The Shen

Duanwu, or the Dragon Boat Festival, is on as I write this, which means dragon boat races, Zongzi (glutinous rice and other things wrapped tightly in leaves), and more importantly, three days off. Duanwu falls on a Wednesday (I don't know whether or not it always does), so our 3-day holiday is made by moving the previous weekend forward two days. So, we had school on Saturday and Sunday, and get Monday through Wednesday off. I've not done anything interesting for a while it seems, so I decided to make the best use of this time to go travelling. Nobody else I could find was interested, which in my mind removed the more popular destinations from my list (Xi'an and Qingdao), and on a whim I decided to spend some time in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province.


Sculpture outside Shenyang North station.

Shenyang is an overnight train ride from Beijing, and since I couldn't get a ticket for the Sunday night, I left late Monday night and arrived early Tuesday morning. I had a few ideas about what might be worth seeing, from the internet and Lonely Planet, but no firm plans. The first thing I did was to get a map and some breakfast, and figure out what to do. I decided that Beiling park was within walking distance, and it was, barely. The walk let me get a bit of a feel for Shenyang, a typical Chinese city much like Wuhan. It is a large, spread-out city, with a subway under construction, and huge but uninteresting buildings everywhere. After a while, I made it to Beiling park.


A lake in Beiling Park.

Beiling means "north tomb", the park is in the northern part of the city, and contains an imperial tomb. The tomb is in the centre of the park, and the park is big. Before reaching the tomb, I walked among steles, stone lions, and old people waltzing on "Sweetheart Island".






Not very clear, but Manchu is visible on this stele.

The park was also crawling with soldiers. Not in a bad way, though. They were all in uniform and on duty, but just there to have a look around the park. Marching as well, but they didn't do that for long.



I had to pay again to get into the tomb, but that's normal here. The tomb was pretty cool, not least because there were very few people there, being early morning and Shenyang not being a popular tourist destination. The tomb is surrounded by a complex, much like a temple. The tomb itself is a mound of earth with a tree on top, surrounded by a semicircular wall and guard towers. There are very few imperial tombs outside the Great Wall, this is one of two or three.




The animal sculptures here represent real and mythical creatures, resting here with the emperor.




If the Egyptians didn't have stone, the Pyramids would've looked like this. Beneath this is the underground palace, where the emperor rests.



After exploring the tomb, I decided to try to make my way to the north gate of the park (I entered from the south). There were a lot more paths than the map on the back of my ticket suggested and I spent a good hour trying to find my way out. I found more soldiers, and they gave me directions, after taking some photos. This part of the park was very green, unlike much of Beijing or indeed the rest of Shenyang.






This is what the world's largest standing army looks like.



Once out, and on the side of a busy road, I made my way to an interesting-sounding place I found on the internet - the aviation museum. The museum appears to be run by Shenyang Aircraft Corporation, and judging by the sounds I heard, and Google Earth, it was adjacent to an active air force base. Entering the museum, before they even charge you, you can get a very close look at some Chinese fighters. They had the J-8B here, which wasn't present in the Beijing military museum, but nothing else I hadn't seen before.




Shenyang J-8B Interceptor

After paying, you are allowed into a museum building which guides you through the history of the Chinese aviation industry, technology used in aircraft and the production thereof, and to the centrepiece, a scale model of the J-11, a Chinese version of the Su-27 produced by Shenyang. There is a strong military focus throughout, with a lot of displays about Chinese experience in the Korean war. Everything is presented quite well, but all the explanations are in Chinese.


Shenyang J-11


At the height of the Korean war, even the Thunderbirds were recruited.

It was almost lunchtime, so I took a cab to a dumpling place I'd heard about. It was in the opposite corner of the city, but so were a lot of other interesting things. People warned me that taxis in Shenyang are dodgier than in Beijing, but I didn't have any trouble - although, in every taxi I caught, the permit they are required to display was not there, or the photo didn't match the driver. The dumpling place was on Zhong Jie (Central Street), and had supposedly been in business since the early 19th century.



The dumplings were very good, despite the wait (service in general is no better here than Beijing). They served me some tea as well, with flowers in it. I had a good meal and a good rest, and planned what to do next.



After lunch I had a walk along Zhong Jie, which is to Shenyang what Nanjing Road is to Shanghai, or Rundle Mall is to Adelaide. Not much interesting here, except that I discovered a Chinese cola, called "Future Cola" in English, but "Feichang kele" in Chinese, which means "extremely happy" (Coca-cola is "delicious and happy").



Much like Rundle Mall, there are some old buildings near Zhong Jie, unlike Rundle Mall, they are part of the Imperial Palace. The Imperial Palace in Shenyang is one of two from the Qing dynasty in China, the other being Beijing's Forbidden City. This may be where the Qing governed from before moving to Beijing, or where the emperor lived when there was trouble in Beijing, I'm not entirely sure. The palace complex is huge, but not as big as the Forbidden City. However, I found it a lot nicer than the one in Beijing, mainly because there weren't too many other people there. Signs are in Chinese, English, and Japanese, but don't explain things in much depth (they want you to pay for a tour guide).









Exploring the palace took up plenty of time, so afterwards I decided to check in to my hotel. Another taxi across the city. I had a shower and a bit of a rest, then went out again. I'd already ticked off most things on my list, so I went to Zhongshan Square, which supposedly has China's largest statue of Chairman Mao.



The statue was pretty cool. Chairman Mao, surrounded by heroic peasant worker soldiers, surrounded by banks and expensive hotels. A great place to take ironic photos.







I then decided to take a walk. Guided entirely by Lonely Planet at this stage, I thought I'd be able to make it to Korea Town for dinner. But, walking around, I couldn't find any traces of anything Korean, north or south (unfortunately I missed getting a photo of a hotel flying flags of both Koreas earlier). I walked all the way to Government Square (walled off to build the Shenyang Metro) and from there checked my book for eateries. I ended up at Xiao Tudou (little potato), which serves nice, heavy potato-based dishes. Cheap, though the interior appeared to have been chosen by Glenn Quagmire.




Even better than it looks!

While eating, an old man outside waved at me. I waved back. This happened a couple more times, then he came inside and started talking to me in Russian. As it turns out, he was a Russian of Chinese descent. He had also been drinking a bit, and wandered off after a short conversation.

I went back to my hotel, and finished the day watching a TV show about the war against Japan, on a channel from Qinghai, dubbed in Tibetan. I turned in early because I had to set off early the next day - I had a ticket to a town called Dandong, on the border with North Korea.