Nanjing: A Guide to China's Former Capital on the Yangtze

Overview

Nanjing has been a capital more times than almost any city in China, and not gently: seat of the Six Dynasties, founding capital of the Ming before Zhu Yuanzhang’s heirs moved the court to Beijing, briefly capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and capital of the Republic of China. That layered political weight is why the city has an outsized Ming wall, an imperial mausoleum on a mountain, and a Nationalist-era Presidential Palace — and why it also holds one of modern China’s darkest sites, the memorial to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, a place most visitors will want to see and none will call pleasant — entry is free, booking ahead is the norm, and it closes on Mondays, which is worth planning a short visit around. Nanjing today is a large, workaday provincial capital with a huge student population rather than a museum piece: the wall and the mausoleums sit inside and around a normal, busy Chinese metropolis, not a preserved old town. The river and the mountain still shape the map — the Yangtze runs along the west side of the city, Purple Mountain rises to the east — and long stretches of the Ming wall, among the longest surviving of any Chinese city, still trace where the old capital ended.

Where to stay

Xinjiekou

The closest thing Nanjing has to one downtown: a dense knot of malls, office towers and metro interchanges at the geographic centre of the old walled city. Stay here if convenience is the priority — everything connects through it, and taxis and trains are easiest to reach from here. The trade-off is character: at street level Xinjiekou could be the centre of several dozen Chinese cities, and it’s the most expensive base in town for what is, mostly, shopping-mall scenery.

Fuzimiao and the Qinhuai riverfront

The old town’s tourist heart, built around the Confucius Temple and the Qinhuai River, with lantern-lit boat rides, food stalls and crowds well into the evening. Stay here for atmosphere after dark and easy walking to the temple and the restored lane of Laomendong. The honest trade-off: most of what you’re seeing was rebuilt after war damage rather than original fabric, it’s the most crowded corner of the city with domestic tour groups, and the riverside strip is genuinely loud until late.

Gulou and the university district

North of the centre, around the Drum Tower and Nanjing University, with Xuanwu Lake a short walk away. This is the calmer, leafier side of town — cheap noodle shops, a student crowd, and easy access to the Ming Palace ruins and the road up toward Purple Mountain. Stay here if you want quiet evenings and don’t mind plainer hotels. The trade-off is distance from the old south-of-the-wall snack streets, which is a proper metro ride rather than a walk.

Near Nanjing South railway station

Practical rather than charming: this is the district to base yourself in if you’re using Nanjing mainly as a high-speed-rail stop between Shanghai and other cities, or arriving or leaving late. It’s new, well connected by metro, and largely soulless after office hours — convention-centre architecture with little street life once the shops close — though the ride to the centre is shorter than the district’s remoteness suggests, about twenty minutes direct on Line 1 to Xinjiekou.

When to go

Spring (April–May) and autumn (September–November) are when to come: mild, and in October the osmanthus trees flower city-wide, which is also when the local osmanthus-season duck, guìhuā yā, is at its best. Summer is genuinely hard work — Nanjing sits on the Yangtze and is traditionally counted, along with Wuhan and Chongqing, among the region’s “furnace cities” for its hot, humid July and August. Winter is cold and damp rather than snowbound, and worth knowing about before you book: Nanjing sits just south of the line China historically used to decide which cities get municipal central heating, so many older buildings rely on space heaters or air conditioning units rather than heated radiators — pack for indoor cold, not just outdoor cold. The first week of October is a national holiday and the wall, the mausoleums and the riverfront get noticeably busier; if your dates are flexible, avoid it.

Getting there & around

The airport experience matters more than the distance suggests: Lukou has comparatively few long-haul international routes, so a large share of overseas visitors actually arrive via Shanghai and cover the last leg by high-speed train — the fastest services take about an hour, much of the timetable closer to ninety minutes. From Lukou itself, the metro’s S1 line is the sensible option over a taxi in traffic, but know its shape: it ends at Nanjing South station in about forty minutes, and the centre is a further transfer onto Line 1 from there. Inside Nanjing, arrive by train and pay attention to which station: Nanjing South is the vast modern hub on the Beijing–Shanghai high-speed line and the one most visitors use, while the older Nanjing Railway Station, north of the centre, still serves a separate set of routes — the two are not interchangeable and are a proper metro ride apart. Once you’re here, skip renting a car: the metro network covers the wall, the lake and the university district comfortably, traffic in the centre is heavy, and parking near any of the main sights is a genuine liability. The old Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, the first the country built entirely on its own across the river, is still worth a look even though newer crossings have taken most of the traffic.

Practicalities

Nanjing is a safe city by ordinary big-city standards; the usual caution around the railway stations at night is enough. Cash has largely disappeared from daily transactions: Alipay and WeChat Pay are what the city actually runs on, from taxis to street-food stalls, and a foreign card alone will leave you stuck at exactly the small vendors that make the food here worth the trip — set one of the two apps up before you travel rather than on arrival. Entry itself runs on more than one track: depending on nationality you may qualify for a short visa-free stay, a visa-free transit window if you’re continuing to a third country — currently up to ten days for many nationalities — or you may need a standard visa arranged well ahead of time — work out which of these is yours before booking flights, not after. On food, Nanjing’s defining dish is salted duck, yánshuǐ yā, at its best in autumn as guìhuā yā — named for the osmanthus season, when the year’s ducks are fattest, and in some kitchens scented with the blossom itself; the everyday street staple alongside it is duck blood and vermicelli soup, yāxuè fěnsī tāng, sold from stalls all over the old town and especially around the Fuzimiao night market and Laomendong. Both are about the duck, cooked and served differently, rather than two unrelated dishes — order both and you’ve eaten like the city actually eats.