A new view of Nanjing - the amazing city

By Edmund Smith-Asante, NANJING

Some journalists have fun on the Nanjing wall

We grudgingly got out of the bus because we felt so tired and thought we were heading straight for our hotel to rest after long hours climbing the Nanjing city wall and visiting other historical sites.

In our exhaustion we had all forgotten that we had not finished our itinerary for the day and that we still had to visit the Nanjing Planning Exhibition Hall.

Our group of African journalists, in China at the invitation of the China Africa Press Centre and the China Public Diplomacy Association, were not so enthused when we were shown around the hall, whose exhibits were similar to those we had already seen on the tour.

These were ancient relics, pictures of some past emperors and prototypes of some human settlements as they existed many years ago.

But it was in another big hall, with the setting of a theater or film auditorium, that the journalists lit up.

We found ourselves walking on glass, and beneath us, as well as in the open space ahead of us, we saw a model of the whole city of Nanjing, masterfully crafted, with high-rise buildings, roads and other infrastructure, as if they were real.

"Wow," everybody kept saying as we gingerly trooped into the hall, marvelling at the beautiful work and the effort put into every detail. We saw mountains, rivers and anything you can imagine that exists in real life.

Then we saw one of the officials of the city, who had accompanied us, signaling to someone. We didn't know what for until the lights went out in the hall and we were shown a 15-to 20-minute video about the city, showing what it had achieved and its future plans.

However, if we were excited about what we were seeing, we were oblivious to the pleasant shock that awaited us.

Just as the video started, the model of the city came alive, with street lights and lights in the buildings. Amazing.

What a spectacle that was. Nanjing is truly a very well-planned city, down to the very finest detail.

Then the comparisons began.

"Can we have this back in our own countries?" we kept asking ourselves, while we lamented the haphazard developments back home and how we sometimes lacked foresight in the planning of our cities.

Nanjing was formerly called Nanking, which means capital of the south. It is one of the oldest cities in China, with a 2,500-year history and a population of 8.3 million, separated into the northern and southern parts by the Yangtze River.

The former capital of China, considered a medium-sized city, it is currently the capital of Jiangsu province.

The city, which covers 6,592 square kilometers, boasts petrochemical, automobile, chemical, electronic, ICT and pharmaceutical industries, and previously produced Fiat vehicles with the Italian motor giant.

Currently it has a partnership with British company MG to produce cars.

Earlier, the group of journalists visited the Nanjing city wall, which was built more than 600 years ago by Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, who started the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The wall has a height of 21 meters.

Although the construction methods are still a mystery, legend has it that the wall was built by over 1 million people with bricks and stones, using special adhesive made from tung oil, glutinous rice juice and lime powder.

The brick manufacturers had to put their addresses on the blocks to serve as a means of accountability to ensure that only good-quality bricks were made for the wall. Anyone who did a shoddy job was punished.

The wall had four parts and included the capital wall, interior and outer walls, but only the capital wall has been preserved.

According to the tour guide, the original length of the capital city wall was 35.267 km but is now 25.091 km after parts were destroyed in battles over the years.

Of the wall's 13 gates that existed in historical times to facilitate easy movements and trade, only four remain today.

The journalists explored the city wall from two of the remaining gates - the southern or Zhonghua City Gate, the largest in China currently, and the South East Gate of the Ming City Wall.

This was first published by the China Daily/European Weekly on July 21, 2017