This is what I wrote:
19th – Nanjing -> Wuxi – early morning tai chi after breakfast. Mausoleum of Dr Sun Yat-sen…
I recall being quite taken with the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. Good exercise climbing all those steps too. So much so, Janie and I both wanted photographic evidence that we made the climb:
…then on to museum (real) and art gallery (shop).
I was starting to get a little vexed by the fact that so many items on our itinerary sounded like sites of touring interest but actually were shopping visits. Some people in our group seemed far more interested in shopping than in actually seeing China, so not only were those shopping legs dull, they also tended to be protracted.
I especially remember one woman, Heather, who was a shopaholic and was almost always last back on the coach after a shopping stop. She bought a huge consignment of tacky-looking laughing Buddhas to take home as gifts, so I honoured her with:
The Dali Lama Award for laughing Buddhas.
To be fair, though, Janie actually really liked that “art gallery” stop as there were some interesting artists with their own art works on show. She bought this small work there, which still has pride of place in the bedroom.
Late lunch in Nanjing, followed by Yangtse River Bridge & then on to railway station for train (shop) to Wuxi.
The number of vendors and the extent of goods – or to be more specific, gimcrack – tendered to the captive audience that was the rail passenger community – had to be seen to be believed.
…Straight to hotel for dinner followed by karaoke.
I remember the visit to a karaoke bar in Wuxi well. Chris, one of our tour guides, arranged the evening and only a few of us (mostly the younger folks from the tour) went. The locals clearly took their karaoke very seriously and mostly sang ballads and love songs – some Chinese pop, some western pop in extraordinary accents.
In keeping with the musical style that seemed popular there, I decided to deliver The Ultimate Love Song, which is one of my early parodies which works to the tune of Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You:
The Ultimate Love Song, Whoops Vicar, NewsRevue, Ben Murphy…, 29 February 1992
The subtlety of the piece was probably wasted on most of the audience, but karaoke is surely more about the karaoker than the karaokees.
Janie and I both remember our little group having quite a lot to drink. I recall Janie doing a duet with Chris the guide, but neither of us can remember exactly which song they sang. I think it was something along the lines of “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”, sung melodramatically and very badly indeed.
For sure we had lots of fun that evening.
All the photos we took on that day – by which I mean all 29 photos – can be seen in raw form in the Flickr album below:
