j a n e t: Fifth Day

the previous night was spent sharing a single-sized bed with my mum and having only the towel as the blanket coz my mum pulled the blanket over to her without knowing i dont have enough. it was really bad sleeping and the whole night i had barely 2 hours of sleep. was listening to my parents snoring really loudly! didnt know my dad snored too. and he snored really loud. i was half wondering whether they were having a snoring competition and was feeling very bad coz i knew snoring is not good for health.

all these thanks to my sister who kicked me out of the room that rightfully belonged to me as well and not caring a single bit for my welfare.

have i offended her in my previous life? i dont get it. maybe i have been a bad sister to begin with.. sucks really.

we went to 长江桥, which took great efforts to built. imagine like thousands of people who died to build the bridge, ie throwing sand bags down this high speed-flowing river and then getting washed off at times. there were many others who donated metal pots and pans in order to raise enough materials to build this. the people in china had to build something to link the north and south parts of china to enable smoother flow of trade.

the people then were so poor they had to eat roots and barks of tree to survive. so the bridge had to be built for the north parts to sell their crops etc to the south and vice versa. it was a really moving story actually. lucky i didnt live in that period!

we also met with the artist who painted in snuff bottles and crystal balls. he was the son of a man who died building the bridge and grew up an orphan, pretty much not knowing how to communicate with human kind much. thus he never marry and spent lots of time painting. quite cool to meet him in person but he's somewhat part of the whole tourist attraction and will go to work there everyday to complete a complex painting, as miniature as it could be.

Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall next!!!
we all learnt about this Nanjing Massacre in history in secondary 2 so i had a faint inkling of what happened. basically very anti-jap sentiments and lots of lives killed.. this whole place was built in 2007 so the architecture was pretty cool and the scrulptures more westernised.

kids aged below 10 were confined to the tour even coz the memorial hall consisted of some skeletons showcase/ burial sites excavates. pretty gruesome and very technical. not nice to take pictures of them though.

really artistic work

the writings were something like "poor child crying! he doesnt know that he's suckling milk in his dead mother's breast" really there in your face.

peace

soon afterwards travelled to WuXi 无锡!!!! meaning "no tin"
this is the place where it was likened to iraq, where in the past people fought bitter wars about the tin supply in the state. finally when the tin was depleted, there were no more fighting and there was peace. so saying the meaning of the place equates to "peace" in some fancy phrase that the guide quoted but i forgot haha. ok i checked wiki, this is it: 有锡兵,天下争;无锡宁,天下清

in WuXi, we went to Three-Kingdom Movie & TV City! this is where they built a fake dynasty kingdom set to film their productions next to their lake. was awesome and really cool!

filming set in the background

the people made alot of money there doing those costume rental and photography-souvenir business.

theyre really genius to stage out a typical war scene. i was watching these and thinking royston should really be here to watch. he's like the biggest 三国演义 fan, Romance Of Three Kingdoms.

those fighting scenes really were marvellous...like those generals werent famous for nothing! those stuntsmen were like holding just the reins of the house and not sitting on it, swinging from the left of the horse, to the right and then to the left! and then there was one who wielded its weapons, throwing into the air and catching it, all while the horse was galloping at high speed. really nice.

got to shopping at a departmental store afterwards! told that it was built by Singaporean and Malaysian investors. hmm not bad business there.

however spent more time at the supermarket in that 1.5hrs!