Saturday March 26, 2016

Another wall, more temples, and enough food to kill a small elephant. Or as it’s known in China: Saturday.

So I’m sitting in the Nanjing Sheraton’s Irish Bar, drinking American beer, listening to a Chinese cover band playing songs I’ve never heard, while some fat, drunk, old guy commandeers the band’s mic, and no one does a damn thing to stop him. And none of this is remotely odd to me. Finally getting used to China I guess.

By the way, still no takers on getting someone else in the family to share their thoughts and impressions on our trip through China with you. Sorry, but obviously none of them care as much about you people as I do. But I’ll still be here for you. Because I care. Even if the rest of my family couldn’t give a hoot about your entertainment needs. You’re welcome.

A pretty straightforward sightseeing day here in Nanjing. I’ll do my best to dress it up for you lot, but just know before we get into today’s entry there have been no hotel crises, nary a near-death roadway experience, nor a single episode of cultural confusion capable of causing an international incident of any sort. So all-in-all a pretty positive day.

Today’s first stop with our guide Denise and driver David (all honorific alliteration is purely coincidental I have been assured) was to Nanjing’s ancient city wall. While not as great a wall as the eponymously named one up north, it’s still a pretty darned impressive one all things considered. It dates back several hundred years to when Nanjing held the designation of Southern capital of China (“nan” is Chinese for “south” while “bei” means “north”, hence the Nanjing/Beijing naming conventions — don’t say I never taught you nothing) and encircles a 21 kilometer perimeter of the old city. It’s got both character and gravitas, so it was enjoyed by all as we walked but a small section of it.

After the wall, we hiked a bit around Nanjing’s Xuanwu Lake along with a seasonally sizable crowd all out enjoying the fine spring weather. It’s truly a fine lake, an again was enjoyed by all concerned parties.

Next, we hit the most central part of Nanjing’s original old quarter. Fascinating historical architecture simply oozing antiquity, and again, a most agreeable sightseeing stop.

Next on the agenda was the beginning of the Chinese people’s coordinated effort to force the collective stomachs of the Congiusta family to explode from grotesque overfeeding as if we were a gaggle of foie gras producing geese. Ah, now your curiosity is piqued is it not? Yes, apparently the Chinese have decided that our family should be the subject of a twisted social experiment to see just how much food a family of traveling foreigners might be willing to eat if plates of delicious delectables were continuously, and without pause, placed in front of them. Lunch consisted of a gut-busting 12-15 distinct dishes that seemed to be delivered to our table on a conveyer belt. Compound this endless food pipeline with Densise’s insistence that it was the duty of the guests to not insult their hosts by eating every last bit of food on the table. Well, we complied, because we are many things, but rude is certainly not one of them. We tried to protest between mouthfuls of food but were given no quarter, and even if we had been, I am positive that we would have been asked to eat that coin as well.

Finally, after spot-licking the tableware clean, we waddled from the restaurant, back to our bus to be deposited back at our hotel in a vain attempt at digesting our lunch before we met with some friends of ours from Durham, now living in Nanjing, for — that’s right, you guessed it: dinner!

Several years ago, Aelex had made very good friends at her elementary school with a Chinese girl living in Durham with her family while her mother spent a year working at Duke University on a research project. Eventually they moved back to their hometown of Nanjing but the girls remained in contact and when we made our plans to bring the family back to China — including our stopover in Aelex’s hometown of Nanjing — we of course made plans to meet up with them so the girls could spend some time together and we could break bread with some old friends.

Our incredibly generous and hospitable friends arranged to pick our family up from the hotel to take us to a fine local restaurant for dinner approximately 4 hours after we had just gorged ourselves on lunch. “No problem” we said. “We can hack it” we said. Last words have rarely been more famous.

We were seated in a private room at the restaurant our friends had taken us to when the father of Aelex's friend started ordering food in Chinese. I didn’t think much of it when he was still ordering 30 minutes later, but what did I know? Shortly after, they started bringing food out. And they continued to do so for the next several hours. I really, really wish I was exaggerating. Our incredibly generous hosts had literally order over 20 local dishes for us to sample, wanting to ensure that we had the full Nanjing cuisine experience. Again, rude we are not so we ate, and ate, and ate, far past the limits any sane medical professional would possibly consider safe. The one redeeming factor of our gorging was that the food remained consistently and outrageously delicious.

In spite of the fact that the buttons on all of our jeans had popped off sometime around the second dish of the meal, the company and conversation made the night more than enjoyable. It was great to see Aelex and her friend rekindle their friendship after some initial awkwardness that would be expected between any two teenage girls who hadn’t seen each other in person for over three years.

Finally — and mercifully — our eating for the day ceased, either by design or because the whole country of China had run out of food to deliver to us. We were again chauffeured back to our hotel in order to go and sleep off our food comas before — I am certain — our cruel participation in this exercise in gluttony will doubtlessly continue on the morrow. So stay tuned faithful readers, for we are a single dumpling away from the point of no return.

Making reservations for gastric bypass surgery upon our return…