Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, former capital of the nation and a city renowned for its historical and cultural heritage. I’d left Hangzhou after spending the last four days relaxing by West Lake and now it was city time again.

I’d actually been in Nanjing three years earlier on my first trip to China. I’d bought myself a one way ticket to Beijing and was taking the train down the east coast towards Hong Kong. Back then, I hadn’t known what to expect. I’d expected largeness, I’d expected people. I’d actually expected the place to be a lot more inscrutable and harder to deal with than I found it. There were times – mostly when attempting to purchase train tickets – when the situation seemed impossible, but on the whole, I found China to be surprisingly navigable.

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