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Published: October 9th 2010
Dalian Maritime University
The main administration buildingI’ve been having a great time in China. Mostly I’ve been working, but I’ve seen a few of the sights around Dalian and in Shandong province and I’ve eaten lots of great food.
The dining halls on campus have an amazing variety of food. One dining hall has about six small restaurants that make food to order. Each specializes in a different type of food (all of which are from China) and so far I have not had a bad meal. Around campus are a number of small restaurants and food carts on the street. I have had a chance to try many of them. I particularly like the hotpot restaurants or the restaurants with freshly made noodles and fresh vegetables in a spicy bowl full of chicken or beef broth soup. The food carts have a variety of food from baked yams to crepes filled with bean paste, a hotdog, cilantro, hot peppers (dry and fresh), crispy deep fried crackers, and some lettuce. This crepe like concoction was surprisingly good. Now that Fall is here, food carts are selling candied crabapples on sticks…mmm…
Toward the end of last month was the mid-Autumn festival. For this holiday people give
each other moon cakes. These are cylindrical cakes stuffed with all sorts of things. I was given a lot of moon cakes leading up to this holiday. Some of the stuffings were strawberries, tea, egg, bean and beef. Needless to say it was always interesting eating them.
Besides wandering all over campus, I have managed to see a few of the sights around Dalian. In the beginning of last month I went to Pole Aquarium. This amusement park/aquarium has many sea creatures and shows and rides centered around them. I saw a seal (or maybe sea lion) and otter show and a dolphin show. In addition to the sea life, the park also has a large aviary, which is in the form of a valley with netting. There were many interesting birds just wandering around and nesting.
The beginning of this month was a week long holiday celebrating the founding of the People’s Republic of China. For this holiday I traveled with some friends to Yentai and Weihai. These towns are across the Bohai Straight from Dalian and therefore a seven hour ferry ride away. Yantai has about 6 million people so it is about the same size
as Dalian. This town is more spread out with a number of nice tree lined streets (at least in the region where I stayed) and many beautiful white sand beaches. The town and the area are known for their fruit and at this time of the year it is apples and grapes. At the night markets farmers would have truckloads of freshly picked apples for sale. We ended up bringing about 10 lbs of apples back to Dalian.
In Yentai I went to a small touristy island which is said to be owned by a god. We walked over the island and along the coast eating fruit from the trees and plants as we walked. Along the coast of the island we saw several painters painting the beautiful sea scenes and a lady in a red wedding dress being photographed. Because this is a weeklong holiday, it is a popular time for weddings. Typically the women are photographed in several different dresses (including a white dress) for their wedding albums.
On one area of the island there was a ritzy development that apparently failed. Only a few houses looked occupied, the rest were overgrown with plants and were
Dalian Maritime University
New buildings for the university and a subway station falling apart. The local farmers had taken to growing plants in the yards and storing dried plants in some of the houses. Besides this area, the rest of the island was very prosperous and pleasant. After Yentai I went to Weihai which is a few hours by bus to the East. Unfortunately when we got there it was cold and very windy. So after looking around a little we went back to Dalian.
I will try to update the blog once a month however I probably won’t have any interesting trips for a while.
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Chris
non-member comment
Like me some green roofs.
That's awesome... "Green is the new roof."