Blogs from Dalian, Liaoning, China, Asia - page 3

This was the shortest day so far finishing at lunchtime so i had planned a very long nap! However, after originally deciding not to have lunch, was persuaded by David to go with him, wally, cecillia and guang to get some dumplings. They were INCREDIBLE! My favourite being a weird combination of crab and chicken! We also learnt the characters for chicken and beef so hopefully will avoid the sheep guts next time.... When got back to room found the girls standing around with Anna locked in her toilet and the Chinese porters struggling to get in. She had been there for an hour with the porters not seeming to understand the urgency and originally suggesting they come up later to help, wouldn't have had the same problems with Stan, Jeff and Eric! I then had ... read more

Today we had our first lessons in Madarin Chinese, the least said about that the better, and Chinese Papercutting. The papercutter teacher spoke no English so was down to Jack to translate!! He was ridiculously skilled and told us how he used papercutting as a living and got his wife by making her some paper animals. The art form is still revered in small villages, how other cultures live! My attempts would do well not to scare off a potential mate but will upload some pictures when I get the opportunity!! We spent the afternoon trying to sort out the internet but to no avail as the central system crashed....so had to settle for sticking my phone out the window and using some dodgy WiFi. We did some Chinese Shadow Boxing, more commonly known as Tai ... read more

We got up early to leave for the airport to meet the others and get our connection to Dalian. Caleb and I grabbed a drink and a Danish and used the hotel wireless to check our emails, we are important men afterall! We checked out and took the shuttle to the airport where we met Hongbo and Ing who are Chinese national post-grad students from Durham who will be making sure nothing happens to us! We went through security where I had a dedorant, that i had thought i had left on the plane, confiscated, that could be an issue seeing how much I sweat and the fact that the Chinese dont really sell it! Flight was delayed so it gave us some time to chat and myself, matt and max to grab some beers seeing ... read more

I went grocery shopping yesterday. Here is a picture of one of my favorite produce stores in Hong Mei (the Korean part of town). I also added a picture of what I bought for 25RMB or about $3.96. Life in China is going good. It has been almost 2 months since my winter holiday. In less than 2 weeks is our next holiday. I will be flying to Korea for 9 days to escape the chaos that is China during any sort of National Holiday (I learned my lesson in Suzhou in October).... read more

Homeward bound We left Beijing for the short flight to Dalian. Dalian? Why on earth would we go back to Dalian? Well, that is where our company paid tickets to Canada left from. In the good old days, we could cash the ticket and fly from anywhere we wanted. Or just change the Japan Air Lines ticket to leave from another city. But this year, the ticket rules changed and we had to leave from the city where we had originally arrived. With the uncertain weather in July (remember the three day fog delay last year) we decided to arrive in Dalian a couple of days early so we would be sure to be in the right city on The Big Day. It turned out to be a good decision as there was a lot of ... read more