We love Dalian (and friendly Russians)!

Last week we were in the process of deciding where we wanted to go on the first part of our summer vacation. The regular school year doesn't actually start until the first week of September (and we finished up the winter/spring semester the first week of July), but we've sort of gotten ourselves roped into teaching at the school's summer camp, so that takes a big chunk out of our free time. We're fine with that--this way we won't just be out spending money all summer. This means we have a little bit of time before camp starts on the 25th. Initially we thought about doing a tour de Shandong province; going back to Rongcheng and Yantai, exploring some other nearby areas like Wendeng and Weifang. But as we were walking around in the rain, along the seaside, past little Korean snack shops and seafood tents, we saw a tiny building that said "Weihai Dalian ferry office." So we decided to go to Dalian. Why not?

Dalian is located in Lioaning province, which (relatively speaking) is a hop, skip and jump away from Weihai (like Seoul, South Korea). It's another port city, with a population of 6.2 million people. We had heard from Gary at AAC that Dalian is a newer city (new for China); Gary is from Dalian, and that's part of the reason we wanted to visit. Plus, Neal gave it a pretty glowing recommendation. We were excited about the prospect of taking a ferry, and we would have gotten on the boat that night if we'd magically had all of our stuff with us. We settled for the next night.

The next day, we packed our bags and headed back to the station to buy our tickets. I have been on a large ferry before, when I traveled from somewhere near London to somewhere near Amsterdam. That time I was on the world's largest ferry, replete with disco dance clubs, movie theaters, restaurants and people who didn't want to sleep. It was a very smooth ride, and we didn't have to pay for a room. We just slept in big, comfy chairs. I thought we would have a similar option for the Dalian ferry, too; we even tried to encourage the ladies at the ticket office to just let us pay for seats. Evidently that's not an option. We settled for two beds in a six person room, for 220 rmb each; this was one of the cheapest options. I think we've even paid more than that for a one way bus ticket, so it wasn't so bad.

We had a little time to kill, so we walked back to the little tent restaurants near the water next to the ticket office. We had scoped them out the night before, and we had our hearts set on eating on the roof of a restaurant, until a friendly Chinese man with a GIANT chef's hat ushered us into his tent. He spoke a little bit of English, was very friendly and told us upfront how much our food was going to cost (without us even having to ask). We walked through the tent and to the waterside, where we sat at a patio table, drinking beer, watching people board the boat we'd be taking in an hour or so. We ordered an entire fish and ate the whole thing. It was so freaking good!

There was a table of Chinese men sitting next to us, drinking baiju and throwing their clam shells on the ground. They were a jolly bunch. When an awkward girl and her male (also awkward) sidekick came around--toting an out-of-tune guitar and charging money for their songs--the jolly Chinese paid for a few tunes. We actually knew some of the songs, just from hearing them over and over, and from being roped into karoake with some fellas from our neighborhood. Let's just say this pair don't have a musical career ahead of them. After they were finished in our area, they simply crawled under the rope partition separating our tent patio from the neighbors' and tried to solicit some more customers for their subpar songs. No one else was buying. There was another little guy roaming around, toting another poorly-tuned guitar, but he was probably ten years younger than the folks in the first duo. The Chinese men marshalled the kid over, and you could tell that he was just terrified. He showed the men his little, laminated list of songs. When he started playing, it was so funny. He didn't know what the hell he was doing, so he was just strumming one chord over and over, singing in a monotone. But it was so cute. We kept watching the Chinese men as they tried not to laugh, but it was just too much. I think he played two songs before he was shooed away.

We finished our meal and went to the ferry waiting area. We were in a snack shop buying provisions when I heard a "hello, Julie teacher." As I turned and tried to talk to Happy, one of my second graders, Rory was busy rolling my sleeve down to cover my tattoo. A good team, we are. She didn't see anything. I mentioned that it would be funny if we were stuck in a sleeping room with her and her entire family (this isn't foreshadowing--it didn't happen). We got in line to board, and once again we were reminded why it sucks to be in the mix with a large group of Chinese people. I don't think most people over here know the meaning of "common courtesy." I mean, why should they? There's a sort of an "every man for himself" mentality, and you have to expect it with as many people as there are. Chinese folks don't handle crowds or lines very well. I think I am getting better at handling Chinese people in crowds and lines. I have started to go more with the flow; using my hips to bat grannies, kids and anyone else out of the way. It's the name of the game. We were a little frustrated, though, as we were being shoved and pushed, because we watched as a crowd of 10 Russian women walked to a special boarding area (that was obviously closed off); they sweet-talked the guard and got to board the boat before anyone in our line even started moving. Maybe we should pretend we're Russian next time.

We finally got on the boat and found our way to our room, but as we searched for it, we saw that the hallways were full of people sitting on newspaper or cardboard. Entire families, even. So there were no "seats" on the ferry, but "standing room only" was an option. Noted. The room was nice enough. There were three sets of bunk beds. We hadn't really planned on sleeping--we wanted to turn the ride into a "booze cruise"--so we had all of our stuff compact enough to carry around with us to the mess hall or to the deck. We don't trust our stuff around anyone anymore. We almost learned the hard way. As we were waiting for the ferry to actually depart, we watched the only other (Chinese) woman in our room go through the most tedious steps to brush her teeth, wash and moisturize her face. There was a sink in the room, and I'd swear this woman had at least 5 different products she used on her face. She looked 50ish--maybe she was 80. Don't know.

In the mess hall, we saw that several other people had the same idea as us. There were two families sitting at a table near us, and even the kids were playing drinking games. With beer. I couldn't believe it. They could have been some of my students, and there they were, playing rock/paper/scissors to see who had to drink. We played red/black/high/low while we drank our beer, and I was overcome with that ol' familiar feeling of motion sickness. Maybe a booze cruise wasn't in the cards. I'd forgotten my dramamine. Darts. We packed up our stuff and made our way back to the room, where we slept for the rest of the ride.

Pulling into Dalian at 4:30 in the morning was awesome. The sun rises really early over here (no daylight savings--all of China shares the same time zone), so as we pulled into the harbor, we got to see the water and surrounding ships in a pre-dawn twilight. It was quite pretty. Being awake at 4:30 in the a.m. ain't so bad if it's nice out. We quickly realized that we had underestimated the size of Dalian. We mistakenly thought it was small, but once we got off of the boat and were bused over to the main part of the ferry terminal, we saw skyscrapers galore. This was no small town. And that was fine, too.

It was amazing to us how many people were already awake and moving this early in the morning (about 5:30 by the time we had gotten out of the ferry terminal and had gotten ourselves together). We sat down on some stairs near the tourist information office (which of course, wasn't open yet), eating some bread and drinking Cokes. Cab driver after cab driver approached us and tried to take us wherever we wanted to go. We didn't really know where we wanted to go, but we weren't in any sort of rush, either.

We walked back over to one of the shops (amidst clusters of shops) near the entrance of the terminal. The ladies who were working were friendly and got a kick out of our attempts at speaking Chinese. That's usually the case over here. When we bought a map they instantly wanted to know where we wanted to go. So we said we wanted to find a cheap hotel. It turns out that one of the ladies we thought was working there was just a taxi driver who was friends with the owners. So she immediately tried to take us under her wing. Everyone asked how much we were willing to pay for a hotel, so we shot them our prices. They laughed at us. This usually happens, too, as most Chinese people assume all foreigners want to stay at the Ramada or the Hotel Dalian. And there was a Ramada, but not with our budget. We don't like to pay much for hotels, because we don't really spend much time in them. So we said in Chinese that a cheap, dirty little hotel was okay. Again, they laughed and told us it was impossible. But the cab driver thought she knew a place, so away we went with her. Once we were actually in the cab, we realized she still wanted to take us to a nice hotel. Nice thought, but we didn't want to pay that much. Again, she told us that it would be impossible to find a hotel for cheaper than 180 rmb. We knew we could do better. And we certainly had some time to kill while we tried.

She dropped us off in a part of town dubbed Zhongshan Square ("middle mountain" square). There was a giant orb in the center of the square, and there was a complicated round-about for the cars to try to manuever. The city actually had a few round-abouts that we saw, and they created pretty heavy traffic jams. Just what you need in China--masses of people in vehicles trying to get somewhere. There were a lot of old people out already, all doing their morning exercises (taken very seriously over here). There were women doing tai-chi, there were other women doing strange stretches in casual wear. There was also a man who had this little whizzing, whistling top, and he had a huge whip that he would crack, precisely alongside the top to get it going. It looked dangerous, but he was quite good at it. Not sure if that was an exercise or just a hobby. Either way, highly entertaining.

We walked past all of the main roads, all of the big, expensive hotels, and we started exploring side streets and little neighborhoods. This city didn't feel like most other Chinese cities we've been to yet. All of the little buroughs that we discovered were so unique and autonomous. I can't quite describe it. It did remind us a little of Qingdao, though (the parts we visited anyway). It was very international-friendly, and not once did we feel threatened or like people were shocked to see us. That doesn't really get old in Weihai, because we know our way around by now. But when you're obviously a tourist in an obviously foreign country, it's nice when not everyone is staring at you, watiting for you to screw up. So many people spoke English, too, so that was nice.

We walked past some hotels, but they weren't open yet, so we decided to go walk around some more before we came back. We headed to Zhongshan Park. It was amazing! It was so big, and it was like walking into a sea of old people. The most striking part of the park, though (aside from its sheer size), was a colossal soccer ball on the hillside. It was red and white, and in front of it, seated, was a big, gold Buddha. There was some temple on top of the hill--and cable cars to take you up--but we opted to just wander and watch the old folks doing their thing(s).

We walked past a large lotus pond and an outdoor amphitheater-type area, and we sat down by some old folks who looked like they were dancing with racquetball rackets. The rackets were part of a choreographed dance that this troupe did; you could tell that they were members of the same organization because they were all wearing the same t-shirt. A leading member of the group pressed play on the boombox, music started playing, and they started their routine. They were spinning around, flipping a little ball over their shoulders, under their legs, however they could--all in unison, all caught on their little rackets. I have never seen anything like it. Another thing in China that is completely new. We also saw some old men swinging from a tree branch on a tree next to us. They were as giddy as little kids, swinging like monkeys on a branch. It was really funny because you never see such spry old-timers in America.

After the park, we headed back to the area that we had already dubbed "our neighborhood" to find some breakfast. We are accustomed to little makeshift restaurants under tents alongside the road, but instead we found a place called MiMi's or MiniMini's that served buffet-style breakfast. This was the cheapest and most delicious breakfast food. It was unreal. One side of the buffet had all of the different bread-y, french toast stick-style options, and the other side had all manner of eggs and gruel. Yes, gruel. Or porridge. It's fitting once you actually see the stuff, but it doesn't taste bad. We actually had seconds. While we were eating, too, we noticed that two of the cab drivers who had tried to give us rides earlier were sitting at the table directly behind us. They looked pretty shocked to see that we were eating Chinese-style breakfast with Chinese people at a Chinese restaurant. Shock and awe. We certainly took our time there, and then we walked back to where the two closed hotels were. They were open now, and they weren't hotels.

With a little more asking around, we ultimately found a place, for 119 rmb a night. So we were 61 rmb richer than most of the taxi drivers had projected. It certainly wasn't easy getting the room, though. There was an obvious language barrier and some stupid, nitpicky issues with our passports. So it almost looked like we weren't going to get the room. Then, like some Russian god was looking out for us, Alex walked into the place. Alex is a Russian university student studying in Dalian. His mother was staying at the same hotel we were trying to book. He spoke Russian (obviously), English and Chinese, and we would have been screwed if he hadn't stepped in an given the receptionists a severe talking to. We kept telling him that he didn't need to help us and that we would just try to find somewhere else, but he wouldn't let us leave. Ultimately, we were so happy that he helped us, because the place was cheap and immaculate. So the Russian ladies who boarded the ferry early (all 10 of them) were trumped by one Alex and his willingness to help out a couple of Americans he didn't even know.

We got into our room around 10:30 in the morning, so we already had about 6 hours of dicking around under our belts. We were pretty tired, so we decided we needed to head to the Starbucks we had seen on our taxi ride. We shelled out more money that we probably should for coffee, but the fact that it wasn't instant coffee and was hot (piping!) made us more than willing to pay for it. Next we headed to the train station to buy tickets to Jinzhou, an area a little north of Dalian that was famous for its Golden Pebble Beach. This was our first experience with a Chinese train station; it was nothing shocking, just more people who all magically seemed to be in our way. But it was cheap to buy the tickets, and we actually had seats on the train. That's the part of the rush that I don't understand. If you have actual seats on the train, what's the rush? It's different on an airplane because everyone wants to stow baggage, but this was a little train, and no one had much luggage.

On the train we sat three to a seat, and we were really crammed into these seats, too. Sitting catty-corner from me was a husband and wife couple (I assume). The wife was all dolled up in every imaginable shade of green. Her and her husband looked like money. But the strangest thing about this couple was that for the entire train ride--to our stop anyway, about an hour--this woman had her hand directly on her husband's crotch. There was no table or anything to cover it up, either. And evidently she thought it was no big deal, but Rory and I both noticed it. Gross. Her hand wasn't just resting, either. It was massaging, the same way Rory might try to work out a kink in my neck or something. But this man's neck wasn't in the "down there" part of his jeans, so who knows what the hell she was doing. Tact, lady. Tact. There were freaking children on that train. We almost missed our stop, because we didn't quite recognize the sign--cause we were watching the free show! haha--but an old woman who had been sleeping the entire time woke up in just enough time to tell us we needed to get off the train.

As we disembarked and made our way around the train station, our hands started to instinctively clutch purses, cameras and wallets a little tighter. This station was out in the middle of nowhere (just like in Weihai), it was part of a relatively small town, and there were some very shady people lurking. After we bought our return tickets to Dalian, we made our way over to the waiting taxis. We didn't realize just how far away from the beach we were, and for a few moments we toyed with the notion of hiring a couple of men on motorcycles to take us to the beach. We hadn't ever seen that option before--rickshaws, pedicabs, three-wheeled cars and taxis, sure--never dudes on motorcycles.

We got in the cab with a really friendly lady who wanted to do the tour package, showing us a bunch of different areas of the beach (from her car) for only 130 rmb a person. We said no way, we just wanted to go to the beach and walk around. We drove and drove and drove in this taxi, and 50 rmb later we were at the Golden Pebble Beach. It was beautiful, but it looked like how I envision Club Med or something. It was almost too pristine-looking, which is saying a lot lot lot for China. It was quite the tourist trap, too, as you had to pay to even go swim or walk on the beach. We had already paid about 70 rmb to get there (including the train and taxi), so we didn't want to pay more to just exist there. We tried to rent a little quadcycle (like an elevated go-kart without a motor, pedal-operated), but the man running the joint wanted us to write down all our passport information and pay a 100 rmb deposit. We foresaw our deposit disappearing over some mythical scratch in paint (cause we're rich foreigners), and opted to not rent them. They were pretty cool, though.

As we walked past seafood tents (where Chinese folks like to rip off foreigners), white tents, more Russians in bikinis (not always a good thing), an cop car accident and a giant amusement park, we saw a sign for the lightrail that Gary had mentioned in his email. Rory and I looked at each other and collectively agreed that the Golden Pebble Beach was not for us, so we decided to bail out. We hadn't even been there for an hour. And if the lightrail tickets that would take us directly back to Dalian were cheaper than 40 rmb, we would still save money by just eating the cost of the train tickets we had already purchased, instead of taking a 50 rmb cab back to the train station, where we already had tickets for the last train of the evening. No way we were going to spend 7 more hours there, spending the money we didn't want to spend. So we opted for the lightrail, and tickets were cheaper than the train tickets.

Once the lightrail actually pulled up, it turned into another familiar shoving match between us and some annoying teens, but Rory somehow managed to nab us each a seat (facing each other, even, and apart from everyone else). We were lucky, because the ride back to Dalian via lightrail was about an hour and a half. And the whole time these teenagers were trying to get our attention and just stare and say whatever they knew in English, just so they could laugh at us and make fun of us. So Rory and I started speaking Spanish really loudly. I think that threw them off.

As the lightrail pulled into Dalian, it rolled up into the same train station we had been at earlier. We had searched all over the internet for more information about the lightrail, and we'd found nothing. It was right under our noses the whole time. We'll have to remember for next time.

After refreshing at the hotel room, we headed to Russia town. We had certainly seen a lot of Russians, so we had high hopes for Russia town. Other than the different architecture, it wasn't really impressive. I guess we thought there would be a lot more Russian food and beer and Russian people, and a lot less Chinese food and Chinese people selling Russian-y things, trying to rip us off. But it was still really cool to see so many of those Russian dolls. I have always liked those. And the architecture was indeed impressive.

Around the corner from Russia town was a little strip that had a German/Italian restaurant and a Spanish restaurant called Tapas. We decided to go have some tapas at Tapas while we were waiting for the German/Italian place to open. We wanted to do a world tour and hit up Japanese town later, but that didn't happen. At Tapas we ordered four little appetizers (each was about a bite apiece), and even though the portions were tiny, the flavor was great and it tasted distinctly not Chinese. I don't know how Spanish it was, but it was great. Ordering an actual entree was out of the question, as it was out of the budget. So we walked back outside, only to see that the German/Italian place was still closed and didn't look like it was opening anytime that particular day. We settled for a Chinese restaurant sandwiched in between the international restaurants. And even though we "settled" for this place, we were quite surprised--it had some of the best food we've experienced yet in China. No questionable beef, amazing noodles. Incredible.

Called it an early evening and got up the next morning to wander around and to buy our return ferry tickets for the following morning. This time around we asked for the "standing room only" seats. The Chinese teller was confused--I don't think she knew what we were asking for--so she called over a really friendly woman who spoke English. We told her that we wanted to buy newspaper and sit on it like we had seen all of the other Chinese people do. Everyone was amused, but we insisted. These tickets were only ¥90 each. So we left the ferry station with ¥260 more in our pockets that we had anticipated for our return trip (I think I did the math right). So we thought we would treat ourselves to a "nicer" lunch.

We checked out a hotel that boasted a Latin buffet. The hotel was really nice, the buffet was not. So instead we went to check out Dalian's Korea town. It wasn't as impressive as Weihai's two Korea towns, but we managed to find a really nice Korean restaurant. The waitress was impressed because it seemed like we knew three languages: English, Korean, Chinese. She was Chinese, so I think she was just floored because we knew the Korean and Chinese names for food and beer (the two most important things, right?). We spent a long time there, as we always do when we eat Korean food, and headed off to our hotel. We ran into the man who had recommended the restaurant to us, and he suckered us into coming into his shop for a little while.

He owned a Polo shop, and it's no surprise that the shop was in Korea town. Whenever visiting Korean scholars would come to the Asian Affairs Center, the two main things they wanted to shop for were golf equipment and Polo brand anything. There were no customers in there with us, so we all just sat and drank tea together. He was so friendly, and I think he was just eager to have human interaction. We made it very clear from the beginning that we weren't buying any Polo gear, and he wasn't put off by that at all. I think we spent an hour drinking tea--the most involved tea "ceremony" I've ever been party to, even--before heading back to the hotel.

Our driver misunderstood where our hotel was, so even though he was in the right neighborhood, he was confused as to which side street he should take. We didn't mind, though, because his navigational error revealed the location of McDonald's and a German style microbrewery. Microbrewery! Didn't know that those existed in China. We had the cabbie drop us off there (we were in a familiar enough locale to find our hotel on our own). We walked in and saw a lot of Russians and a lot of beer. We were excited at the prospect of drinking any sort of dark beer. But unfortunately, you couldn't only drink beer--you had to pay the ¥38 each for the buffet before you got beer. We told the waitress that we had just easten, so she went to talk to a manager or something. The manager came over and told us that he had whittled the price down to ¥21, but we weren't interested. We weren't going to pay that much for beer and food we weren't going to eat. It wasn't too big of a blow, it just would have been really nice.

Later we went for a walk around our area, determined to find the McDonald's we had driven past earlier. We knew it was going to be a hike, because we really had no clue which route we had taken in the taxi. After walking around for about an hour (and after all the big, lit up buildings had turned their lights off--right when I was getting ready to take pictures of them), we finally just got in another taxi and Rory drew the McDonald's symbol. No problem. We went directly to a different McDonald's, and it was across the street from a KFC. After we ate, we walked around this area, and it was money central. Both sides of the plaza were flanked by huge designer shops, another McDonald's, another Starbucks. I never thought I would see Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Chanel and other big names in Dalian. Maybe in Beijing (or what I imagine Beijing to be in my mind), but just one day earlier we thought Dalian was going to be a small city. Freaking Dior!

We woke up the next morning and grabbed a few necessities before heading to the ferry--dramamine(!), newspaper and some strange packets of edible crunchy crystals that were supposed to combat diarrhea. We arrived at the terminal with about an hour to spare, so we strategically scoped out the best seats for waiting close to the gate. Our plan paid off, and we were on the first bus to be shuttled over to the boat. We certainly get a lot of stares over here, but I don't think we've ever gotten as many as we did when we started to lay our our newspaper and sit in the hallway with all of the other (non-rich) Chinese folks. We figured we didn't need beds--it was daytime, and we only really wanted a few nap sessions.

The dramamine and the strange crystals worked, so all in all it wasn't a bad ride. Much smoother than getting there. I immediately started to edit a Chinese colleague's resume (the English parts), and the working-class man who was sitting next to me was so entertained. He kept looking over my shoulder as I would rewrite sentences, and I think the fact that I was writing all of these strange, English letters really quickly was quite the sight to see. I didn't mind, though.

As Rory was sleeping, I noticed a couple of college-aged girls sitting across from us, giggling. One of them was doodling, and she kept looking up at Rory and then back down at her notepad. She was sketching him. I would have loved to have seen that sketch, because I get to see and hear all of the funny things he does when he's sleeping. Lots of chewing. How do you draw that? Ultimately, though, these two girls worked up enough nerve to come talk to us, and that led to an instant audience, including a recent university graduate who had majored in English. They were all very friendly, and we exchanged cards and phone numbers. The girls told us that everyone around us on the boat was very curious about us; why were we sitting out with all of these Chinese people when we could have paid for a room and a bed? We simply said: "because it's a lot cheaper." I don't think that our desire to do something the cheapest way possible will ever quite make sense to Chinese folks, because we're supposed to be rich. But it was funny when these girls confirmed that that's exactly what everyone around us was thinking.

As we headed back into the Weihai harbor, we weren't at all struck with that "it's good to be back home" feeling. We wished we could have stayed in Dalian for a long time. I want to say that Weihai is losing it's luster right about now, but I think that's just the impending summer camp talking. And I'm sure camp will be awesome--the newest teachers are certainly...diverse. Glen and Chrisine, the kiwis, are amazing--we get along really well--because they're freaking NORMAL (which we thought was impossible after Cecilia left). They are hilarious and are somehow the hybrids of both sets of parents. We wished they were staying on with Daguanghua for another year, but after summer camp they will go to a little city near Chanyi (and Mayor Ma). So at least they will be close to us. Let's just say that the new Australian will take some getting used to. He's a character, worthy of an entire blog just based on some of the crazy things he says. It only took him three days to blow up at all four of us. Just when we thought (hope hope hoped!) we were through with crazies...