Dalian

Oh baby, it felt good to get on the train and leave that last test behind. I never realize I'm feeling stress until it's gone and the weight lifts.

This trip's not going to be the same as the last. For one, the destinations - Dalian and Qingdao, both coastal cities, both modern, are totally different than the countryside and small towns I visited in northern Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia. Plus, having a buddy along will be nice. Jordan's an experienced world traveler, veteran of nights spent in European sheep fields and torturous bus rides around Latin America. The important thing is, someone will be here to watch the bags while I use the nasty bathrooms.

So much to tell, not enough time. The train to Dalian was good, we took the slow train starting Friday evening and arriving Saturday morning. We stayed up late talking and nursing big bottles of Harbin beer bought just before hopping in the taxi to the train station. For some reason, everyone else on the train decided to go to bed at 10:00. This was new, the other trains I've been on have had lots of activity until late, but this time Jordan and I were the only talkers. We switched to truly inaudible whispering after one sleeper told us "itsa tima for sreeping, preasa be quieta". That didn't stop the large, motherly attendant from telling us later to "finish our drinks and go to bed" (in chinese, thus no accent). Man, it's been a while since I heard that one used seriously on me.

In Dalian we were immediately accosted by the 'travel agents' haunting the arrival area. We succumbed only after we realized that Dalian might not have the ridiculously cheap, low quality lodging that pervaded the places I'd previously visited. Luckily, it's the off season right now, so we were able to negotiate. Final result was 40 kuai per person. That's a little over $5 American, not bad at all for a room on a par with Motel 6, but it still hurt a little for me comparing with my record low of 5 kuai a night.

We spent Saturday wandering the city center, checking out the parks and shops and stuff. The highlight was finding this artist hidden on the second floor of some random shopping building we walked into. He was there painting, and his work was all around him, all kinds of stuff and all really cool, but especially the tiger drawings. As I watched, he was working on a tiger, his brush tip separated into two prongs and making lots of short, precise strokes for the fur. Jordan and I looked around, talked to him a little and checked out his stuff. He produced a little promotional booklet proclaiming him to be the #1 tiger artist in all of China. Looking around at tiger drawings marked at 12,000 kuai, we couldn't contradict him. He told us he didn't care about money, we were his friends, and ended up giving us some of his smaller stuff cheap. After we bought a few little things, he whipped out his brush and painted up a couple fresh ones, which he rolled up in newspapers and gave us for free. Typical Chinese friendliness, but not so typical in someone selling stuff.

I knew Dalian has a lot of companies from the west, so I was surprised but not to the point of disbelief when I saw "The Olive Garden" staring at me in big letters from the side of a building. Dreaming of fetuccini alfredo we investigated, only to find that it was an italian restaraunt but the name was coincidental. The owners seemed genuinely unaware of their counterpart in the states, but I'm a little suspicious considering all the extra business that name will bring from hungry westerners. To top it off, the restaraunt wasn't even open, just in the final stages of construction and set for the grand opening in a week or few. We were invited in anyway, and accosted by a couple of waiters-to-be eager to practice their English. We obliged for a few minutes, chatting about the basics like where they'd studied, where we were from, etc. The one I was talking with was relatively young, maybe late teens, and really nervous to be speaking English. His voice trembled and his smile was pasted on, but his English wasn't bad and we had good information exchange. I shook his hand goodbye and it was trembling with nervous excitement. As Jordan and I rounded the corner of the building we heard a high pitched "yeeeaaah"! echo behind us. I smiled at the ecstasy in that sound. Our backs were turned, but I imagined him hopping up and down and pumping a fist. The sound was a pure expression of the feeling I've had a few times myself studying Chinese, but I don't think I've ever done such a good job of translating what I was feeling into a sound.

The weather Saturday was really warm. I had to peel off my sweatshirt as we walked around, making me feel ridiculously overpacked knowing I had yet another outer layer in store back at the hotel. That all changed today, Sunday, when we woke up to see that the temperature had dropped and it had rained in the night. We'd already planned to see Gold Pebble Beach, and we're not ones to be put off by a little rain. Saturday, we'd been told go by way of "qinggai" (I think), a word we didn't understand. It was a puzzle figuring out what the word meant: we knew it wasn't bus, train, subway, car, etc. At first we guessed trolley, becuase we'd seen those headed around the city, but then realized that the place we were going was 60 kilometers north. I've never heard of a trolley going that far.

It turned out to be an LRT, which I think must stand for light rail transit. Pretty much an express train. That possibility had crossed our minds, but we'd ruled it out because we figured those 60km between the city center and the beach wouldn't be very developed. Turns out we were way off. Dalian's city center is really impressive, lots of shiny new skyscrapers with interesting designs. We'd assumed from there it would all gradually scale down, but as we rode the LRT we hit another little group of high rise buildings, almost as big as the first. Following, we saw a sign seeing that we were entering the "development district", which turned out to have yet another modern neighborhood. Between these centers, there were empty areas, but it all looked like it was in the process of massive growth.

The beach was deserted as the wind got stronger and chillier. Today, I was feeling pretty good in my wind-blocking outer shell. I'd just thrown it in my bag at the hotel, not realizing that the weather would get so nasty, but Jordan hadn't been so lucky and was stuck in a light jacket. We weren't willing to dish out the cash required for the multitude of random activities advertised in the guidebook: cross-country motorcycling, hunting in the woods, amusement park. We settled for a chilly hike down the clean beach, covered by gravel that's as close to gold as a rock's going to get. No false advertising there. Reminders of enormous crowds were all there, big permanent shelters on the beach, restaraunts lining the road opposite, but today it was empty. We passes a single group of Chinese people our age huddled together cooking kebabs, maybe the equivalent of a BBQ in the states. After snapping a few pictures of the scenery, we decided the hotel room was sounding like a pretty good spot to spend the rest of the day.