10 Years Later. This is a very sensitive subject in China, and CNN apparently has been blocked in all Chinese areas. Yu Jinhua invited us to visit the Shanghai suburb of Jia Ding, which we found fascinating. A fairly new suburb built around a very ancient village, it is about half an hour from our hotel and is the destination for the first express way built in China to connect this suburb with the center of Shanghai. About halfway there, we stopped in Nanxiang to walk through the Gu Yi Garden, a pleasant place dating from the Ming Dynasty.
Cranes provide a motif for much of the art work and there are cranes in residence as well.
This pagoda dates from the Southern Song Dynasty, about 1217 A.D., and has only been open to be climbed by the public in the past few weeks. I climbed the narrow but high interior stone steps bracketing wooden ladders between each floor so Jacque could take a picture of me waving from the top level, she having stayed on the ground. After this adventure, we ate lunch, following which we visited the old Jia Ding Confucian Temple which is now the town museum. It was interesting to see that ancient artifacts dating to times well before the Song Dynasty have been excavated in this area. Following this tour, we returned to our hotel to continue packing, after a brief detour to buy something during which we received a good introduction to Chinese justice.