Shenyang and Dandong

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Two more days of no showers and pillows made of some kind of bean that remind me of beanbags - later we're finally in Dandong. Yesterday we woke up in Shenyang and bought some food from Carefour and then bought our train tickets and took two long buses to the Botanical Gardens. There were absolutely beautiful - a huge park with many courtyards and trees and flowers. We sat first and ate our lunch of fried curry rice, bananas, raisins, and apples and then wakled around a bit more to sit down in another spot and do some Chinese work. There were many couples all around. After a little while we moved again and found a huge grassy courtyard where - for the first time in China - people were finally allowed on the grass. Most of the time this is not permitted but here pepole were allowed and they were all over the place playing soccer, guitar, and basketball and just relaxing. We sat down by a rock and did more work until a mother and son came over and we started talking to them. The son (Jeff) had had three years of English so they kept trying to get him to say things to us. We talked for a while and walked together to the exit before taking another bus back. We then had a great kabob dinner of fish, chicken hearts, cucumbers, toast (also another first for China) and potatoes. The restaurant was so crowded that we ended up sharing a table with three others. Every now and again I would ask them what they were eating (how to say it in Chinese) and they would tell us and then insist that we try some. In this way I learned how to say wood ear mushrooms and clams. We then took another bus and got off randomly to find a small market with more kabobs. We bought some and got into a huge discussion about identity. Cat always tells people here that she's Chinese born in Canada and I told her to me that's like an African-American coming up and telling me they're African, which would be strange. She says that she does it because she's Chinese-Canadian but the Chinese part is stronger to her - which made sense to me.

Today we got up and took the train to Dandong after checking out of our hotel. There was one adorable little kid sitting with us who gave me a candy and a Chinese man who spoke English pretty well. We got to Dandong and called Cherry (a teacher from Rockies who lives in Dandong) to meet us at the train station. After a while she came and checked us into a fairly nice hotel same as the last but looks like an old homey place and has the train station and a tree outside the window. Showers are open from 6-7am for women. Hopefully I'll get to have one tomorrow. We left our stuff at the hotel and had handmade noodles for lunch. Then we went to the park - which is like Duke Forest only made mostly of road instead of dirt trails and has trails to cages for different zoo animals all over (surrounded by trees). I saw my first two humped camel, reindeer and rooster (which are very cute). There were many couples taking their wedding photos. It was great to get to hang out with Cherry - I'm looking forward to seeing everyone from Rockies again. We got to go up to the top of the huge hill that the park is in and look down - in the near distance there was a river and beyond the river one could see extremely flat North Korea with two factories and one big hill scattered around. We're going to go to the river on Friday - that'll be the closest I get to North Korea. Dandong is surprisingly HUGE I though it would be much smaller since the Lonely Planet doesn't mention much in the city but I was wrong. Cherry said she thinks it's about the size of Dalian.

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Photos

Entrance to Dandong Garden
This is the entrance to the garden in Dandong where we went with Cherry.

Dandong
This is a view of Dandong from inside the gardens. If you look carefully you can see the Yalu river in the back and behind it is North Korea. The Yalu bridge can be seen at the right crossing the river.