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Published: October 28th 2009
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Daliain's welcoming committee
Maurs asked me to carry that bag Before we begin here, we were informed that all of China is on the one time zone which is unusual as the country appears to have at least 2 ½ hours time span but in Beijing they do what they want. Now Dalian is BIG and I had never heard of it until I saw it on the list of ports of call. I suspect that pollution is a bit of an issue and the sky is hazy and only blue overhead. The city is enormous; the high rise buildings are very tall and interesting; maybe spectacular it’s a better word to use and they have much more character than say Melbourne’s tall boring conservative buildings. Traffic is thick, the cars blow their horns a lot and the streets are wide and sometimes it’s a fair walk to find traffic lights to cross those wide streets. Even crossing the street with the lights requires care, as cars can turn right against the right light as they do in the US. Taxis are mostly VW Santana’s (1980s type cars). They have white seat covers but that’s all they have going for them (nothing like the immaculate taxis in Japan). Cars are bigger
Excuse me
Whose footpath is this ! than they are in Japan. Cars use English numbers and letters on their number plates with only a small Chinese character on the left side. Drivers park on the footpaths and right on street corners, so sometimes its not easy walking up and down the street and obviously the city doesn’t employ parking inspectors! All street signs have English translations under the Chinese names so any reasonable map will get you around OK (our ship provided maps are barely usable and it must be very hard for passengers who struggle reading normal maps). Like Japan, most new buildings also have English signs on them along with their Chinese names (I figure there must be a federal government requirement about that). Dalian reminded me of London when I was there in 1976, it needed a good wash and the footpaths were dirty and stained. But despite all this, still no graffiti (Melbourne please take note again!). We got a few interesting buys at then markets - a tiny hand sowing machine AU$5, a neat little torch with movable arm and laser attachment, and a couple of unusual dashboard items. The most interesting sight was Laodong Park that cost AU$4 entry. Chrysanthemums
In the backstreets of Dalian
The washing isn't so uncommon, just where it was this time were just starting to finish and they had a novel way of displaying then growing up against 1M high dead tree stumps - very bonsai like and quite interesting at that. Outside the park entry there was a small band playing cultural music and instruments, which was also quite interesting. The small city trees are staked just as they are in Japan with four stakes tied to cross bars supporting the trunk - many small trees are also “bandaged” with hessian to half way up and I don’t know what this is for at the moment.
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