Showing posts from: September 2019
Chaoyang Jie, Art, Culture and History: A Street Worth Visiting in Shenhe District, Shenyang
Chaoyang Street in the Imperial Palace district of Shenyang, overshadowed by the proximity of the city’s most illustrious tourist drawcard, the Gu Gong Palace itself, doesn’t get the interest it perhaps deserves. Visitors to Shenyang tend to be drawn to Gu Gong and with equal magnetic force to the “shoppers’ paradise” of the Middle Street Pedestrian Mall. But if you divert some of that time to exploring Chaoyang Street, you might happily discover some less known little treats it has to offer.
Fengtian office of Southern Manchurian Railways (131 Chaoyang Street)
It’s hard to credit that this rundown building with its faded facade and peeling paintwork, and the roof vegetation, was once the Fengtian※ office of the powerful Japanese Southern Manchurian Railway organisation, known as Mantetsu. Japanese’s control of the railways network in China’s Northeast came about after Japan defeated Russia in the 1904-05 war. The railway line, running from Harbin in the north to Port Arthur (Lüshan) in the south, was acquired by the Japanese in 1906. The premises on Chaoyang Street were clearly still occupied and padlocked from the outside (apparently, currently a training centre for a children’s library system). However, the organic outgrowth of the roof resembling someone’s unkempt backyard, suggested that the property was not a candidate for the local tourist circuit.
Shenyang Huangchengli Cultural Industrial Park (129 Chaoyang Street)
Shenyang and Chaoyang Jie’s penchant for turning the ordinary and mundane into something fresh and different is ably illustrated by the makeover given this old industrial complex. Situated like the ex-Manchurian Railways depot in the 皇城社区 (Huangcheng neighbourhood), a narrow entrance lane from the street leads to a small square. A new project, still presently in the process of completion, is to transform what was a drab old industrial site into a visually more appealing urban landscape. An attractive and classy new arch adorns the entrance to the square and historically and culturally relevant murals and other artworks including elegant carved relief panels decorate the walls. A subject figuring prominently in the industrial park’s paintings is local celebrity and 1930s Dongbei martial strongman Marshal Zhang (“the younger”). The artistic facelift of the old industrial complex on Chaoyang Street is a refreshing innovation in Shenyang, but one for which the city has precedents, eg, Shenyang’s 1905 Cultural and Creative Park taps into that same artistic and aesthetic potential for transforming a depressed industrial wasteland.
Marshal Zhang Mansion (Shaoshuaifu Alley, off Chaoyang Street)
Marshal Mansion, located down a short lane off Chaoyang Street, is the former residence of the “Two Zhangs”, Northeast warlords from the Chinese Republic era – father Zhang Zuolin and son Zhang Xueliang. The mansion now a museum comprises several buildings connected by courtyards. The main building, the family mansion itself, is neo-Gothic in style and is fronted by a body of large stones which have a prehistoric resemblance. The other buildings include an amalgam of different architectural styles (eg, traditional Siheyuan buildings, South China pavilions and Chinese–Western mixed styles). There’s lots of military stuff and a good collection of material and photos from the younger Zhang’s life after his fall from power and emigration to Hawaii. Other items of interest at the museum include the Zhang family carriage used to ferry the Zhang kids to school, and one of China’s very earliest motor vehicles. Admission is ¥60 adult and ¥30 concession.
Former Zhang residence–cum–museum
For more on Marshal Zhang Mansion go to
https://www.7dayadventurer.com/2019/11/01/shenyangs-house-of-the-marshal-zhangs/
CFS Changchun: ‘Hollywood’ on the Songliao Plains
From near Changchun’s central train station we waved down a cab to take us to the site of the city ‘s cinematic claim to cultural eminence in China, the Jilin province city’s pioneering film studios. Although it looked fairly close on Google Maps it took an eternity to get to the former movie site of CFS, Changchun Film Studios. Road distance in China is measured in the conventional way by metric length, but also by the number of motor vehicles they’re are between point A (where you are) and point B (where you want to go).
The setting for the film studios is an impressive one. From the street front you enter a big green park and walk up a grand, sweeping drive. At the top of the drive is the film studio complex, but before you reach the studio entrance, you have to contend with Mao Tse-tung. There he is, “the Chairman” standing erect, as he was in life, larger than the life of any one Chinese person. A gigantic, white statue of Mao, waving benignly at every human figure passing within the shadow of his massive, seemingly immovable image※.
It was quite late in the day by now but we were still keen after travelling that far, to see inside the CFS Factory/Museum. The callow youth on the turnstiles gate had other ideas…he point-blank refused us entry because it was after 4 o’clock, less than an hour till the museum closed. Unable to dissuade him, we went away disgruntled but decided to explore the outside parts of the site anyway.
This bore unexpected fruit as we discovered a nice little courtyard adjacent to the factory with an overt military touch (statues of heroic patriotic types and other martial figures, battle-green painted artillery guns, etc). The factory’s military theme is continued in the forecourt which exhibits a fighter plane of 1950s vintage.
Before leaving altogether we chanced a quick look-through of the CFS gift shop which was still open. This proved a fortuitous diversion on our part…while unenthusiastically perusing the shop’s uninspiring assortment of predictable souvenirs on the shelves we noticed a side door ajar which we took advantage of by slipping through it and into the exhibits area. Thus, through a combination of arse-lucky opportunism and devious initiative we did gain entry to the factory after all and for gratis!
The public CFS Studios display comprised a long, darkly-lit corridor which threw the lighted exhibits down one side into relief. These exhibits were a miscellany of items reflecting the film company’s past productions, the result undoubtedly of a raid on the props department and the costume wardrobes (old military weapons, uniforms and paraphernalia), old style 35mm film cameras and sound recording machines, etc.
The military theme of the factory exhibition was further underscored in the choice of film posters to display…war movies galore! The impression that CFS’ most popular movie genre was war was hard to ignore on this evidence.
Peaking inside a few of the rooms running off the main corridor revealed that the complex was still a hub for contemporary film-making. Production tech staff could be seen working on documentary and TV projects using modern technical equipment (not the antique stuff in the corridor).
Another room off the corridor held a small viewing theatre…surprisingly to me the projector was running a 1930s British B & W film starring Larry Olivier (not dubbed into Chinese and no one watching!). Elsewhere in the room there were pictures and bios of Chinese film-makers, dubbers and other behind-the-camera personnel who had made a contribution at CFS Films during its halcyon days.
The props displayed were for the most part interesting and authentic-looking (authentically old too!), but I did find the stuffed tiger mounted and encased in glass right at the end of the passageway rather incongruous and something that didn’t add to the CFS collection.
Changchun Film Studio Group Corporation (Ch: 长春电影集团公司) (to give it its formal title) was the first film production unit registered by the PRC in 1949 after the communist victory. Changchun Film Studios was chosen to fill the cinema production void left by the Japanese Manchukuo Film Association and the Northeast Film Studio. The Corporation also operates the somewhat maligned Changchun Film Theme Park elsewhere in the city.
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※ Mao’s Goliath-proportioned statue and other plaques in the park are transparently propaganda pieces for the government commemorating the communist state’s establishment (October 1, 1949)
Zhongshan Park – an Outdoor Haven for the Locals: Social Cards and “Dad’s Army” Drills
Very many cities in China have a Zhongshan Park 中山公园 (perhaps the most famous is Beijing’s Zhongshan Park near the Forbidden City). In honour of the Chinese Republic’s first president, Sun-Yat-sen, it became a standard practice to name public parks after the revered Dr Sun, who within China is better known by the name Sun Zhongshan.
Dalian’s Zhongshan Park is certainly one of the most chilled-out and slow-paced of the parks named in celebration of “the Father of Modern China”. Entrance to the park is from Huanghe Lu, one of Dalian’s busiest, traffic-heavy roads. Once you come under the canopy of its large trees you only need to penetrate the park’s perimeters by the smallest of distances to put the constant noise and shuffling of traffic on Huanghe behind you.
The first thing that my eyes lit on as I followed the park’s curving pathway was the rich variety of plant life in the park’s garden. It had lots of different Chinese natives but interspersed with these were some exotics like, of all things, pockets of the unforgiving prickly-pointed Mexican yucca (below). Seats, tables and and the occasional gazebo can be found within the park. I liked some of the (minimalist) sculptures too.
Of Zhongshan Park’s many patrons using the park, two groups were of most interest to me. The park’s central square bordered by neat hedges, Weeping Willows and Conifers, was the setting for numerous games of cards – people engrossed in playing cards being watched by equally engrossed onlookers. I noticed, here and elsewhere in this city, the penchant for card games by the locals (cf. the preferred pastime for Liaoning’s other principal city, Shenyang, which is checkers). The card players in the park seemed wholly serious about their games, notwithstanding the fact that no money appeared to be waged on the outcomes.
Meanwhile, diagonally across from the numerous, endless “no stakes” games of poker, or whatever the preferred Chinese card game is in this region (it wasn’t Mah-jong they were playing, I could see that!), an assembly of local seniors were hard at it constructing a commendable Sino-version of “Dad’s Army”, or so it appeared to this unenlightened Júwàirén✻. Led by a no doubt self-appointed “sergeant-major”, the mainly septuagenarian band were strenuously and loudly put through their paces in a set of vigorous military-style exercises…hup, two, hup, two stuff straight from the US military drill-book. 
Footnote: I did find one slightly discordant note jarring ever so slightly with the tranquility and harmony of Zhongshan Park. Just about everywhere you walked around the park, you were made aware of its proximity. Towering over the park like a nebulous cloud was a very tall, oddly scientific-looking building…it’s edifice had a decidedly technocratic countenance to it but was a very idiosyncratic, anachronistic appearance indeed. I looked at it more closely later from outside the park, I’m not sure but it may have been a hospital(?) with a wacky space-age facade, but it looked like something out of “The Jetsons” AD2119 to me.
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✻ unlike the stereotype Dad’s Army from 1960s British television though, these didn’t seem like a bunch of aged clowns bungling their drill, generally making a hash of things and tripping over their own shoelaces…they were totally serious and dedicated trainers from the look of it
Lvshunkou Coda
It always pays to read the small print on an overseas package tour, this is doubly critical if the small print on the brochure is solely in a language you have zero mastery of. I signed up for a Lvshunkou district history tour which turned out to be a Lvshunkou district history-lite tour.
When we got to the Lüshan/Port Arthur area, because of time constraints, we never got to see the Russian fort, the historical battlefields of the Russo-Japanese War or the Russian-Japanese prison site, let alone the site of the historic Manchurian Railway Depot. As things transpired all we were able to fit in was a whistle-stop tour of the Lüshun Museum.
First we had to join a lengthy queue to get in to the museum, a popular site (we spent 10-15 minutes in the hot late summer sun alternately admiring the elegantly attractive edifice of the museum and snapping pictures of the nearby phallic-suggestive Friendship Tower).
Once inside though, it was worth the temporary discomfort, it was a neat and compact little museum of Lüshun art history and archaeological pre-history. I was drawn to the museum’s collection of regional artefacts, ceramics, figurines, statuettes, vases, Buddhist artworks and its anthropological holdings. But what took my eye in particular were a couple of large, very ancient-looking stone writing tablets. I also took a shine to the large and very dramatic historic battle painting in one of the rooms.
Outside again, we were given enough time to use the close-by, rusty old Russian-era gun emplacements as a mood-capturing backdrop for half-a-dozen selfies. After that, we barely had time to admire the site’s well-maintained gardens before we were whisked off back to the tour bus to explore other, less historically significant parts of the district.
Time Enjoyably and Harmlessly Misspent in Lǚshùn: Part II
After a busman’s lunch (on the bus!), the next time-wasting activity on the agenda at Lǚshùn was a boat ride arranged for its own sake. We filed out of the tour bus and aboard an old boat and handed a slim satchel of sausage (prompting an instant misunderstanding: I thought the paltry offering of protein was for us to consume on the ride). The boat, carrying fifty or sixty Chinese nationals and myself, charted an oblong-shaped course, going out one side of the harbour and then returning the other thirty minutes later.
I have no notion of, nor was I enlightened as to what the purpose of the boat ride was. We were shown no notable sights or landmarks, saw nothing but empty stretches of water inhabited by other passing vessels some engaged in the same futile, unspecified mission as ourselves. All this leads me to conclude that the purpose was a nihilistic one, an existential muse on nothingness…or perhaps the real reason lay in the small portion of meat we were all given at the start. Everyone else on the boat quickly divested themselves of their piece overboard where it was gratefully snapped up by the swarming flock of seagulls which had been shadowing our boat’s course. With nothing else to do I duly followed suit. Clearly, the the boat trip was part of a supplementary feeding program for the local colony of seagulls in Lǚshùn.
In a twinkle we shape-shifted from clueless, futile wanderers in the Yellow Sea to gimlet-eyed consumers on a warehouse shopping junket. We were enticed with sparkling opals, beads and precious other gemstones. In a showroom an adolescent Chinese “Joe the Gadget Man” sales dude went through a “show and tell” routine demonstrating how either genuine the precious stones were or how expensive they, I couldn’t be sure which. The Chinese tour party seemed quite engrossed by his highly animated showy spiel, to me it was all a bit ho-humdrum. We moved to the food section of the building where we inspected rows of the dried fish delicacies and all manner of other comestibles that Chinese consumers like to stock up on in large quantities.
Our final Lǚshùn stop to waste an hour or so was the saddest experience of the day. It involved a trip to a Chinese “drive through” zoo. Not an enlightened zoo like Western Plains Zoo which places the animals’ welfare and happiness at a high premium by allowing them the distance, space and relative freedom to move – as only an open plains environment can do. No, this was more like the bad old western zoos of the 1960s which doubled down on confinement and captivity, corralling the creatures, mainly here Eurasian bears of various kinds and a few tigers, into tiny, unsanitary cages, so they could be stared at through the bars. Bored and immobile, they were pathetic sights.
The only animals given a bit of space and exercise were the zoo’s Bengal tigers and tigresses. These big cats were allowed to prowl round a dusty strip of turf, albeit a fairly restricted one. We, the humans, were permitted to take photos as we circled round the mainly listless tigers from a good, safe distance. Occasionally an attendant would throw them slabs of meat from a truck.
The last of the animals on display for the public’s enjoyment were a pair of large brown bears. Ostensibly, they were better off than their caged compatriots because they were sitting in a large pond of water. But I think that was just for the benefit of paying customers, so they can see them frolicking in a riverine environment. When the gates close for the day I suspect they get shuffled back into their 4 x 3 cages. In any case the water quality in the pond didn’t look all that flash, it looked a bit dirty, and this was not helped by visitors in the buses chucking water bottles into the pond to get the Ursus arctos to stand up so they can take better photos.
Having wasted enough time in Lǚshùn, some enjoyable, some so-so, we started back to Dalian and our digs at the ubiquitous Jinjiang Inn.
Footnote: there was one more time-waster thrown up by the tour on returning to Dalian. We stopped off at the “Dalian Bathing Beach” for a quick “Bo-peep”…the Dalian beach scene has got a bit of a reputation, sometimes described as “the Miami of Asia”. If this small beach is anything to go by, the sand quality looked decidedly more like unappealing pebbly Brighton Beach than golden sands Miami (with wall-to-wall portable beach huts replacing the British beach’s trademark reclining chairs). The park adjoining the beach was actually more interesting with its range of seaside-inspired sculptures. An on-site kiosk※ supplied all the sand buckets and shovels, inflatable toys and plastic balls any intrepid Chinese surf-adventurer might need. My attention was drawn to the large map sign and it’s list of beach regulations, most notably the rule forbidding “the removal of sand without permission” and the one discriminating against beachgoers who have various serious ailments by denying them (together with the inebriated) the right to swim at the (public) beach.
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※ the sign on the kiosk’s wall “No tea, no fun!” gives us a pointer to the type of wild, swinging beach parties the locals must get up to…absolute chai-fuelled beach-mania raves no doubt
Time Enjoyably and Harmlessly Misspent in Lǚshùn: Part I
Lǚshùn, Lüshan, Lvshunov (旅顺) – variations of nomenclature for a settlement with a long, multinational history as highly prized first-rate port and a key strategic location on the Northeast coast of Asia. For some tourists, Lǚshùn is merely a peninsula appendage to a trip to Dalian, Liaoning’s second city. Popular for visitors from China, Russia and Japan – at the crossroads of the three differing cultures – and for anyone, anywhere, interested in the modern history of the region.
But for those less interested in the story of the North Asian powers’ struggle for supremacy in Port Arthur (Lǚshùn’s former name under the Russians), there are plenty of other diversions and attractions to fill in a day in the Lǚshùn area. Crossing that spectacular, breathtaking bridge that separates Dalian from Lǚshùn, passing some impressive modern residential monoliths (obviously a lot of new estates cropping up recently), we made not for Lǚshùn’s history-soaked prison or museum…our first stop was at a submarine base at the ports with a large aged submarine in pride of place. On first sighting the displayed veteran U-boat I was initially under the misapprehension that it was a Japanese World War 2 sub left behind by the Japanese Navy or perhaps captured by the Chinese at the war’s end (a sort of spoils of war on show won from the vanquished foe)※
On taking the tour through the permanently moored submarine (opened for inspection at both ends of the craft), I soon realised I was wide of the mark. This was in fact a Chinese naval submarine, a Type-033 submarine actually (which is probably quite significant detail to your average, obsessed submarine aficionado)※. And the whole enterprise, known as the Lushun Submarine Museum (established 2015), is a new feature for China (the country’s first museum to exhibit naval military culture).
The other attraction at the museum vying with the ex-service sub is a submarine simulation exhibit, a room devoted to recreating a realistic'(sic) submarine cruise. Severe looking naval servicemen man the entrance, herding waves of visitors in and out in regimented fashion. The tightly packed paying punters in the room jockey for the best posy to take pictures of the ‘demo’: comprising the virtual submarine, with its commander barking orders to his crew, steering a safe sea-course between a host of pop-up enemy frigates while notching up the odd warship ‘kill’ itself…in effect a large scale video game on a super-wide screen with all the bells and whistles, not to mention the “real-life” sound and lighting effects to conjure up the appropriate atmosphere.
After the Submarine Centre we were ready for a more hands-on 3D animation (or at least that was the view of the tour organisers). We piled out of the bus and into what ostensibly was a commercial building. Inside we were led to a room to indulge our inner-nine-year-old in a video game. We were equipped with sonic “ray guns” (or whatever the equivalent current millennial term is) and invited to pretend that we were riders on an out of control roller coaster. Our seats rocked and rolled violently tossing us to and fro…we sat there immovable, gaining what vicarious pleasure we could muster by ‘zapping’ 10,000 demons each, only to find ourselves desperately trying to dodge the infinite number of remaining malevolent dragons, zombies and other miscellaneous monsters hurtling towards us without respite. Most of the adult Chinese tourists seemed to be totally captivated by the virtual “make-believe” alternate universe, whereas for me it was, at the least, a novel, “one-off” experience, considering I am someone with no interest in ‘civilised’ computer games, let alone ever contemplated visiting a fantasy arcade venue to play games of a unrelentingly violent nature.
Gamers’ central 
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Rah, Rah Russian Street, A Commercial Tourist Vestige of Russified Dalian
Russian Street (Russian Lu), or as it is sometimes rendered, Russian Style Street or Russian Custom Street, is a lingering reminder of the days the city of Dalian was an outpost of Moscow. Today the connexion to an erstwhile Russia is most visually embodied in this single street to the north of Shengli Qiào (Shengli Bridge), near Dalian’s Xigang district.
The start of the street is marked by (what I imagine was once a very grand but what is these days) a large, aged Russian mansion. A sign in front of it proclaims the Russian heritage, русский. Russian Street is a longish, commercial street (with a short side lane appended to it) near the city ports. Rows of stalls line up on the inside of the street in front of the bricks and mortar shop buildings. It’s a street restricted to pedestrian traffic, although this in no way hinders the bike and scooter riders and the odd delivery van with its Russian goods.
Virtually all of Russian Street’s gift shops sell more or less identical merchandise – moon cakes in highly decorative boxes, inexpensive bars of Russian chocolate (going at 10CN¥)✺, jewellery and opals, decorative lighters, toy weapons, tanks and missile launchers❂, and above all, rows and rows of the famous Matryoshka dolls (also commonly called Babushka dolls), so many that they they were almost spilling out into the street. I noticed that China’s Matryoshka dolls are more orthodox than the kind I found in Moscow, where the vendors with unbridled commercial zeal were fast at it selling all manner of variations on the dolls-within-dolls theme (Vladimir Putin dolls, Barack Obama dolls, Lady Gaga dolls, Elvis dolls, and so on ad nauseam).
Half-way down there’s a authentic Russian pectopaH (restaurant)…a lot of visitors don’t venture much further than this point and it’s a good deal less busy than than the Shengli bridge end. Russian Custom Street ends at a roundabout with a large official-looking building of state, there are a couple of small coffee shops and a number of food outlets spread out along the thoroughfare.
Russian Street in 2019 conveys what is at best a superficial nod of recognition of the Russian presence in Dalian that was at its influential height some 120 years ago. Like that other (northern) Chinese town Harbin, Russian Street, Dalian, retains a Russian feel with bi-lingual street signage, but it doesn’t quite match the sense of “Russification” which Harbin leaves visitors with.
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✺ in Dalian’s summer swelter, they are definitely of the “eat them before they melt” kind
❂ toys of a military orientation are extremely popular throughout Dongbei, a fixation I imagine which extends countrywide (a very 1960s-1970s echo of Western predilections)
Tracing the Japanese footprint in Dalian – Qiqa Street
The Empire of Japan occupied the cities of Dalian and Lüshan (or Lvshunkou)※ and in fact a large chunk of China’s North-East for almost the entire first-half of the 20th century. Even now, nearly seventy-five years after the Japanese were vanquished from Chinese Manchuria, travelling around the Liaodong Peninsula, you can readily find the imprint of their former presence.
A conspicuously heinous reminder of the Japanese connection with Dalian (Dairen to the Japanese) and the peninsula can be found at Port Arthur (renamed Ryojun by Japan after its victory in the 1904-05 war with Russia). Specifically this can be seen in the former Russian-built Japanese Prison (now a museum) with its “hanging wall” and other torture devices used by the Japanese Kwantung army against Chinese.
There are other threads linking Dalian to its Japanese (and of course to Russia⍟), but while in Dalian I took time to visit a part of the city with much less unsavoury and more positive connotations of the former Japanese occupancy. We took a taxi from the city centre to a fairly lengthy street called Qiqa Street, not far from the Midtown area…this street is a quaint reminder of Japanese influence and imprint on the city.
Walking along it, I can’t say that much of the architecture in this street looks particularly Japanese in appearance, although to be fair we only had time to explore the western end of the street. The street dog-legs right at one point and heads east for quite a number of blocks in Zhongshan district. However, on our abridged tour we did see a number of Japanese businesses – eateries, hairdressers, and other shops – as the presence of Japanese characters on a number of the shopfronts testify. At least one block of the street has a concentration of these shops with eateries such as the pint-sized JoJo’s Tea (light Japanese meals, run by Chinese staff).
Qiqa Lu also has several buildings unrelated to Japanese culture or cuisine including a Chinese government building and the equivocally named “Paparazzi Who’s the Murderer? This commercial entity comprises a red telephone box at the front of the premises. When you lift the receiver, a metal door to the left swings open to reveal ….? I remain ignorant as to the raison d’être of Paparazzi Who’s the Murderer? Is it a bar, a nightclub, is it a mystery/crime-themed theatre-restaurant? Having not ventured inside, I guess the answer will remain elusive….
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※ Dalian known as “Dairen” by the Japanese
⍟ Port Arthur, prior to the Russo-Japanese War was home to Tsarist Russia’s Pacific fleet
Circling the Square at Xinghai
From our hotel in Lianhe Road in the Shahekou district of Dalian, Xinghai Square didn’t look that far away on Google Maps. Wisely, we decided against footing it to the Square, as the taxi ride took a surprisingly long time to get there. Located south-west of Dalian CBD, Xinghai Square is a very large city ‘square’ (in fact it is circular in shape) comprising large lawns and hedged gardens, dotted with modern sculptural pieces depicting rowing, sailboarding, gymnastics and other outdoor activities.
Although a pleasant place to aimlessly wander round at any time of day (barring inclement weather), the best optics are had at night. The lights on the phalanx of modern high-rise, residential monoliths surrounding the largely parkland square provide an illuminating backdrop to it. At the water’s edge there’s a high rectangular concrete platform which is sharply raised at both ends to resemble a ski jump or perhaps an enormous skatepark. Many visitors amuse themselves by climbing the steep high ends by themselves or in tandem with their friends to catch the ocean views to the south – looking out over Xinghai Bay to the spectacularly long and modern sea bridge (Xinghaiwan Bridge) and beyond, to the Yellow Sea. Most, having carefully treaded and scrambled their way to the top of the ‘skatepark’, take the opportunity for the obligatory 25 to 30 selfies!
After nightfall most interest is concentrated on two parts of Xinghai Square. One, alongside the ‘skatepark’, is the brightly-lit amusement park and auxiliary restaurants, a collection of largely stock-standard rides and entertainments, a sort of Dalian answer to Brighton Pier (without the pier!). The other, which draws the bulk of nocturnal visitors to Xinghai Square, is the vast circular fountain and its colourful displays of vertical water propulsion which draws hundreds to witness the vivid spectacle and video-record the event on their phones. Providing audio for the spectacular waterworks show is a accompanying musical soundtrack, with a mixed bag of numbers ranging from melodic Classical Chinese pieces to international pop like Simon and Garfunkel.
But the biggest spectacle of the night was the mass exit at the immediate conclusion of the vivid colour water show. People who moments before had been quietly watching the performance were all instantly and determinedly making for the exit gates at a fast rate of knots – as if they had suddenly remembered another engagement they had! The exiting crowds scattered in such numbers that the handful of police on duty had difficulty in keeping them off the roadway. Waves and waves of them streamed out of the precinct on to Huizhan Road and into taxis and cars.
Footnote: at 110 hectares 星海广场 (Xīnghâi guângchâng) is the largest urban square in Asia. The name ‘Xinghai’ literally means “the Sea of Stars”
A Rural Hot Springs Resort, Dandong District Style
Before leaving Dandong altogether for the southern Liaoning Peninsula and Dalian, we took to the country for a couple of days R & R. On a recommendation we went to Fengcheng for a taste of the Dandong type of hot springs resort.
From the advanced publicity I had envisaged a Chinese version of some kind of swanky, luxurious modern resort complex surrounded by flowing meadows, undulating hills, wooded forest* and a pleasant babbling brook. Imagine my disappointment when we arrived to discover nothing resembling a health farm or even an ashram exuding the enlightenment of the Bhagavistawama.
The ‘resort’ was in the middle of the township…a dusty side-street off the main drag, it was a series of rundown, crumbling, grimy buildings not suggesting the hot springs country recuperator I was picturing on the way there.
Not a terrorist attack but a sighter of the free entertainment available from the resort’s room windows
The rooms were equipped with a brace of hot tubs (large, deep bathtubs really) and apparently there were hot springs below the ground pumping up thermal water. I couldn’t personally verify the bona fides of the springs’ healing powers but I took it at face value. In any case, even if the medicinal therapeutic benefits lacked evidence, it was very welcome just to relax and unwind for an hour or so each day in the heated tub. On my travels in China I haven’t encountered many baths in the hotels and appartments I have stayed in.
The local hairdressers’, in better nick than the ‘resort’
Even if it didn’t measure up to my (Western) understanding of a de luxe country hot springs resort, I have to admit that it was certainly a bargain deal and tariff: three meals a day (with the owner family experiencing authentic local tucker at varying odd times), two rooms plus the hot tub facilities for ¥150 per night. Although when the plumbing burst at 3am one night and we ended up almost up to our ankles in water that may or not been from the springs, I did have some fleeting, momentary doubts about our choice. But this can happen anywhere at any time, so I passed it off as part of the experience.
Don’t get me wrong, while the resort’s surface appearance and location may not have not been exactly the ticket, and about as far from a top-of-the-range rural resort you can get, the town and surrounding countryside of Fengcheng did have a certain attraction. A sleepy little Chinese backwater hamlet during the day, takes on a lively night-time ambience with the constant blare of street music reverberating up and down the main street of the town.
Fengcheng’s natural environs (just a leisurely stroll from the built-up area) have a lot to offer in the way of walks through wilderness, viewing pleasant rivers and streams and some dazzling local fauna. All in all our brief sojourn in Fengcheng was a chill-out, low-key diversion from the urban tourist trail. 
Fengcheng, Liaoning province, is about 35 miles or so north-west of the city of Dandong
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* the best kind of forest!
Tiger Mountain, Eastern Liaoning Province: A Border Wall and a Fine Example of Restored Chángchéng
Before coming to Dandong, my only exposure to China’s greatest human-made wonder was a day visit years ago to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall near Beijing. So I was interested while in Dandong in taking the opportunity to see a very different and quite remote section of this greatest of walls. I also relished the chance to experience a section of 长城 that would not be maxed out with zillions of formicating tourists. Visitors often complain that seeing the Wall at the more popular sections like Mutianyu, Juyong Pass or Jiankou entails having to manoeuvre round countless numbers of slow-moving or immobile walkers, thus taking the gloss off the unique Chángchéng experience.
We toured the Hushan section (about 15km north-east of Dandong) on a warm midsummer’s day. At the entrance gates to the site (a pseudo-ancient wall edifice created to create the ambience of a historic wall structure), the process of entry was fairly seamless, our tickets, pre-arranged, were purchased on the spot and we moved through the turnstiles and were funnelled into waiting transporters. From there we were whisked off to the start-point (about 700m distance from the gate), passing ambling visitors and a large heroic sculpture positioned about half-way to the Wall’s first part. The tourist start-point contains an impressively restored main tower (the two-storey gate tower).
On the structure itself there was a steady stream of inquisitive visitors eager to climb and explore the Tiger Mountain Great Wall. Well patronised but nothing like the “Boxing Day” crowds and queues in the Beijing district Walls. The only part of the Wall where a slight bottleneck eventuated was two-thirds of the way up to the summit where we had to line up (in a fairly orderly and polite fashion for a Chinese queue) to climb a set of very steep and narrow stairs. Once past there, there wasn’t any further encumbrances impinged on a very smooth climb to the Wall’s highest point.
The authorities don’t want anyone to ‘kindle’ the Great Wall
As I expected, some of the Wall’s floor surfaces were in better condition than others, but it was all still perfectly walkable. From the highest lookout point there are commanding views across the border into the uniformly wide, unpopulated fields of North Korea. The descent down from the summit is mostly very steep and winding. At the foot of the stairs on the eastern (border) side is a raised battlement area containing the relics of a couple of mounted guns that are several centuries past their use-by date.
By Great Wall standards Tiger Mountain isn’t a particular long section compared to others—distinctly short to be precise—but it still provided a reasonably testing walk in the hot summer of August even for those of reasonable solid fitness. On the descents especially, there was some steep, narrow and tricky steps requiring a careful and steady step. At the end of the walk, at the car park right on the PDRK border, there is a statue of some significance and nearby two strategically positioned refreshment outlets competing for your business. After a energy sapping morning’s climb there were many takers for a cool beverage. For those of us on an organised tour, a pick-up bus arrived within ten minutes to take us back the start-point, from where we were relayed back to the main gates by a “people mover”.
There is a row of souvenir stalls adjacent to the entrance wall building but unfortunately we were denied a chance to peruse the Wall-related merchandise as we were whisked off again back to the tour bus. If you continue past the Hushan site for a couple of kilometres on the winding Provincial Road north, there are several good vantage points on the side of the road from which to take good, unobscured long shots of the highest watchtowers on the Wall peering out from the mountain’s canopy.
Hǔ shān chángchéng
Background: Built during the Ming Dynasty in 1469. Originally connected with the Jiumenkou Great Wall near Qinhuangdao, eastern Hebei province.1,250m of the renovated Wall is open to the public. Contains 12 watchtowers of which the 8th, a two-storey watchtower is the stand-out.
An Upcountry Tour Along the Sino-Korean Border: More “Broken Bridges” and a Boat Trip on the Yalu
From our mid-city hotel in Dandong we took a tour upcountry following the river road (S319) into Hushanzhen and beyond. At the northern outskirts of the city we stopped for our first glimpse at the Korean side of Yalu Hé. The spot we stopped at contained a memorial to the Korean War sacrifices (two statues of heroic Chinese servicemen) and a stall hawking the usual military-themed momentos and souvenirs. The crossing point here to North Korea was fairly narrow and was marked by the barely existing remnants of an old wooden bridge (the bridge itself was long gone with a few rotting planks visible where the posts of the bridge once stood). Little could be seen on the other side, a wasteland of grasses and vast meadows.
At various stretches of the river road we were face-to-face with the barbed wire fence that demarcates the border between the two different communist countries. At some points the two states were separated by only about 30-40m of Yalu water (especially on the Binhai Highway stretch).
After a mandatory stop at Tiger Mountain to see the Hushan Great Wall (see separate blog), we ventured on to lunch at a pleasant roadside restaurant, one that specialises in the tourist trade, shuffling bus loads of lunching tourists in and out swiftly to capitalise on high turnover profitability.
Further up the river we stopped again at another bridge, this one with stronger historical overtones of the Korean conflict. This bridge bore some similarities with the famous Dandong Broken Bridge in that it was also a disconnected structure. From the Chinese shoreline it looked like a normal bridge, but once on it you soon realised that it jutted out only about two-thirds of the way to the opposite mainland, ending suddenly and abruptly in the middle of the Yalu river! Many, many Chinese tourists took the stroll along the length of the abridged bridge reading the Korean War information boards on the side as they went. Having reached the point where the bridge ended, it was obligatory for all to pull out phone cameras and take photos of themselves with the North Korean remote countryside as a backdrop. 
In what seemed almost conspiratorial, the North Koreans on the other side had truncated their bridge in a similar manner (although what there was of it was not as long as the Chinese one). I have no notion as to why these two sides of the bridge don’t connect or why they were at some stage severed, but I’m sure there’s a back story to it, if I could avail myself of the necessary Mandarin.
The site has plenty of tourists stalls, as well as an amicable fellow dressed in Korean War era uniform with a blackened face and a rifle who provided ‘atmosphere’ for the historic site, making himself available to tourists for ‘authentic’ looking photos. Next to the bridge there was a wharf from where we took a long boat trip out into the river. The boat charted a course around the waters veering into North Korean territorial waters…we got close enough to the Korean mainland to make out farms, the occasional building, a handful of motor vehicles, but saw precious few actual North Koreans.
Our boat passed a desolate fishing boat reeling in its net in the windy waters and eventually disembarked at an another point down the river where we were entertained by an all-female music concert which included both Chinese singers in traditional costumes and a girl pop band with members dressed in a kind of retro-Sixties’ outfit. Back at the wharf we returned to the bus for the long drive back down the S319 through Kuandian County, reaching the outskirts of Dandong just in time to join the afternoon gridlock on Binjiang East Road.
Dandong’s Historic Bridge to North Korea: A Fleeting Peak into Kim’s Kingdom
Dandong in China’s North-eastern Liaoning province is 541 miles from Beijing, but only some 105 miles from Pyongyang, North Korea’s seldom seen capital. But Dandong is much, much closer to North Korean soil as a visit to the most eastern city in China’s Dong-Bei will confirm. From Dandong’s shoreline on the Yalu River, the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Korea (PDRK) is just the distance of one short bridge away.
We, like millions of Chinese visitors from other parts of the vast country, paid the admission fee (¥30 per head) to tour the bridge open to the public✹. This bridge is no ordinary bridge even by Chinese standards, the bridge is truncated on the Korean side as a result of war damage. This is the famous Yalu River Broken Bridge. Built by Imperial Japan in 1911, the half-way section of the bridge was destroyed by an American B-29 bomber during the Korean War. The bridge has been deliberately kept un-repaired since for its Cold War propaganda points-scoring (and the eastern sections of the bridge subsequently dismantled by the North Koreans).
As you walk up the stairs from the entrance, you are bombarded with another bit of transparent Chinese propaganda extolling the patriotic homeland – a stirring large multi-figure set of stern-faced statues, heroic Chinese servicemen striking an ever-vigilant pose, on the lookout for foreign “enemies of the state” (there’s also another patriotic military wall sculpture on the front (street) side of the bridge.
At night the Broken Bridge is at its most visually striking as the bridge cascading into a revolving spectrum of colours. Climbing on to the bridge itself (draped in Chinese flags) during the day allows visitors, some in guide-led tour groups, more opportunity to study the bridge’s intricacies in detail. The swing bridge signage contains detailed information explaining its unusual engineering specifics, a “Unique Horizontal-Opening Beam Bridge” (a special thrill for civil engineering tragics and graduating Lego enthusiasts alike).
The bridge was very well attended on the afternoon/evening we visited, everyone making their way to the famously truncated section of the bridge to survey the damage close-up. The end-point, with people jostling for prime position, is also the best spot to peer into the “Hermit Kingdom” of North Korea, home of the colourfully unstable President Kim. Just across from here is the “ghost town” like city of Sinuiji…at night bereft of lights, and during the day scarcely little to be seen, a scattering of seeming abandoned grey old buildings, a strange orange dome-shaped structure that catches the eye and a dilapidated Ferris wheel, and precious little else. Eerily it is seemingly also bereft of observable human life. An added nationalistic touch for very many of the Chinese visitors was to snap a selfie with both the red Chinese flag and the Sinuiji “still-life” backdrop.
Of course back in Chinese Dandong you can find a North Korean presence right here. Several of the restaurants in riverside Binjang Middle Road are North Korean (run perhaps by economic refugees who had once taken the chance to hop over the Yalu at some point to find more profitable trade and opportunity on the Chinese side).
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✹ there are in fact two bridges in Dandong, sitting side by side, that span the river to North Korea – the second bridge, the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, is a traffic bridge for (a restricted number of) sanctioned vehicles making the journey to Pyongyang