Dynasty and under the Nationalist government before the Japanese invasion has much of its historic city wall still standing, and its tree-lined streets are lined with many attractive older buildings.

However despite its long history, Nanjing is perhaps most famous – or rather notorious – for a horrific period during the invasion, known as the Nanjing Massacre. I’ve written before about our decision not to take our children to the Killing Fields Museum when we visited Cambodia, but on this occasion we took the view that paying our respects at the Memorial Hall was essential.

The Hall stands just outside exit 2 of Yunjinlu station on line 2 of Nanjing’s metro system. Entrance is free, but you’ll need to go through a stringent security check. It’s a large, open area dotted with statues and memorials, with the main exhibition underground. As you head downwards you pass rows of books, like a library: these contain the names of all the known victims of the massacre.

Rows of books contain the names of victims of the Nanjing massacre

The Japanese army marched into Nanjing, then the capital of China, in December 1937. A planned retreat by the Nationalist army fell apart in the chaos, so most of the Chinese soldiers went into hiding in the city. The Japanese began searching house to house for them. They were not careful in distinguishing soldiers from civilians, and were not taking prisoners – anyone they suspected was simply marched to the river and shot, or beheaded. Over the next six weeks, the relentless bloodshed seems to have induced a sort of collective insanity in the Japanese occupiers. All military discipline, and any pretense at a rationale for their behavior, collapsed, and they embarked on a frenzy of murder, looting, arson, and abuse.

Exhibits recreate the bombed and burning city

It’s a distressing story, and my younger child had to go outside before we had finished looking around the hall. Parents should also be aware that the systematic sexual abuse of Chinese women and girls was one of the more horrifying aspects of an incident once known in the West as “the Rape of Nanking”, and the exhibition does not gloss over this. However it’s important that such atrocities are remembered. As with the Holocaust, the extent of the Massacre, and even whether it took place at all, has been questioned by Japanese nationalists, despite the plethora of detailed eyewitness accounts, not only from the victims, but from foreign Nanjing residents who reported on and tried to prevent the brutality at the time, and even from the Japanese soldiers themselves. The Memorial Hall not only commemorates the victims but also attests to what took place.

It’s done with dignity and restraint, avoiding flag-waving and demonization of the Japanese. Particularly moving is the room dedicated to pictures of the survivors. Those still alive when the Hall was opened were photographed for the occasion, with the lights behind their pictures being turned off when they pass away. Already half the photographs have gone dark. Those with more sensitive children will want to be aware that the Hall was built on the site of one of the larger mass graves, and many of the skeletons still lie where they were found.

The hall includes mass graves which have been excavated to reveal human remains

We left the exhibition quiet and thoughtful, and it’s certainly not for younger children. However it does older children no harm to understand the terrible things that human beings are capable of when they are persuaded to consider others less than human, and helps them to appreciate the time of peace and plenty in which (for the most part) we live. In my next post I’ll show the other side of Nanjing, with a visit to the tranquillity of Purple Mountain.

Photos: Kevin Dooley via Wikimedia Commons, Andrew Killeen, Ken Marshall via Wikimedia Commons