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.