Exploring Nanjing’s Fascinating History

The Hopkins-Nanjing Center is fortunate to be located in one of China's most richly historical cities, with important sites in several dynasties and in modern Chinese history. Student Blogger Eric Omorogieva takes us on a tour of his favorite historical spots around Nanjing!

One of the advantages of living and studying in Nanjing is the proximity to a sea of beautiful landmarks, museums, and the unique nature that surrounds the city. The city and its thousands of years of stories, whether inspiring, happy, or tragic, serve as an important marker throughout Chinese history for its status as the capital of several dynasties and the birthplace of China’s first republic. For those eager to explore the roots of a city, like me, your time in Nanjing will be filled with exciting opportunities to discover. Here I will introduce five of Nanjing’s many prominent locations that are worth visiting.

HNC students on a Purple Mountain hike

Purple Mountain (紫金山)

Many current HNC Students are familiar with parts of this historic mountain following the hiking event led by Professor Paul Armstrong-Taylor to usher in the new school year. The Purple Mountain, renamed several times throughout the course of Chinese history, was ultimately coined after the purple clouds that can often be seen around the peak of the mountain. The large area provides many activities and tourist destinations that could be split into several trips. 

When taking a metro ride from the Yunan Road station (located right next to the HNC building) to the Zijinshan Mountain station, a total of 4 stops, only a quick walk ahead reveals the sight and scale of the mountain. If you prefer to take a hike, the path up the mountain will take you through a variety of roads and steps that provide great exercise. From the dirt roads to the seemingly never-ending flight of steps, the fight to the top ends with a well-deserved sight of the city, the opportunity to take pictures, grab refreshments, and get ready to head back down after completing the hardest part.

Eric (middle-left) and friends at Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum

Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum and Ming Xiaoling

Also located on a further area of the Purple Mountain are multiple mausoleums that serve as commemorations to former Chinese leaders. The efforts to link these monuments together make for a very convenient experience for tourists. Transit between them only costs 10 RMB and catching a ride is straightforward using WeChat. 

The first mausoleum is dedicated to Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of modern-day China whose efforts ended the dynastic period and established a republic. To modern China, he is the "Forerunner of the Revolution." This effort to commemorate Sun can be seen throughout the city’s popular shopping areas such as Xinjiekou (新街口), as well as other tourist spots, but nothing reaches the level of this mausoleum, built in the 1920s following the leader‘s death. Reaching this landmark requires a longer trip on the metro, as well as a less stressful walk up a road and to the base of the real climb. Once arriving in the main area of the base, the view up the extremely long flight of steps is marvelous. The walk upwards is long, but the enhancing scope of the main hall makes up for it. At the main hall, visitors can look at the statue and tomb dedicated to the leader, view the nearby garden, and relax. 

Similarly to Dr. Sun’s, the Ming Xiaoling is also dedicated to an important leader in Chinese history. The Hongwu Emperor, who was the founding leader of the Ming Dynasty and ruled for 30 years in the 14th century, is considered one of China’s most significant emperors. The mausoleum began construction while the emperor was still alive in 1381 and continued until 1405 after his death, and its age shows. It’s worth visiting to get a look at the infrastructure that has survived centuries and still maintains its old Ming-era appearance. 

The Presidential Palace (总统府)

In the heart of Nanjing also lies the former government offices and compound of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, the Taiping Rebellion forces, and the Republic of China (ROC). This palace is huge and, in fact, it’s one of China’s largest surviving complexes. Entering past the gate instantaneously takes you back to the feeling of old generations in Chinese history. Visitors can explore a variety of exhibitions covering the history of the palace under various governments, view art related to important moments in the Palace’s history, or take a personal look at gardens, residencies office spaces, and even thrones used by prior leaders. The entire experience is self-paced and provides many opportunities to simply enjoy the surrounding environment.

Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall

The Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall and Exhibit covers a dark period for the city but is filled with a phenomenal learning experience. During the early days of World War II, Japanese forces began encroaching on the then-capital city of China, before launching an attack that not only killed hundreds of thousands of civilians but led to numerous war crimes and the destruction of much of Nanjing. The museum itself aims to not only retell the story but constantly memorialize the victims, thousands of whose remains are buried beneath the museum itself. Everything about the experience is intentional from when you pass security, look at outside statues, and enter to graphics emphasizing the 300,000 lives lost and portraits of the survivors. The exhibit is both in English and Chinese and covers a wide range of history from the buildup of events to the legacy of the massacre. Like many of the landmarks listed, which are only a few of many, this museum is a must-see while you are in Nanjing and has important lessons for understanding not only the city, but modern China.

Written by Eric Omorogieva (Cert+MAIR '25)

Connecting through Hobbies

This semester, with the Hopkins-Nanjing Center fully back in-person for the first time in three years, many interest groups are back to their pre-pandemic activities and many new ones have sprouted, like the Public Speaking Club, Ping Pong Class, the Hogwarts Games, food and milk tea groups, and even the student-run coffee shop in the HNC student lounge. Below are a few highlighted groups.

Public Speaking Club (Toastmasters)

If you've never heard of Toastmasters, I'd encourage anyone to try it out! It's a worldwide organization with more than 10,000 clubs, including 100 in China and 20 in Nanjing. The Toastmasters meeting format includes table topic discussions, two speeches, evaluations, and other activities that provide participants an encouraging environment to practice their public speaking on all topics. In the HNC club, the Chinese students use English while the international use Chinese. We always discuss topics relating to culture, history, and international relations, of course! This group is designed perfectly for the HNC because it helps students improve their public speaking abilities that they can use in and out of the class. Ultimately, Toastmasters' goal is to make leaders, because if you can communicate, you can lead. We hope to embody that spirit through this club.

Mahjong Interest Group

About once or twice a week, students in the mahjong interest group will send a message over WeChat to have an impromptu session. Since readings and class assignments have started stacking up as we get further into the semester, students still have found the chance to play a game or two. Only four people can play in a traditional mahjong game, but many students will come to watch the game as they wait for their own turn, with upwards of ten people surrounding one table as they watch others play. Likewise, mahjong has several different varieties, depending on the location it originated from, each with extremely different styles. Students tend to play several different types of mahjong, with the most prominent being Sichuan-style mahjong. However, if a student wants to play a different style, they just need to know how to teach the other students how to play. Mahjong proves to be a fantastic way to practice language and really get to know other students, including their poker faces. With so many mahjong players and varieties of mahjong amongst the group, the mahjong interest group is likely not to get boring anytime soon!

Prof. Armstrong-Taylor at the
House Sorting Ceremony

Dungeons and Dragons Interest Group

With DND being extremely popular in the US, with even a movie coming out regarding the game this past year, it isn’t unexpected that a DND interest group has found its way to the HNC. Students set up a joint semester-long campaign with sessions meeting weekly. The first few weeks of the semester involved introducing students who had never played before to the world of DND, wherein in the first session they used pre-made characters to experience a sample run-through of the game. The next session involved character-making, where students got to create characters for the campaign that will be starting in a few weeks' time. Some characters created so far consist of Loomesa Nightingale the elf ranger, Elis-Nura the human barbarian, and Norbert “Noodle” McNamara the human rogue, with many more to come before the first campaign session!

Quiz Bowl Interest Group

Quiz Bowl is a popular trivia game played by students ranging all the way from elementary school to university, in which teams of students use buzzers to answer questions regarding various subjects. This semester, student Naeem Chowdhury decided to bring the fun of Quiz Bowl to HNC every week on Thursday at 8pm. However, this version of quiz bowl is slightly different—in that students yell out “buzz” instead of pressing a buzzer, which leaves for some questioning about who called it out first. After answering a “toss-up question,” where everyone from either team can answer the question for up to 15 points, the next question is only given to the team that answered the toss-up question correctly, in which they can earn up to 30 more points. In total, there are 20 toss-up questions, but teams can earn over 500 points in a game if they are experts on all the subjects.

After the first session of Quiz Bowl, many of the international students realized the practice Quiz Bowl questions from the internet often tended to be very Western-centric, so they decided to ask the Chinese students if there were any similar games in China. Turns out, there was! The Quiz Bowl interest groups then decided to try out something new—have one game with Western-centric questions in English and then one game with China-centric questions in Chinese. Just like how the Chinese students struggled to answer the Western-centric Quiz Bowl questions, the international students also struggled to answer the China-centric trivia questions. Altogether, it added to the fun of trivia as students learned new information about the world as well as new vocabulary in both Chinese and English!

Written by Savannah Glaves (MAIS '25) and Sam Trizza (Cert+MAIR '25)

Country Driving: A Road Trip through Ancient China

September 29 through October 6 was this year’s Golden Week in China. Students had off-time from class to work on theses, sightsee in Nanjing, or travel. For Golden Week 2023, Sam Trizza, his roommate Jack 周峰, Brock Mullen, and Sam Parmer took a road trip through nearby provinces, visiting ancient towns and rural areas.  

Before I arrived at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, I was recommended a book by Peter Hessler called Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory. I picked it up at the HNC library and, with my roommate Jack’s overwhelming kindness, we planned a road trip through Jiangsu 江苏, Zhejiang 浙江, and Anhui 安徽––a circle around Taihu Lake––for Golden Week. Here are notes from our journey: 

Day 1: We left Nanjing for the Number #1 Road 一号公路 in Yixing, Jiangsu to have lunch with one of Jack’s students and her family. Besides being an HNC student, Jack is primarily an English teacher helping students focus on their oratory skills. Yoyo (10), Andrew (7), and their parents were generous hosts. We had a large meal with tea and conversation covering Yoyo’s questions about America, why we thought it was important to study at the HNC, and our questions about life in Yixing and the Chinese economy. We finished our visit with a stroll in a countryside park where locals were hanging out with their sugarcane-eating kids. We spent the night near Wuxi 无锡 where one young Chinese boy was fascinated with the American military and asked us if we knew his school friend who visited America last year.  

Day 2: We traveled to Suzhou 苏州, the “Venice of the East”, to see the Pingjiang Road and the Grand Canal, which was dug during the Sui Dynasty (581 - 618 AD). Never did we see more people during Golden Week than at Pingjiang. It was truly a 人山人海 experience. Then we headed for Tongli 同里古镇, a preserved ancient town with more dense waterways than Suzhou. We stayed in the heart of town in a hotel owned by a local family­­––it felt more like we were staying in their house. The hotel had furniture that was over a hundred years old, Mao memorabilia, and 3 courtyards in a long-line fashion that symbolized prosperity in Chinese architecture and home design. 

Day 3: We left Tongli and headed for Moganshan 莫干山. We passed by Hangzhou 杭州 since the 19th Asian Games were in session and we dared not go near the crowds or traffic. The rolling hills that came from the plains of Hangzhou turned into the jagged, bamboo-covered mountains of Zhejiang province 浙江 which surprised us Americans. There were sometimes trees on the mountains, but mostly bamboo, which has bright green leaves at the top, making all of the mountains look that brighter green. Moganshan is home to lots of villas including one for Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek. After a 30-minute twisty-windy bus ride down the mountain, I was pretty motion-sick. One woman actually threw up when we got off the bus. Not a bus ride I’d like to do again.

Pretty tired from an afternoon on the mountain, we drove through Anji 安吉, a small town that surprisingly was home to a massive castle called ‘Hello Kitty World.’ Instead of stopping there, we visited a local night market. It became apparent that many of the little kids there didn’t have much interaction with foreigners. Maybe Hello Kitty World doesn’t have a big western draw. There, we received what was very common on this trip, and sometimes so common even in Nanjing: little kids walking up to us, staring straight up, and sometimes not saying a word. The occasional waiguoren or ni hengao was shared. The folks at the market were very kind. We had some of the best fried dumplings, bought some blueberry wine, chitchatted, and were on our way.  

We made it to a rural hotel, enjoyed the wine outside, and ended up talking with the owner for around two and a half hours. She gave us snacks to enjoy our blueberry wine with and poured us glasses of her homemade Chinese bayberry wine. She had never had Americans at her hotel. We learned about her son in school, her TikTok-famous daughter studying in Hangzhou, and a bit of her family history. She was a fantastic host who shared culture and conversation with us. 

Day 4: We left that morning for Huizhou 徽州 and Hongcun 宏村, two AAAAA (5A) rated tourist sites that boast ancient villages with shops. One thing became very apparent during our trip: China’s history is full of places that were built, destroyed, and rebuilt many times, and places that were important to multiple dynasties. It almost felt useless to keep track of which dynasties did what where. On the car ride into Anhui, Jack explained that all the villages and rural areas we had visited up to that point were some of the richest in China. They were byproducts of being in the Yangtze River Delta 长三角, one of China’s most prosperous economic zones full of companies and industry. But once we entered Anhui, Jack pointed out that even the roads were a little worse.  

Instead of seeing Hongcun that night, we decided to get up early and see it the next day, and instead grab dinner, a massage, and a night’s sleep.

  

Day 5: Hongcun was pretty incredible and transported you instantly. It was established in 1131 by the Southern Song Dynasty. We tried some xian bing 馅饼 from a man who said it was Hongcun’s best. I believe him! We walked around and appreciated the old-style architecture, close-quarter walkways, and good food. Scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were also filmed at Hongcun. After a morning in Hongcun, we started the long drive back to Nanjing.

Overall, the trip was eye-opening to learn about ancient China and the Yangtze River Delta, but most importantly, to have interactions with Chinese people outside of Nanjing. They provided interesting perspectives on issues here and abroad. All along the trip, we had our trusty guide, driver, and friend Jack to help us understand and interpret what we were seeing. On numerous occasions his commentary helped inject more flavor to what we were experiencing and he was able to provide thoughtful perspective and answers to questions we had. 

For those who seek a Chinese road trip adventure, three pieces of advice: read Peter Hessler’s book, make a great friend like Jack, and study at the HNC! 

Written by Sam Trizza, Cert+MAIR 2025