They say you only see a place properly when you go and return. This was the case with Nanjing. I had not been there for about 6 months and had lived there for over 4 years and when I returned it felt like putting on an old pair of slippers. Of course 6 months is a long time in a Chinese city which is rushing at full speed to become brighter and shinier than its neighbours. The metro system has a changed a little and the taxis were all a uniform yellow – an improvement brought about by the Youth Olympics last year.
However, the people are the same – this is both a positive and negative comment. On the metro a small child came up to me to say ‘Hello’ and I got a lot of stares. When I got fed up of the staring I tried scowling at them only to be met with smiles. Nanjingers are friendly, there’s no doubt – and you are made to feel special. People smile at you and people offer you their seats and their children are pushed forward to say hello to you.
I went for a quick bite to eat at BurgerKing and was reminded of a negative aspect of Nanjingers when a man who was clearly fed of of standing behind me in the queue pushed me out of the way and walked towards a till at which someone who already being served. He started shouting his order to the assistant. Enraged by this inconsiderate behaviour I shouted at him to get back in the queue and he did so with his tail between his legs!
I thought I would catch up with as many people as possible while in Nanjing and this included my old flatmate Tiffany and my adopted Chinese grandmother Zhang Jing Hua. She is 89 years old and lives by South East University so we had made arrangements to eat at a small restaurant there. Typically she turned up looking like she had run through a charity shop and most of the stock of old jumpers had stuck to her body. It wasn’t a good look! Anyway, she pointed out when I laughed, she was at least warm! Then she produced a bag for me which contained a huge winter coat (she apologised that one of the buttons was missing), a red scarf that had clearly seen better days, a red woolly hat with some unidentified substance stuck to it and a bar of soap.
She insisted I put the coat on even though I already had one on and we were sitting in a restaurant – I obliged! Then, typically she said she had already eaten and was full. I have rarely been able to catch her hungry – even though we often meat for lunch or dinner. Why do old people often do this?
Leaving my old friends, I walked up to Gulou metro station and made my way to the station and turned my back on Nanjing once again. Shanghai has a lot going for it but the people are not as friendly and it is much harder to make Chinese friends here.