nanyang chaos: a tired blogger's ramblings

so here i am in nanyang, and honestly i'm completely wiped out. this city is... a lot. first things first, let me show you where we are:

yeah, that's the spot. south of the mountains, they say, which explains the name. it's basically this massive prefecture-level city in southwestern henan, bigger than you'd think at 26,509 square kilometers. been walking around these plains and hills all day.

history here is... ancient. like, 2500 years ancient. started as some zhou dynasty fiefdom, conquered by chu, renamed wan, then the qins came in 272 bc and set up shop. but it really hit big during han dynasty days - one of the "five capitals"! can you imagine? they called it the "southern capital". must have been something back then.

if you get bored, xinyang, zhumadian, pingdingshan, luoyang, sanmenxia, shaanxi province, hubei province are just a short drive away. that's a lot of options, but honestly i haven't left the city center yet. too tired.

attractions? yeah, there's some stuff. the nanyang fuya is this ancient government office with 700 years of history - only preserved county-level one in china, they claim. then there's wuhua mountain, zhang zhongjing's old place, daxiangguo temple... and jade. oh god, the jade. it's everywhere. they have this international jade city and jade street - apparently nanyang is the jade capital of the world. bought a cheap bracelet. probably plastic.

i just checked and it's...12.09 degrees there right now, hope you like that kind of thing. feels like 10.92. not terrible, but i'm freezing in this light jacket. should have brought more layers.

someone told me that zhang heng - the guy who invented the seismograph - is buried here. and zhang zhongjing, the "sage of medicine". and zhuge liang! the strategist dude. emperor liu xiu too. this city is basically famous-person central.

population's huge - like 11.98 million people. no wonder i'm always bumping into people. they've got all these cultural relics, but honestly i'm too tired to count them. 13 state-protected ones, 94 provincial... whatever.

transportation's... okay. buses, taxis, trains, even an airport. they got high-speed trains in 2018, which is nice. but tourism-wise, it's not exactly packed with foreigners. english services might be tricky.

here's some random pics of buildings i took:

so yeah, nanyang. it's... here. hope you're having a better time than me. going to bed now.

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