Nanjing, China

Nanjing sits in eastern China, in Jiangsu Province, roughly 300 kilometers west of Shanghai along the Yangtze River. It is one of the few cities in the world where the weight of history is so tangible it changes the mood of a place. Former capital of multiple Chinese dynasties, site of one of the twentieth century’s most devastating atrocities, and a city that has rebuilt itself into a thriving modern metropolis — Nanjing holds all of this simultaneously, without apology. Visitors who expect another gleaming Chinese boomtown tend to leave surprised. This is a city of plane trees and ancient walls, of excellent duck dishes and profound memorial halls, of university students cycling past Ming Dynasty gates. It rewards slow travel and genuine curiosity.

A City That Carries History Like Weight

Nanjing’s Chinese name means “Southern Capital,” and the city has worn that title — and lost it — more than once. It served as the capital under the early Ming Dynasty, the Republic of China, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, among others. Each era left architecture, ruins, or scars on the landscape. Unlike Beijing, which often presents its past with grand ceremonial polish, Nanjing’s history feels more intimate and, at times, more sorrowful.

The 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which Japanese forces killed an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers over six weeks, remains central to the city’s identity. You feel it in the quiet around the Memorial Hall, in the way locals discuss the city’s past, and in the particular kind of civic seriousness that runs beneath the surface of everyday life here. This is not a city that performs its trauma for tourists — but it doesn’t hide it either.

At the same time, Nanjing is genuinely lively. Nanjing University and several other major institutions keep the city young and intellectually engaged. The dining scene is confident and local. Parks fill up on weekends with families, elderly couples doing morning tai chi, and teenagers taking selfies in front of ancient stone carvings. The emotional range of a visit here is wider than almost anywhere else in China.

The Old Capital’s Greatest Sites

The most immediately impressive physical legacy of Nanjing’s imperial past is its city wall. Built during the early Ming Dynasty in the fourteenth century, the Nanjing City Wall is the longest surviving ancient city wall in the world, stretching approximately 35 kilometers. Large sections remain intact, and you can walk or cycle along the top of significant stretches, looking out over a city that has grown enormously beyond the original boundaries. The Zhonghua Gate in the south is the best-preserved section and one of the most elaborate surviving gate fortresses in China, with a honeycomb of tunnels, arched vaults, and defensive features that reveal just how seriously the Ming took the concept of military architecture.

The Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum on the slopes of Purple Mountain is the tomb of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty. The approach to the tomb through the Sacred Way — a tree-lined avenue flanked by stone animals and officials in pairs — is one of the most atmospheric walks in all of China. The stone figures have a roughness and solidity that makes them feel more powerful than more refined examples elsewhere. UNESCO has recognized this site as part of its Ming Tombs World Heritage listing.

The Confucius Temple complex, known as Fuzimiao, sits along the Qinhuai River in the south of the city and functions as both a historic site and a bustling commercial district. The temple itself has been rebuilt many times but retains genuine ceremonial architecture. The surrounding streets are lined with traditional-style buildings selling souvenirs, snacks, and local crafts. It is touristy in the way that most great temple districts inevitably become, but worth seeing — especially in the evening when lanterns light up the river and the reflection turns the water red and gold.

Purple Mountain: Where Emperors Rest and Locals Hike

Zijin Shan, or Purple Mountain, rises on the eastern edge of the city and acts as Nanjing’s primary green escape. The mountain holds within it a remarkable concentration of historical sites spread across forested slopes and hiking trails. Most visitors take the cable car to the summit for views across the city and Xuanwu Lake below, but the real pleasure of Purple Mountain is moving through it slowly on foot.

Beyond the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, the mountain also contains the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, dedicated to the founder of the Republic of China. The approach is one of the most dramatic in China: a long granite staircase of 392 steps climbs through cypress trees to the domed blue-tiled memorial hall at the top. Sun Yat-sen is a figure respected across both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and the site draws Chinese visitors with something close to reverence.

The Linggu Temple area nearby is quieter and particularly lovely. The Beamless Hall, a fourteenth-century brick structure built entirely without wooden beams — an engineering achievement of its time — stands inside the grounds. A pagoda in the complex offers additional views over the treetops. In autumn, the maples on Purple Mountain turn vivid shades of orange and red, making it one of the best places in eastern China for fall foliage.

Local families use the mountain’s lower trails for morning exercise. You’ll pass elderly men practicing sword forms, groups doing synchronized fan dancing, and children chasing each other through stone archways. It is as much a living public park as it is a historical monument, and that dual nature makes it endearing rather than solemn.

Nanjing’s Neighbourhoods Worth Exploring on Foot

The area around Laomennong in the central city has been carefully restored and offers a sense of what Nanjing’s older residential lanes once looked like. Narrow alleyways wind between grey-brick courtyard houses, with bougainvillea spilling over walls and small cafés tucked into what were once storerooms. It is slightly curated but not aggressively commercial, and the balance between preservation and livability has been handled better here than in many similar restoration projects across China.

The Gulou District — named for the Drum Tower that rises at its heart — is the intellectual and cultural center of the city. Nanjing University is nearby, and the streets around it are dense with independent bookshops, coffee houses, and restaurants that serve a more local than tourist clientele. The Drum Tower itself, a Ming Dynasty structure, is worth climbing for its view of the city spreading out below. In the evening, the plaza around it becomes a gathering point for street performers and casual socializing.

Along the Qinhuai River, the district stretching from the Confucius Temple toward Zhonghua Gate feels distinctly different from the rest of the city — narrower, more water-focused, and historically associated with the pleasure quarters that once made this the most famous entertainment district in southern China. A boat ride along the Qinhuai after dark, with lantern-lit bridges reflected in the slow current, is one of those travel experiences that is difficult to describe but very easy to remember.

Xinjiekou is the commercial downtown, a dense cluster of department stores, malls, and busy intersections. It’s not particularly charming, but it is useful and tells you something about how Nanjing functions day to day. The contrast between Xinjiekou and the quieter historical districts a few kilometers away is part of understanding how layered this city is.

What to Eat in Nanjing

Nanjing has a strong and distinctive food culture, and locals are proud of it — sometimes defensively so when compared to the more famous cuisines of neighboring cities. The city’s culinary identity is built around freshwater ingredients, duck, and a slightly softer, sweeter flavor profile than you find in Shanghainese or Cantonese cooking.

Salted duck (盐水鸭, yánshuǐ yā) is the defining dish of the city. Unlike Peking duck, which is roasted, Nanjing’s duck is brined and poached, resulting in tender, subtly flavored meat with a pale skin. You’ll find it in almost every restaurant and at street stalls throughout the city, sold by the half or quarter. Locals buy it to take home; visitors eat it standing on the pavement. Either approach is correct.

Duck blood vermicelli soup (鸭血粉丝汤, yāxiě fěnsī tāng) is another Nanjing staple — a rich, dark broth with silky rice noodles, cubes of coagulated duck blood, duck giblets, and tofu puffs. It sounds confronting and tastes extraordinary. Small bowls cost next to nothing in local restaurants around the Fuzimiao area and the university neighborhoods.

For breakfast, look for tangbao, the small soup dumplings that are Nanjing’s answer to Shanghai’s xiaolongbao. The local version tends to have a slightly thicker skin and a more robust pork broth inside. The scallion pancakes sold by street vendors in the morning are excellent, particularly around Gulou.

The night market outside the Confucius Temple area runs until late and offers a good sampling of local snacks including osmanthus cake (a fragrant sweet made with the flower that blooms across Nanjing in autumn), various lotus root preparations, and fried stinky tofu for the adventurous. For a sit-down meal, the restaurants along Hunan Road in the Gulou area serve solid Nanjing cooking without the tourist markup that affects some of the Fuzimiao venues.

Nanjing’s Museums and Memorials

The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders is one of the most important and sobering museums in China. The architecture alone — stark grey concrete angles, a vast outdoor plaza, a skeletal sculpture of entwined figures — creates a psychological effect before you enter. Inside, the permanent exhibition documents the 1937 massacre through photographs, survivor testimonies, artifacts, and forensic evidence in a way that is thorough and deliberately unflinching. An outdoor section includes an excavated bone pit, where remains of victims were found, preserved and visible behind glass. This is not easy to visit, and it should not be easy. Allow at least two hours and plan for emotional weight afterward.

The Nanjing Museum (南京博物院) near the entrance to Purple Mountain is one of the finest regional museums in China and significantly undervisited by foreign tourists who tend to prioritize the Shanghai or Beijing equivalents. Its collection spans over a million objects covering six thousand years of Chinese history, with particular strength in the jade, silk, and porcelain collections. The museum complex includes a reconstructed Republican-era street that functions as a kind of living exhibit — small shops, a cinema playing old films, a teahouse — and gives a sense of early twentieth-century Nanjing that is genuinely engaging rather than gimmicky.

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom History Museum, housed in a garden that was once the official residence of a Taiping king, covers one of the most unusual and violent episodes in Chinese history — the mid-nineteenth century millenarian rebellion that established a breakaway state with Nanjing as its capital and reshaped southern China for over a decade. The museum is small, the English signage limited, but the garden setting and the peculiarity of the history make it worthwhile.

Getting Around Nanjing

Nanjing’s metro system is efficient, well-signed in both Chinese and English, and extensive enough to reach virtually every major sight. Line 2 connects the main railway station to Purple Mountain, Xinjiekou, and the Confucius Temple area. A single journey costs between 2 and 6 yuan depending on distance (roughly $0.30–$0.85 USD). You can use a rechargeable metro card or pay with Alipay or WeChat Pay — the latter two are essentially mandatory for cashless transactions throughout China, and setting one up before arrival via an international card is strongly recommended.

Bicycles are an excellent way to move through the older neighborhoods and along the city wall. Nanjing has a public bike-share system (Hello Bike and Meituan Bike are the main operators) with docking stations throughout the city. Unlocking a bike via the app costs around 1–2 yuan per 30 minutes ($0.15–$0.30 USD). The terrain is largely flat, which makes cycling practical even for casual riders.

Taxis are metered and reasonably affordable. A cross-city ride rarely exceeds 40–50 yuan ($6–7 USD). DiDi, China’s dominant ride-hailing app, works in Nanjing and can be more practical than flagging a taxi if you don’t speak Mandarin, since the app handles destination input via map rather than verbal communication. DiDi now has an international version that accepts foreign credit cards, which simplifies things considerably.

Nanjing South Railway Station is one of the busiest high-speed rail hubs in eastern China. High-speed trains to Shanghai take about one hour and 15 minutes, to Beijing around three and a half hours, and to Hangzhou around two hours. The station itself is enormous — allow at least 30 minutes to navigate it before your train.

Day Trips from Nanjing

Yangzhou, about 90 minutes by train or bus from Nanjing, is often called China’s garden city. It was once one of the wealthiest cities in the country, positioned at the junction of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal, and its historic wealth funded gardens, temples, and cuisine that locals will tell you — with considerable justification — is some of the best in China. The Slender West Lake park is the main attraction, a long meandering lake with pavilions, moon gates, and lotus-covered sections that epitomize the classical Jiangnan aesthetic. Yangzhou is easy to do as a day trip and rarely crowded with international tourists.

Suzhou is about 90 minutes from Nanjing by high-speed rail. The classical gardens there — Humble Administrator’s Garden, Lingering Garden, Master of Nets Garden — are UNESCO-listed and genuinely extraordinary examples of landscape design. Suzhou is more heavily visited than Yangzhou and the tourist infrastructure around the gardens is relentless, but the gardens themselves justify the trip. Going on a weekday morning minimizes the crowds somewhat.

Zhouzhuang, one of China’s most photographed water towns, is accessible from Nanjing via Suzhou, adding perhaps an hour to the journey. The canal-laced town is often dismissed as overly commercial, and in peak season it is extremely crowded. But arriving early in the morning, before the tour buses, gives a different experience — stone bridges reflecting in still water, breakfast being cooked in open-fronted kitchens, local life briefly visible before the day’s visitors arrive. The twin stone bridges at the center of town are genuinely beautiful.

Closer to Nanjing, the town of Lishui and the wetlands of Shijiu Lake offer a quieter nature-focused day out, popular with Nanjing residents escaping the city on weekends. The lake area is known for crab and freshwater fish, and eating by the waterside is the main activity.

Practical Tips for Visiting Nanjing

When to go: Spring (April–May) and autumn (October–November) are the best times to visit. Nanjing is notoriously one of China’s “three furnaces” — cities famous for extreme summer heat — and July and August can see temperatures above 38°C (100°F) with high humidity. Winter is cold and grey but functional. The osmanthus blossom season in early October transforms the city, filling entire neighborhoods with fragrance and drawing domestic tourists in large numbers.

Language: Mandarin is the language of Nanjing, and English is spoken in hotels, major museums, and the metro system, but not widely elsewhere. Having a translation app (Google Translate works with a VPN; Baidu Translate works without) is essential. Downloading an offline Chinese dictionary before arrival is wise.

Internet access: China’s internet firewall blocks Google, most social media platforms, WhatsApp, and many news sites. A VPN installed and tested before entering China is necessary if you rely on these services. VPNs are technically a legal grey area in China; practically speaking, tourists use them routinely without issue.

Money: China is rapidly becoming cashless. While carrying some yuan (RMB) is advisable for emergencies and markets, most daily transactions — restaurants, transport, shops — are handled via Alipay or WeChat Pay. Both apps can now link international Visa and Mastercard accounts. Setting this up before arrival or at your first opportunity is the single most useful practical step you can take. ATMs that accept international cards are available at major banks and airports.

Accommodation: Nanjing has a full range of international hotels concentrated around Xinjiekou and near the railway stations, with rates for a solid mid-range hotel running approximately $60–$120 USD per night. Boutique hotels in the older neighborhoods — particularly around Laomennong and near the Drum Tower — offer a more atmospheric stay and are often priced similarly or lower. Budget options including hostels cluster near Nanjing University and in the Fuzimiao area.

Visas: Most nationalities require a visa to enter China. China has expanded its visa-free transit policy significantly in recent years — allowing citizens of many countries to transit without a visa for up to 144 hours — but verify current entry requirements well in advance of travel, as the rules have been changing frequently. For a dedicated trip to Nanjing, a standard Chinese tourist visa (L visa) is the typical route.

Nanjing does not make itself easy to categorize. It is too historically complex for simple admiration, too alive for simple reverence, and too honest for the polished tourism narrative that many Chinese cities now project. That resistance to easy framing is precisely what makes it one of the most genuinely interesting cities in the country.

📷 Featured image by Dendy on Unsplash.