At half past five in the morning, the Spirit Way of the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum was still shrouded in the morning mist. The flagstones of Stone Elephant Road glistened with dew; six hundred years ago, Zhu Yuanzhang’s coffin was carried along this very path to its final resting place. The stillness of the moment is almost surreal—there is no clamour from tourists, only the wind whistling through the gaps between the stone guardian beasts, emitting a low, mournful wail. Reaching out to touch the ear of one of the stone elephants, it feels cold and rough, with moss six hundred years old embedded in its grooves. A World Heritage Site, it turns out, is time that can be measured by the palm of one’s hand.
A twenty-minute walk from the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, the blue glazed tiles of Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum awaken in the morning light. Three hundred and ninety-two steps: with every step ascended, the view behind me grows a little wider. By the time I reached the summit, I was breathless, but the moment I turned round—the entire city of Nanjing lay spread out beneath my feet, with the Zifeng Tower standing like a silver needle, stitching modern Nanjing onto the ancient earth. On the stone balustrade in front of the Memorial Hall, visitors took turns having their photographs taken beneath the plaque inscribed with the words ‘The World Belongs to All’. A white-haired elderly man stood alone in a corner and bowed deeply three times before the seated statue of Dr Sun Yat-sen. As he left, tears glistened in the corners of his eyes, yet he disturbed no one. Some forms of reverence require no words.
At midday, I sat down at a small eatery beside the Mucuyuan Metro Station. A bowl of duck’s blood and vermicelli soup was served: the duck intestines were crisp, the duck’s blood tender, and the vermicelli unfurled in the amber-coloured broth. The man sitting next to me, a local elderly gentleman, was drinking beer whilst tucking into a plate of salted duck. He remarked to the out-of-towner travelling with him, ‘We Nanjingers eat eighty thousand ducks a day.’ After saying this, he added, ‘I didn’t make that figure up; it was in the papers.’ As I bit into a soup dumpling, the scalding broth splashed onto the tip of my tongue—so savoury it made me want to sigh. It turns out that a city’s character can indeed be chewed and swallowed.
At two o’clock in the afternoon, the crowds at the Nanjing Museum were somewhat dizzying. But at the corner of the Republic of China Hall, I suddenly found myself transported to another time and place. The bells of old-fashioned trams jingled; mannequins in the cheongsam shop wore moon-white soft satin; and the shop windows of Yong’an Department Store displayed vintage gramophones. A girl in Hanfu sat on a wooden bench at the railway station, taking a selfie whilst holding a sugar-coated hawthorn skewer, only for an elderly gentleman in a Zhongshan suit to wander into the frame. Neither looks at the other, yet within a single frame, a dialogue between two eras is complete. In an old teahouse, I order a pot of Yuhua tea, whilst on stage a Pingtan performer plucks the pipa, singing ‘Scenes of the Qinhuai’. The tea is emerald green, reflecting the play of light and shadow through the carved window panes; for a moment, I lose track of time.
As dusk falls, I walk through Xuanwu Gate to Xuanwu Lake. The lights of Zifeng Tower come on one by one, resembling a glowing bamboo stalk. The cherry blossoms around the island have long since faded, but the lotus leaves of a summer night cover the lake’s surface, billowing into green waves in the evening breeze. Strolling slowly along the lake embankment, to my left stands the six-hundred-year-old Ming Dynasty city wall, whilst to my right lie the neon lights of Xinjiekou. Every brick on the city wall is engraved with the name of its craftsman, whilst runners wearing headphones dart past at the foot of the wall, followed by elderly people fanning themselves with bamboo fans. The lake reflects all this; ripples spread out, blending the ancient and the modern, only to set them apart once more.
In a small pavilion by the lake, a man is carving bamboo. The craftsman, wearing reading glasses, guides the tip of his knife across the bamboo bark; a thin layer of green skin is scraped away, revealing the jade-coloured grain beneath. ‘This is a shallow carving that leaves the green intact,’ he says without looking up. ‘The bamboo must be harvested after the Frost’s Descent festival, and when carving, one must be as precise as when writing—not a single stroke can be wrong.’ I crouched beside him for half an hour, watching him carve a single bamboo leaf, before finally asking in a soft voice, ‘How long does it take to carve this one leaf?’ ‘From selecting the bamboo to completion, it takes about three days. But the actual carving takes no more than the blink of an eye.’
On the way back to the hotel, I flicked through the photos on my mobile: the ears of the stone elephant, the steps of Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum, the white porcelain bowl of duck’s blood vermicelli, the vintage telephone at the Republic of China Museum, the ripples on Xuanwu Lake, and the bamboo carver’s fingers. Pieced together, these images reveal the full secret of Xuanwu District—it does not rush to thrust history upon you, but allows the past to grow naturally, like the grain of bamboo, within the breath of every day.
The stone elephants at the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum still stand in their original places; new footsteps tread the steps of Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum every day; and within the display cases of the Nanjing Museum, the pupils of the golden beasts forever reflect the light. As for the traveller, they are but another passer-by—like that sliver of green bamboo shavings from the bamboo-carving master’s blade, gently falling upon the surface of Xuanwu Lake, creating a circle of ripples before vanishing.
Yet once the ripples have faded, the water remains water. Nanjing remains Nanjing. This, perhaps, is the very essence of a great city—it cannot be carried away, yet it dwells forever in one’s memory, like a shallow engraving in green ink: faint, yet indelible.