Nanjing 
Today, with high rises and skyscrapers, the skyline of Nanjing has changed much.
Just like any other city around the country, the old alleyways are disappearing quickly. But if you look carefully, you can still find one or two left. Along which, fine spots that give you a sense of how life used to be like around here.
I've just entered Ganjiadayuan, former residence of the Gan family. The huge compound wasn't built in one day, but was gradually expanded over years through several generations. The most famous figure in the family is a man named Gan Xi, a scholar of Qing Dynasty. The massive wooden decoration and the scale of the residence telltales the affluence of the family.
People in Southern China love to pave their courtyard with all kinds of patterns with pebble stones or bricks. In this courtyard it's paved with a special kind of bricks. But it's not done in the usual way we know, with the brick laying on the ground, but rather with the brick standing like this. More than that, the yard never flooded during the summer because it has a wonderful drainage system, which was designed before the yard was built. Some people say it鈥檚 even better than what we use today.
The Gan residence has a total of over 300 rooms, but people only say it has 99.5 rooms. Why? One explanation is that during the Qing dynasty, nobody was supposed to own a home with over 100 rooms, except the royals. So no matter how large you made your home, you could only say you had 99.5 rooms. Thus the name "ninety nine and a half" has become the name for many similar grand home complexes. Basically it is composed of many small courtyards that are linked with one another.
Pushing a window open, I tried to picture a life here: it was a time when girls were not supposed to leave the courtyard, especially the girls from a rich, influential family like this. And the narrow alleyways were once busy with hurriedly running errands.
The Gan family was particularly known for their artistic talent. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, it's said each of the couple hundred of the family members could play a musical instrument and one of their favorites was a local opera called Kunqu.
Even today people still came here to practice Kunqu. They call themselves Friends of Kunqu.
These amateur Kunqu singers meet here every weekend in the old residence. I was surprised to find one foreign face among them.
Kunqu is one of the finest and oldest forms of local operas in China. Somehow the slow melody just matches the old houses and rooms, which are full of untold memories and stories.
