Class Trip

Our school has organised a couple of free (included in tuition) trips through the semester to interesting places around Beijing. The first of these was today, to the Great Wall at Mutianyu. Last time I came to Beijing I saw the Wall at Badaling, which I'd heard is much more heavily touristed (and would agree, now having been to both).

The Long Wall of Ten Thousand Li, as it is known in Chinese, once defined the northern border of China. After the Qing dynasty took over in the 1600s, it lost relevance and fell into disrepair. So, now, it is not continuous, and only a few sections have been restored, mostly near Beijing (such as Badaling and Mutianyu).

So, the plan for today was to take buses from our campus to Mutianyu, an hour and a half away. All the C classes went, so a total of maybe 80 people. Upon arrival, and after navigating the obligatory minefield of pushy souvenir sellers, we were presented with stairs. A lot of stairs. None of the teachers came with us, except one who looked to be in his seventies, so there was no excuse for us young students to go and take the chair lift up.


A rest stop about halfway up.

We finally made it to the wall itself. It was definitely The Wall, but we couldn't see much of it from the top of the stairs. You have to walk a lot further here than at Badalin, both to get to the wall, and to see it properly. But it is still a great place to be.




Mutianyu is known for its famous guard towers and steep slopes.




With a local.

We walked (climbed) past a couple of guard towers and took some photos. But knowing there was just more of the same further on, some of our group decided to turn back, and I joined them. Closer than the stairs down was the chair lift and toboggan down. I went with the chair lift, feeling very tired and unfit by this time.


Almost as steep as the wall!

We still had the better part of an hour before leaving, but in the carpark I spied a beacon of hope, a reminder of the world I had left behind... a Subway. Tired and hungry, there was no question in my mind. They were stingy with the sauce and charged Western prices (about five times anywhere else here) but it was good.

I spent most of the rest of the day playing Call of Duty with the Chileans on my floor. I've started applying for work - both in teaching (English) and acting. There is a lot of work here by the looks of it, if you are (or look) foreign. I'm having to wait for my scholarship money this month a bit longer than expected - whether or not I get it tomorrow decides whether or not I go on a holiday for the upcoming long weekend. Let's see what happens.

A Romantic City of Dalian, Day 2

Started day 2 forcing myself out of a comfy bed and into a proper shower, for the first time in a while. Had the hotel's breakfast (Chinese buns and a boiled egg) and headed out. We went past the three squares from yesterday (Zhongshan, Youhao, Shengli) on the way to Laodong (Labour) Park, to enjoy the attractions which weren't open the night before.


Anything worth seeing in China has a rock.

There were a lot more people around than last night. The Chinese garden had some people singing and playing erhu (the traditional Chinese instrument), and there was a large group of people gathered for some sort of ceremony - neither of us knew what it was. We walked up past the people feeding pidgeons and towards the soccer ball.




Bending it like Beckham

Near the ball, you can take a chair lift up the hill to the tower. This offers some nice views of the park, and the surrounding area. It goes over a road, which is protected by a confidence-inspiring net.





The top of the chairlift was still a short walk away from the tower, but the view from the hill was nice. The park was on one side, and a small European-style housing development was under construction on the other.


Dalian!

The tower was much like the other Chinese TV towers I've been in - except we were the only ones in it. Metal poles obstruct the view in parts but what you can see is nice.


Hills to the west.

I did see something interesting - which was either an unladen container ship, or the Varyag, which is an aircraft carrier visible on Google Maps (see Wikipedia). If it was the Varyag, it would've been moved since the Google picture was taken, which is unlikely.


What do you think?

Coming down the hill we got some more good photos.







We left the park (after shooting some balloons with a BB gun of course) and went back towards Shengli Square. It was getting to lunchtime now, so we walked to Youhao Square to eat at the oddly-housed KFC.



Chinese KFC is significantly different from that in Australia, but I've probably talked about that enough already. No crab claws at this one anyway. After lunch, we took a bus to the other beach, near Xinghai Square.


The other beach.

This beach had a few more people on it than Tiger Beach, but was still quite cold and windy. There were some stalls selling things made of shells, and there was a big dome aviary for pidgeons. Some of the pidgeons were outside walking around, and Leslie thought it was lovely.


She likes pidgeons? She did the same thing at Laodong park.

We then realised Xinghai Square wasn't all that close, and took a bus there. It's pretty big. So big that it took us a while to find a way in. Around the circumference there are sculptures based on sports - apparently the football in the 2008 Olympics was held here.


I took the opportunity to go skiing.

It is definitely larger than Tiananmen Square. It is oval-shaped, intersected by roads. In the centre is a large stele, 1997cm tall, to mark the year of Hong Kong's return to China. This is ringed by the signs of the Chinese zodiac engraved in stone.




I'm a dragon. The years are written as well, in case you don't know.


Looking back towards the city.

There is another waterfront here - all concrete. It feels as if it should have expensive seafood restaurants all along it, but it doesn't - just some hotels and a closed beer garden. Again, this place probably livens up a lot in the summer.









With the tourist bus along the coast not running (as a bus driver retorted, "why would anyone travel here in winter?") we took a normal city bus back, through the centre of the city. Along this route you can see Renmin (People's) Square, and Olympic Square. They were just squares, and I think we'd already seen enough. So, we went back to the hotel where we'd left our baggage, shared our photos, and had an early dinner. We wandered around the shopping centre under Shengli Square for a bit, then Leslie had to go to the airport. I then had a couple of hours to wait until my train left, so I spent the time sitting in the centre writing about my experience, until the centre closed and I was kicked out at 8:30. So I went to the train station with another hour to wait. This was not as bad as I envisioned, but less pleasant than Beijing, it was like a typical crowded Chinese airport departure lounge. I didn't really get to know the people around me on the train, just went straight to bed.

I forgot to mention previously, I was originally going to catch a train which would get me to Beijing around 6am. Those tickets were sold out by the time I got to Dalian, so I had to take a later train, getting me to Beijing at 8:30am. As such, I made it to class at 10 (the train station is on the opposite side of Beijing from my university). I missed my oral Chinese class, but I think my weekend made up for it.

Dalian, Day 1

My roommate's language partner had bought plane tickets for a weekend in Dalian, a coastal city in the northeast, but a month later still had nobody to go with. I wanted to go anyway, so I decided to go with her. All the cheap flights long gone, I bought an overnight train ticket. Such are the beginnings of an adventure - my first overnight train to a city I'd never been to before. It was bound to be more fun than hanging around in Beijing with Alfonso at any rate (no offense intended, if you are reading).

Dalian is quite close to Beijing, but across a bay, so the train takes a bit over 10 hours to get there. My ticket was for the K681 - leaving at 8:20, arriving at 8:25 (K trains make more stops along the way than the faster and more expensive Z trains - there are a few other letter codes, but not between Beijing and Dalian). The train station is accessible by subway easily (though it is quite far from our campus). There are a few stations in Beijing, and I was to leave from the main one. I'd taken trains in China before, and so had a bit of an idea of what Beijing station would be like. I was not surprised by the enormous, grandiose station buildinng, but I was surprised by the classy interior. It was like an airport, with waiting lounges for each train looking like overcrowded airline club rooms. I was able to find my "gate" (with little difficulty, but knowing Chinese is pretty much required to navigate the rail system) and board my train by 8.

There are a few classes of travel on Chinese trains, hard or soft, seat or sleeper. Hard seat is the cheapest, and soft sleeper is the most expensive. Most Chinese take hard sleeper as it's not too expensive (Y250, as opposed to Y390 for soft sleeper) and actually allows you to sleep. This was my thinking as well. My girlfriend had said she'd never heard of foreigners taking hard sleeper before (the general assumption is that foreigners are happy to pay extra for soft sleeper) but there were two Filipino students on the beds above me, so clearly I wasn't the only one. Hard sleeper beds are arranged in three levels, grouped in sets of six (so three bunks face another three bunks), with dividers between. The top two had the Filipinos, the middle had me and a man who does some sort of work related to seaports (hence going to Dalian) and the bottom had a family of three (with a 3 month old daughter) travelling to a small town in Liaoning, one stop before Dalian. They were a nice group of people, and though the Filipinos weren't talkative (probably because they had to come up from Shanghai) and I had trouble understanding the northeast accents of the others, it was a good trip. We were able to share a lot before lights out at 10pm. The ride was smooth (didn't even notice the train starting) and I only woke up a couple of times, when the train stopped. Hard sleeper, despite the name, is fairly comfortable.


My train buddies.


Hard sleeper

I arrived in Dalian, and promptly lost all my new friends in the rush of people through the quiet station. So, I was on my own waiting for Leslie, who would land a bit before 10. I was easily able to find a tourist map, and Dalian is quite small, so I was able to keep myself occupied roaming around until then. The train station is next to Shengli (Victory) Square, which is an odd collection of sculptures (ranging from what looks like a scene from VP-day, to a giant saxophone) on top of a huge underground shopping centre, closed when I was there.


Creepy sculpture on Shengli Square.

There was also a morning market nearby, which I avoided. Instead, I got out my map and tried to find interesting things nearby. Youhao (Friendship) Square was a short walk away, but not too interesting, just a giant ball in the middle of a roundabout. Zhongshan (Sun Yat-Sen) Square was the same distance again, and much nicer, despite mostly being a construction site (Dalian is plagued by the same subway diggers as Harbin, but it's worse here because it's a smaller city). I spent some time here, looking at the interesting buildings around the square (which is circular). Dalian has a lot of skyscrapers and is quite clean for the most part, a lot like Nanjing which I also liked. After a while here, I decided to head back to Shengli Square, as I'd read somewhere the airport bus stops at the train station.


Looking towards Youhao Square from Zhongshan Square. The ball lights up at night.

I looked around the underground shopping centre, but finding little more than clothes shops with bad English, I decided to check out the morning market. Found some interesting souvenirs (though there wasn't much particular to Dalian) and practised my haggling skills. After wasting a bit of money (but a lot less than they were asking!) I got a message from Leslie saying she would meet me at Zhongshan Square. So, I slowly headed back. Unfortunately she got stuck in traffic, so I became intimately familiar with the square. I was also noticing the stares, which should be expected in a place like this, but I suspect they were not so much unused to foreigners, but thinking "why did you come here in winter?". Eventually Leslie showed up, and we set off to find things to do.


Some of the buildings around Zhongshan Square.

We found Russian street, past a tram line and the worst intersection in Dalian. It is like a smaller version of Harbin's Central Street, full of Russian signs and faux-colonial Russian buildings. It has more people on the street selling things than in Harbin though. I had to explain to Leslie the Russian dolls they were selling - she didn't know they had smaller dolls inside.


Russian Street. Unfortunately didn't bring my Russian hat.

After this, and after finding our hotel and checking in, Leslie wanted to ride a tram. Trams are uncommon in China, and are in Dalian due to its Russian history (some old Russian trams are still running). Leslie had never seen them before and called them buses on rails - which of course led to a lecture about the Adelaide O-Bahn. On the way to the tram stop, we walked past an odd street with giant beer bottles.


Bang, anyone?


Old Russian tram.

We found a tram line not far from our hotel. According to our map, it went to the beach, but none seemed to go that far, so we took it as far as it would go, and back again. It was an old-style tram on the way out, and a modern one on the way back. We then took a bus to another beach, Tiger Beach. It felt like an abandoned resort, which wasn't far from the truth - few tourists come here outside of summer.


Ocean Park at low tide.

Walking along the "beach" we saw an interesting attraction - an old destroyer. You could go in for Y20 and were free to look around the entire ship. Leslie got in for free as she has an official tour operator ID (she has a scam for everything).


As far as I could tell, the ship had no name apart from "104".



Parts of the interior had been decorated with posters explaining the history of the ship and the Chinese navy (all in Chinese), including one eerie diagram showing Taiwan's defenses. There was also a strange hallway deep in the ship which looked like it might have been a hotel - turns out it was. It didn't look open but perhaps during the summer, it is possible to sleep on board.



We continued walking along the coast for a while. Leslie really wanted to see a particular bridge further along. We walked past a bird park before finding a beach. Going down to the beach, we walked past a bride and groom - people have their wedding photos taken here. It is a small beach between cliffs, with more rocks than sand. There are a few islands visible - there are expensive ferries to some of them I think.


Islands from the beach


Looking at the beach from above.

Not much further along was that bridge - Bei Da Qiao (North Big Bridge). Apparently it was built as a friendship project between China and Japan. It covers a valley - the ocean comes in a small way under the bridge, and inland there are some buildings nestled between mountains. It's a good place for photos, and looks a bit European.


Bei Da Qiao


Looking inland from the bridge.

We then decided to walk back - there wasn't much more in this direction for a while. We went back to Tiger Beach and caught a bus back into the centre of town. Got off at Labour Park, which was closing down (everything in Dalian seems to close early). We couldn't do much but look at the attractions. It has a small Chinese-style garden near the entrance, then an amusement park, then its centrepiece, a giant soccer ball. It also contains Dalian's TV tower.


Giant soccer ball and TV tower.

We then returned to the proper centre of town, around Zhongshan and Youhao Squares. By now it was dark. There is not much to do in Dalian at night by the looks of things, so we decided to have dinner and then an early night.


See, it really does light up.

Dinner was at a Shaanxi restaurant (not to be confused with the neighbouring province Shanxi). We had Chinese burgers, noodle soup, and I tried a Dalian dry beer. I don't know why they call it dry.


Not sure what the Chinese burger is actually called, but they're really good.

Another food review

I had a bit of an interesting day today - walked around the local area trying to find a nonexistent museum. Not much to relate from that though, except that university campuses here are huge and poorly documented. I had some good street food on the way back but that's not the subject of this review. The subject is...



Guangyou Sweet Potato Instant Vermicelli - Sour & Hot Flavor. I've been meaning to write this up for a while, and since it was the last packet, I decided to do it now. It has a doctor on it, so it must be good (but they all do). The text under his arm over the noodles says something along the lines of "sourness to make you happy, satisfyingly fast". And if you needed any more convincing, the best translation I can make for the brand name Guangyou is "entirely friendly".



Opening the packet (just a plastic bag) gives you a blob of noodles, and some packets of flavouring. I included the lid of my bowl in this shot becuase it is a bit strange - a Chinese version of Peter Rabbit I think. I'm not really sure what the "sweet potato" in the name refers to - perhaps the noodles themselves are made of sweet potato, or more likely, the stuff in the poop bag (you'll see) is based on it.



One good thing about China is you are pretty much guaranteed to always have access to very hot water. We have this machine in our laundry/bathroom area which, when it works, gives boiling water (when it doesn't, the nearest is 3 floors away).



The first thing going into the noodles (now looking like a squishy brain instead of a dried up brain) was the vinegar, the sourness for happiness. Mixing it in, things start to look and smell ok. Until of course I discover what was hiding inside the noodles...



The seal was intact, so I put it aside and went ahead with the poop bag. I call it the poop bag because of the graphic way the contents have to be added.



It looks a lot nicer after being mixed in. Now, I could turn my attention to the silver bag. This bag contained a powder mix. I've had the powder on its own before (I was recovering from being sick and didn't want to risk the other spicy-looking things) and it is pretty much the same as Maggi chicken flavour. That is to say, not that interesting. But, it comes with little seed things. Not sure what they are supposed to be or do.



Ready to eat! Not bad for instant noodles, a surprising sour bite combined with a long-lasting hotness, another enjoyable offering from Guangyou. But upon finishing the noodles, one discovers they were forged in the fires of Mordor...



I hope this glimpse into my student life has been interesting. I intend to document my dormitory conditions a bit more later, when I have time and nothing interesting to talk about.

I'll be leaving for Dalian tomorrow on a train. It is a port town with an interesting city. Not far from Beijing, but the shape of the bay between there and here dictates a 10-hour train ride. It will be my first sleeper train, so there will be much to share I'm sure. I doubt I'll have a chance to make a post while there, so expect a big one when I get back. I'll probably be getting back to Beijing around 6am Monday and going straight to class - so let's hope I can actually sleep on the train.

I'll finish with something more typically "China" - the front gate of the China University of Geosciences: