Day 3
Meadow was bitten by an evil-looking centipede in the night, which much have been rather traumatic but didn’t seem to cause any harm worse than a wasp sting. The hotel owner was very apologetic (even though it was probably us who brought it in from the forest) and drove her and Zuzka to the hospital to get it checked out - they said it was fine. It was a relatively short coach ride to the “opening ceremony” which was happening on Day 3 of the trip, and is actually the first of three opening ceremonies, one in each place we are staying. There were TV cameras and journalists there. Various important Chinese officials gave short speeches, and then there was a short sprint race aounrd the park, about 2k. It started with a few longer, easy legs, followed by loads of very short legs crossing over each other in the middle of the park. One of the most difficult things was actually finding the next control circle on the map! We then had a bit of time sitting in the sun before we went back to the hotel for lunch, and to load luggage into the bus. In the afternoon we went to a museum. Some highlights were a saucy sand pit where you could dig for bones, and a juicy 360 degree film with tilting chairs which made it feel quite realistic. It was then about an hour to drive to Zhenjiang, north-east from Nanjing, where we’d stay for the next two nights. This hotel was very tall, with our meals being on the top floor (floor 29) in a revolving restaurant. We had some spare time in the evening, so ACI went shopping in an underground shopping street in search of fakes of well known brands.
Here’s some information we were given about the city:
Welcome to the beautiful city of Zhenjiang, a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu Province. It is located in the south of Jiansu Province, on the south bank of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and in the western section of the Yangtze River Delta. It was called “Runzhou” in ancient times and was the capital of Jiangsu Province in the Republic of China. Zhenjiang is a core city of the Nanjing metropolitan area and an important part of the national level Southern Jiangsu Modernization Demonstartion Zone and the Jiansu Yangtze River Economic Belt. There are also famous universities such as Jiangsu University and Jiangsu University of Science and Technology.
Known as the “first mountain in the world”, Zhenjiang sits where the Yangtze River and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal meet. The Zhenjiang section of the Grand Canal of China was included into the World Heritage List. Zhenjiang Port is the third largest shipping center in the Yangtze River Basin. Besides, Zhenjiang is a famous town of fish and rice in the south of the Yangtze River and there are two 5A0level scienic areas of Sanshan and Maoshan, as well as many scenic spots and historical sites such as Xijin Ferry and Nanshan. In November 2016, Zhenjiang was included into the second batch of National Tourism Demonstration Zones by the National Tourism Administration.
The 2017 International Low Carbon Conference (Zhenjiang) was successfully held in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province from September 26-28, 2017. And in November 2017, it was allowed to retain the honorary title of National Civilized City after scrutiny. Besides, in December 2017, it was selected as the National Intellectual Property City and ranked 18th according to the 2017 China’s City Comprehensive Well-off index. In Semptember 2018, it won the “2018 Central European Green Smart City Award”.