I did not research before arriving to this city and headed there with zero expectations. My purpose to meet a friend from Charleston who was living and working outside of the city. Nanchang is the capital of Jiangxi Province in the southeastern region of China. Nanchang is located by the Yangtze and Pearl River Delta areas and is home to over 5 million people. The city has many railways passing through, making it a common stop-over for people traveling long distances.
I traveled by train for 14 hours from Guangzhou to Nanchang. I was supposed to catch an earlier train but woke up a little late and missed that opportunity. This was my first time to ever ride a train in my life so I was super excited and curious to see how this experience would unfold. It was especially unique because I would be traveling this way for the first time in a country where the language and culture was completely foreign. You know, its another experience when you cannot only ask for assistance to find your train car but are directed to several different beds because you kept parking in reserved spots!
Traveling through the country side of China allows passengers to see the landscape change from flat farming communities to lush mountain landscapes. There are so many small, rural villages throughout China. It makes you think about their quality of life there and also how their minds perceive the large world outside of their village. I often find this curious question to cross my mind whilst traveling abroad in developing countries.
My first train experience was everything that I had expected it to be and not. My bed was on the third level which can be reached by a small ladder situated in the aisle of the train. Once up, I positioned myself and my backpack as comfortably as possible in the small space. As a woman with long legs, I couldn't help but giggle when I found that my feet hung off the end of the bed and I couldn't manage to sit up properly. Seems my neighbors, an elderly couple on the bottom level bunk, also thought this was funny because they had to take pictures.
After 14 hours on a train you are bored, tired, and ready to get off. You try to walk around to pass the time but there is nowhere to go. I found myself in the middle of the train cards playing cars, drinking Tigers and smoking cigarettes to pass the time. Hey, "when in Rome," right? There is a food car and also vendors that come along selling boxed noodles and some snacks, but I honestly can't stomach that sort of stuff. I vouched for some fruit from vendors outside after every train stop. The nice thing is that there is always a hot water machine on the train so you can have a warm meal and a warm cup of tea. FYI, if you travel in China, you should bring along your own tea. It is nice to have something fresh when you've been stuck in a small cubicle like area with five other people.
Once landing in Nanchang, I found my friends apartment which was located on-site of a university. I was welcomed to a fun little party which was thrown for his going away. We reminisced old times and shared lots of laughs around the people that he had come to known so well in his year there.
The next day he showed me around the city. It was so different than the area which I had come from. In Foshan, the area has many investors thus creating a very modern and beautiful city but Nanchang was clearly in the midst of modernization. Some paved roads were met by dirt roads leading their ways through multiple buildings identical to the other. We putzed around the market to see what we could see which was unfortunately when I came to face the truth of the dog rumor. There, in the back of the market, was a cage full of dogs waiting to be picked out for dinner. I couldn't even entertain the thought and let as soon as I had spotted it. While I wish I could buy them all, it's just not the way the world works.
Nanchang is a quickly changing city but is still stuck in the past. While the Pavilion of Prince Teng was a beautiful site to see and the Bayi Square's historical precedence of the Nanchang Uprising, there isn't much else there to see. Its is noted that Nanchang it quite big and I was only in one district but even according to Chinese locals, these are the highlights.