Barbs44Travels: DALIAN DAILY

Our first port on this second leg of our journey was Dalian, China. This city of 7 million people that I had never heard of before was a complete surprise to me. It is a vibrant city with entire blocks being demolished for urban renewal but it still has many buildings from the early 1900s that have been preserved. I was very impressed with this city and wouldn’t mind returning to spend more time here.

Dalian City Center

Dalian was first occupied by the Japanese after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. Six days after the signing of the Peace Treaty, Imperial Russia, supported by the French & Germans forced Japan to relinquish the port to the Russians. The Russians then started developing the port into a commercial link between the interior of Manchuria and the outside world through the building of a rail line connecting to the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Our first stop was the Russian Street where the original Russian-style houses still stand. Most have been made into tourist souvenir shops and restaurants with the names in Chinese and then Russian in smaller letters. There were all kinds of little market stalls with trinkets, vegetables, dried fish, & clothing out in the street. I passed one with the dried fish that we had seen earlier in the Vietnam markets. It was fun bargaining there where the language was Chinese first, Russian second and English somewhere below other Asian languages.

Russian Street

Russian-Style Clock Building

Dried Fish Stall

We then drove through the city past the obligatory People’s Park that every Chinese city seems to be required to have. There we passed by the Dalian Women’s Policewomen that we were to visit later in the day getting ready to give a holiday performance.

Policewomen in People’s Square

Our next stop was Xinghai Park, the largest square in all of Asia – twice the size of Tiananmen Square - built in 1997 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the city’s founding. Its central feature is an ornate, carved column inspired by the one in Tiananmen Square. As we got off the bus, we were enveloped by the smiling crowd of families busy spoiling their one child. Our guide took us to the Dalian Centenary Sculpture that is to represent the open book of the future or a pair of soaring wings. In front of this huge edifice, there is a road of bronze footprints representing 100 years of the common people. There was an imprint of a 100 year old woman with her bound feet and her month-old baby great-great-granddaughter.

Open Book

Bound and Baby Feet

Crossing from the monument to the Square itself was an adventure because evidently the May 1st holiday was an auspicious day for marriage and the custom is for the entire entourage to process around the drive that circles the Square. We counted at least 5 bridal parties with their flower-bedecked matching cars. One bridal party all had red cars with a white teddy bear holding a red heart in the back window. There was also one stretch limo and one Hummer limo but most favored convertibles so they could be seen and could wave at bystanders.

Bridal Car

Red Entourage

There were also all kinds of families flying kites, taking advantage of the fresh ocean breeze. On the walk up to the monument, I was passed by bikes and trikes that were available for rent. Everywhere, the people were having a great time and often smiled or waved for pictures. The Red Cross was there collecting for the earthquake victims of the recent quake in Western China with their white & red flags. They were even willing to take American dollars.

Monument Walkway

Trike

Kites

Monument with Red Cross Flags

Reluctantly, I got on the bus and we joined the throng of cars traveling along the seaside road. This road had only been open to the military until about 10 years before, but people were sure using it for the holiday. As we were sitting in traffic, we looked at a museum and saw that the windows were being washed. The ladies washing the windows didn’t have sissy things like safety belts or any kind of restraint at all at they stood on a tiny ledge to wash the third floor windows. I wondered how high they would go before they thought about safety equipment.

Window Washers

After an interminable wait in the bumper to bumper traffic, we arrived at the seaside recreation area called Tiger Park. I got a kick out of the kids with the horses they could ride by bouncing in the saddle. One of the kids got tired, so his dad took over and seemed to be having a great time. They had sightseeing boats you could take a tour in and there was a cable car that went from the Tiger Park over to an aquarium that was supposed to be quite good. About that time, though, we were more interested in what was for lunch.

Tiger Park

Horseback Riding

Aquarium

We traveled back into downtown Dalian for our lunch in a very nice restaurant. The tables were all set up for a Chinese hot pot and they were not kidding about the “HOT” part. Each table had two wells with two compartments each. One side had a bubbling light colored liquid and the other had something that looked like gravy. At each person’s place, there was a wet towel in a holder under the table. On the table was a plate with chopsticks, a bowl of chicken soup, a cup of tea, and a bowl of soy sauce based dipping sauce. Normally, I think customers pick what they have ordered off the plates and put it in whichever boiling liquid is preferred. But since we all sat down and just looked at everything, a server came to each end of the table and began putting raw beef & chicken into the liquids. While that was boiling, mushrooms and noodles were also put in to boil. Then the server began pulling out the meat and piled it on our plates. The gravy-looking sauce was full of hot chilies and was hot to the point of making your mouth numb, but had a fantastic flavor. The light sauce had shrimp in it and was much easier to eat, but was much blander. After the meat & noodles had cooked, they started adding the greens which included cabbage, watercress, seaweed and chrysanthemum leaves. We had much more food there than we could have possibly eaten.

Restaurant

Hot Pot

After lunch, we still had an hour before it was time for us to be at the Policewomen’s Training Center, so we were given free time to do a little shopping. I spotted friends coming up the street clinking and Tom had found a bottle of Great Wall wine that our tour guide in Beijing had highly recommended. I got a bottle of that and a couple of bottles of the Tsing Tao beer that I had discovered in Hong Kong and felt ready for those 7 days we were going to have at sea.
The Dalian Mounted Policewomen’s training center is high on a hill above Dalian. It is a high honor to be chosen to be accepted into this program. The girls must be a certain height and must have done well in school but it isn’t necessary for them to know anything about horses. While we were at the center, we watch one new girl on a horse with a lunge line being held by an instructor while another was being instructed on the proper way to draw her sword.

Sword Instruction

We were then ushered to the view seats for the policewomen to make their entrance and to watch the instructors do trick riding. Unfortunately, there was also a table full of officials watching from the side and rather than performing for us, they turned their attention to these officials and we didn’t get a very good view of what was happening. I did get a good shot of the Chinese bow, though, before it was used in the program and it looks much like the Persian bows that we had seen in the Topkapi Palace. The instructor rode by and chopped heads off straw figures with a sword then shot targets with a rifle from horseback and finally used the bow to shoot arrows from horseback. Two of the girls had spent extra time learning to do tricks such as riding in, bouncing off the ground and then riding backwards in the saddle or riding with on leg or the other straight up in the air - very accomplished for girls who never got on a horse until they were 17 or 18 years old.