Return of the Rain

Friday, May 21, 2010--Nanjing   We were slow getting up.  The hotel doesn't include breakfast, and the room is quiet and comfortable.  Wes' only complaint is about the hardness of the beds.  All our hotels have had hard beds.   The sun was out, so we dressed in shorts and headed for the Musuem of the Nanjing Massacre.  It's on the edge of town where a gate used to exist--a gate where bones of persons who were killed in the massacre were found.  The museum is a huge complex that tells the story in detail about the loss of 300,000 lives and the rape of 20,000 women when the Japanese invaded in 1937.  We spent over two hours seeing the exhibits and reading about the atrocities and the later conviction of the leaders.    When we came out of the museum, it was raining.  We hadn't expected it at all and didn't even have our umbrellas with us.  We sat in a protected area for 30 minutes or so, but the rain just got harder.  Eventually, we decided to walk the two blocks to a major street that would have a bus stop.  We were completely soaked by the time we got there.  But a nice lady helped us find the best bus to get us near our hotel from there.   Because of the bad weather, we just stayed the rest of the day in the room and watched TV.  We have a movie channel that shows American films in English along with a Chinese channel that has news in English.  We watched both of those.   Saturday, May 22, 2010--Nanjing   We had hoped the rain would be gone today so we could go to the park to see some of the historical sights here and visit the botanical gardens.  Unfortunately, it was still raining and was cold.  When I was in China in May before, it was hot.  But this year we have had mostly cool days.    We left the room to go to some of the nearby malls to spend some time looking around and being among people.  About two hours later, we returned to the room.  The rain continued.  We watched more films on TV.    By late afternoon, it was dry outside.  We walked to Nanjing Normal University and explored the neighborhoods around it.  We got back to the hotel just as it began to sprinkle again.    We leave to go further north tomorrow, so we will probably escape the rain again.  We will be going to an old walled city called Qufu.