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Nanjing: A Pressure Cooker


	Photo: Ramon Chan

While Wuhan further up the Yangzi River is considered the hottest of the sanlu or “three furnaces” of China, it is Nanjing that has the reputation for boiling over. In the fourteenth century, a peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang led a rebellion that toppled the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279-1368). He established Nanjing (literally “Southern Capital”) as the seat of the Ming dynasty.

In the nineteenth century, the Taiping Rebellion took control over southern China and established their capital in Nanjing. And China and Japan still spar over acknowledgement of Japan’s massacre of over 300,000 residents of the city during World War II. The wounds still feel fresh at the city’s Memorial of the Nanjing Massacre.

Despite its tragic past, Nanjing today is a beautiful and welcoming city. One of the many pleasures it offers is a chance to see its city walls. While modernization and development have demolished the defensive walls of other cities across China, Nanjing’s tall, thick stone walls and gates are still a living part of the city’s history.