Pour a little salt...

The third part of the conference proceedings involved two nights in the nearby city of Wuxi, which I had visited only several days prior on holiday. Staying at the rather impressive Juna Hubin Hotel, a morning was spent at an industrial park, specifically for electric scooters and bikes of various makes and models, which are widespread throughout the major cities. I was particularly impressed by one which had the capacity for self-driving! I can imagine a future where we'll simply zip around in a self-driving easychair with a coffee and book whilst our vehicle takes us to our destination. After that was a visit to a precision textiles company, which, whilst being the manufacturing centre for some major name brands, didn't quite interest me at the same level. In the afternoon, we finished our conference with a very enjoyable visit to Wuxi's Huishan Old Town and gardens.

With a car deciding to merge into our bus the previous day (our bus was scratched, the car lost three panels), it made narrative sense that, following a return to Nanjing, that the airline company cancelled my flight from to Guangzhou, and then couldn't find my initial booking when arranging a replacement. When I was finally booked on a late-night plane, we found ourselves stuck on the tarmac due to inclement weather. Never mind, everything sorted itself out and I finally made it in their air with a three-hour layover at Guangzhou airport in the middle of the night, before taking the nine-hour flight back to Melbourne town.

I took this window of opportunity to finish the final written requirements for the second course in my doctoral studies (I still find doctoral coursework strange at best). This was a major project on a public debate in New Zealand between two opposing views in climate science, with my former professor and IPCC lead author, James Renwick, debating a soil scientist and AGW "sceptic", Doug Edmeades. Whilst trying to be as charitable as possible, Edmeades engages in extremely sloppy cherry-picking of data and shows a profound lack of understanding of even the basics of climate physics. It is so bad that I am tempted to suggest that he is engaging in malice rather than ignorance, as it seems perplexing that one could complete a scientific doctorate whilst being at odds with scientific methodology. I think I will be writing to him to find out why.

I have again taken the silver bird to China, this time to Nanjing in an official capacity, namely, for the Jiangsu People-to-People Conference and 70th Anniversary Commemoration of the JSPAFFC (Jiangsu Provincial People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries). Nanjing, all from my limited experience, is quite a different city from others I have visited in China. Famous for its scholarship, universities, and students, the tree-lined streets have a more gentle (but still vibrant) pace than other cities, and in many ways, it reminds me of inner-city Melbourne. Arriving a day earlier than other conference attendees at the slightly famous Jingling Hotel, I decided to visit the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, because I'm such a cherry bundle of joy, right? This event, which has haunted me for many decades since I first learned about the event, refers to the brutal Japanese fascist invasion in 1937 of what was then China's capital city. After the city fell, the invaders brutally killed more than 300,000 people (roughly a third of the population of the city at the time) in the next forty days in what has not-euphemistically been called "The Rape of Nanjing". If you can imagine the worst possible atrocities that humans are capable of carrying out, turn it up even higher on the dial, then maybe then you have the Nanjing Massacre.

The Memorial Hall is a vast complex dedicated to preserving the memory of these events and is perfectly organised, starting from the social and political environment prior to the invasion, the collapse of the seriously out-gunned defending Chinese army against the invasion, the occupation itself, the few foreigners who tried to protect civilians and record events, the international court cases following the war, and, interestingly, concluding exhibits on the importance of the memorial and the desire of peace with forgiveness. With written, photographic, and video records from the events, interviews of survivors, and even a hall of a mass grave unearthed in situ, the hundreds of other attendees made their way through with great quietude - I noticed four others of European background present at the time. If you ever find yourself in Nanjing, put aside a few hours at least to visit this "must-see" memorial and give homage to the victims.

It was a curious juxtaposition from horror to beauty that immediately afterwards I would visit the nearby Cloud Brocade Museum, dedicated to the silk weaving and Yun brocade style. It had some very charming pieces, and quite a good story to tell about the development of the craft, along with many quite superb examples and contemporary pieces for sale. Despite the size of the building, the entire museum can be easily completed within an hour, and I get the sense that the exhibition is still in development. Continuing a more aesthetic bent, that evening I ventured to the Confucian temple area of Fuzi Miao. This is pretty much what it says on the tin: a bustling area of vendors, restaurants, and, of course, temples, all beautiful in architecture, historical in content, and located alongside a river and surrounded by parkland. Of course, as is befitting such a place, it is a very popular haunt for numerous young women engaging in historical cosplay.