Here's my final blog from the China 2009 eclipse tour the Astronomy magazine editors have conducted, along with Melita Thorpe of MWT Associates. Sunday we travel to Shanghai, board a plane in the afternoon, and fly back to Chicago and then to Milwaukee.
See all the images from Dave's tour in our solar eclipse 2009 trip gallery.
This morning our group of 187, including Senior Editor Rich Talcott and his wife Evelyn, boarded buses in Nanjing and traveled through the city to see a holy place of sorts for Chinese citizens, the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who died in 1926. En route we heard from our local guide about the history of Nanjing (formerly Nanking), a "medium-sized" city of three million residents. The place is infamous for Japan’s invasion in 1937, when the Japanese army overran the area, including the city, burning, pillaging, murdering, and raping in what has become known collectively as the "Rape of Nanking." Altogether, some 300,000 people died in the carnage.
When we arrived at the tomb site, we disembarked and marched up the incredibly long procession of steps and plazas to see the burial place of China's first president. The architecture and presentation was vaguely reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial, in an odd way.
Afterward, we returned to the city and explored at length the Confucius Temple area of Nanjing, exploring the Quing Dynasty style bazaar with almost unlimited shops and stalls. It was an amazing sight to behold.
This afternoon I participated in an astronomical roundtable with the other lecturers aboard the Victoria Prince, who included Talcott, SETI Institute astronomers Frank Drake and Seth Shostak, Astronomical Society of the Pacific Executive Director Jim Manning, and astroimager Dennis Mammana. We responded to many questions about life in the universe and how Astronomy magazine works, as well as this week's impact observed in the cloudtops of Jupiter. It was a most enjoyable session.
This evening we have our farewell dinner and then ready to set sail for the States! This is over and out from the 2009 China Eclipse Trip, and I'll look forward to blogging again from our offices in Waukesha.
Follow Astronomy Senior Editor Michael Bakich at Twitter.com/AstronomyMag (@AstronomyMag) as he continues his tours of China.
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