I met Lydia at Suzhou Train Station just before eight in the morn because we were going to Nanjing for the day so that we could visit the Nanjing Museum which is one of the biggest and important in China. It takes just over an hour and a half to reach Nanjing from Suzhou on the high speed train, it’s around 215 km.

It was a cold and rainy day and shortly after arriving we got some hot food, spicy potatoes and dumplings to keep us going.

The museum is vast and so we did not get to see everything. Some sections have an English translation but you can always hire an audio translator to help guide you. I think you could easily spend a day in here but I would recommend taking lunch with you because the cafe is not so good. some of the exhibits are exquisite, especially some of the jewelry, but I enjoyed looking at the bronze ware, such as the two models below of the horse and carriage and the ox pulling the cart.

Mind you there were a couple of dodgy exhibits which were just rocks claiming to be tools.

There was one mechanism that sets the ancient Chinese tech at the forefront of design and ingenuity and that is the trigger mechanism for the crossbow which they developed many moons ago.

It’s an amazing piece of mechanical design.