While at Dr. Sun Eat-Sen’s Mausoleum at the Purple Mountain in Nanjing, there were several tourist stalls outside selling snacks and souvenirs. One of the stalls was selling small medals with animals on it from the Chinese zodiac. The Chinese zodiac is based on the lunar calendar which assigns an animal and its attributes to each year in a repeating twelve-year cycle. I was born in Singapore which has a large Chinese population and therefore I grew up with this idea. In fact I can still remember a few silly teenage conversations about which zodiac sign is a good match for which one when making dating decisions. Anyways according to the Chinese Zodiac I am a monkey and so I bought the monkey medal. They even personalised it by inscribing my name and the date of my visit. I never actually had anything like this before and I really liked it. A nice little souvenir to take home. In fact I still have this medal hanging on a door knob in my house in Melbourne.
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