If I didn't travel much in the first half of my semester, I seem to have made up for it in the second half. As luck would have it, the university students are given one entire week without class time in order to study for their exams. In this case, lucky for them is lucky for me, as I too have been granted an entire nine-day period with no teaching constraints. I thus decide to take this opportunity to visit my best friend Dan, who is also teaching at a school near the northern China city of Dalian. Indeed it was a lucky week, as I also manage to get return air tickets for a steal.
Dan and I have been best friends since early high school, but our relationship goes back much further. Our families have known each other since I was about five years old. Back then, however, we didn't like each other a whole lot. Chalk it up to our one year age difference if you will. He and my brother André have always been best friends, but we didn't connect until a little bit later.
It had been almost exactly a year since we had seen each other last and this is the second time that I've gone to visit him in a distant place. The last time, we were in Alberta, camping in the Rockies and this time it's northern China in a rather upscale beach resort town called Jinshitan (or something like that).
He's currently teaching in a Canadian school accredited by the British Columbia Board of Education (following a BC curriculum even). Most teachers there are from the West Coast and most students are from very well-off families, as education is not free in China and this is an expensive school.
The beach is only about a 10 minute walk away from his apartment, but who needs to walk when you have a motorbike.
Yes indeed, with dirt cheap fireworks (you could put any small-town Canada Day celebration to shame for less than 50 bucks and if you pitch in with a few friends, you could pretty easily outdo Ottawa) available to anyone and even cheaper beer you've got the makings of some pretty sweet beach parties.
So I got a week to spend with my best buddy and his lovely girlfriend Vicky -who is originally from Greece and is also a teacher at the school- and though they are still officially working, they've got plenty of time off. Though the first day is rather quiet, we hop on the commuter train and head into Dalian on our second and third days.
Dalian is quite a new city, with wide roads and plenty of traffic, which makes the experience of crossing the streets a little bit different than in the rest of China. Traffic flows a lot more quickly and this conflicts a bit with people's traditional habits of just subtly insinuating themselves into the stream of cars and trucks and expecting them to go around. It can make for some pretty hairy situations, which I eventually discover while riding in taxis (whose drivers have the tendency to be rather merciless). And while we're on the subject of taxis, aside from regular cabs, Dalian had some of the most unusual little vehicles I've seen in Asia.
Note that the people in the first picture are mostly crossing at a traffic light, so it's not always chaos.
Our second day is spent shopping, eating and wandering around downtown. I finally find a good pair of shoes that fits me at a large, Western sporting goods store and Dan and Vicky want to visit a Korean commodities market in the city. If you're unfamiliar with Asian commodities markets (or so we call them) picture a building that looks like a large warehouse with about half a dozen floors all crammed full of things ranging from kitchen goods to clothing to Chinese brush paintings and Buddhist sculptures. These are the places to go to get things at a good price. Buying most household goods or souvenirs anyplace else means you're probably paying too much.
On our second day we play the role of good tourists in Dalian. We decide to visit Ocean world, which is sufficiently kitchy, but also interesting. It's got nautically themed corridors and passages with fish tanks displaying all kinds of marine life along the way.
It's got a shark tank, a dolphin and Beluga show -complete with a real live mermaid- and it's even got a UFO (... the question is, why not?)
One of the big draws is a huge fish tank which you observe through a glass tunnel with a conveyor belt that moves you along at a pleasant pace.
It's also got some odd things for goofy people like us (or for kids, if you prefer) like masks on poles and a big shark head that can swallow you.
So after that we decide to take a walk along the water front and partake in other activities, such as zip-lining and enjoying a cold refreshing beer.
The waterfront area of Dalian is lined with amusement parks, real estate developments and apartment towers, the biggest city square I've ever seen and some nice green space. There are Modernists statues all around town and somewhere in the city is a gigantic soccer ball sculpture. It can make for an odd blend indeed. One of the strangest features, however, would be the full-size European style castle on a mountainside right beside several groups of apartment towers. It's being used as a seashell museum, and though we didn't actually go to visit the exhibits, I can't help but wonder about how the museum is laid out (seriously, what would you put in all those narrow turrets?)
The rest of the week is mostly free, but Dan and Vicki have some exams to supervise and corrections to complete. We have an exam party on one day and finish all of Dan's papers, assembly line style. A beach party with some of Dan's teacher friends happens at some point in one of those nights, as does one of the teachers' birthday parties, and on my last day there I grab Dan's motorcycle and go for a ride in the hills while he's busy collecting textbooks. However, before that, we return to a part of town that we had seen in some of our outings, but that I hadn't really gotten the time to explore. It's called (phonetically) Kai-Fa-Chu and it's got an unusual area referred to as Five Colors City, which is decidedly different and has a bit of a theme park feel about it. We've got a gingerbread house type building.
Some storybook characters, with which I'm seen in one of the photos.
I have no idea what this one is, but it functions as a bizarre gate to one of the avenues.
And here is what appears to be a totem pole made from various pieces of fruit, each with a different goofy face and expression.
Of course, there's the food. China having an abundance of inexpensive and delicious restaurants, Dan and Vicki introduce me to all their local haunts. They developed the interesting habit of calling the restaurants in town by the names of their favorite dishes that are served in each one, since this is more memorable for them than the actual restaurant names. Local specialties are always fantastic to try, and two restaurants which stuck out as excellent had been called Tudo-Ni and Guo-Bu-Ro for their mashed potatoes/gravy/chives concoction and their eggplant/fried potato/pork dishes, respectively. Tudo-Ni also had some very interesting donkey meat dumplings.
I must say that one of the things that has struck me the most while on vacation is how quickly the days go by. I try not to blink too much. I had a whole week to spend with my best friend and before I knew it, it was gone. On our last evening, Dan and I take a bike ride to a fishing village near town and we stop by the sea to take a few last pictures.
When we did this last summer, we were on a mountaintop in Jasper and the summer before that Dan and I spent a lot of time together, as he was the best man at my wedding. This year, we're by the sea in northern China. These past few visits have been memorable indeed, but it's hard only seeing your best friend once a year.
photo credits: all P
