I took the 2 hour Fast Train trip to Nanjing from Shanghai, lured by a guidebook that described Nanjing as "One of China's most beautiful cities, with plane trees on every street and a plethora of historical and cultural sites". What I encountered was a heavily polluted, traffic jammed metropolis. There were certainly things to see, and the cluster of sights on Purple Mountain on the fringes of town were well worth a look. The ancient city gates and the Presidential Palace were also very impressive. It's probably a place that I'll only visit once.