"Dong Bei Ren"


....which means North-East person, in Chinese. The NE people have a fierce reputation in China (and that's fierce as in feral, not fierce as in Chelsea). Anyway, in the Northeast I visited two cities: Dalian and Dandong.

Dalian from the hill. It's a HUGE port, miles of containers - I've never seen anything like it except in Hong Kong. It's also famous for being beautiful and maybe it is by Chinese standards although I didn't get that so much - they're big into football, see the giant ball in the middle of the funfair. Every taxi driver wanted to talk about football, it was like being in Highbury. There are some nice beaches there which looked pretty clean even though the water was freezing. (I'm English so I paddled).






Russian Street in Dalian. The Chinese were grateful to the Russians for helping win the war agains the Japanese (I think) and granted the Russians the right to run trauns from Siberia to the port at Dandong and I guess this themed street developed in response. It's a curiosity but like themed streets everywhere in the world just sells tat.




From my hotel room in Dandong I could look across the river at North Korea. The hotel kindly provided telescopes in these rooms so you could spy on North Koreans doing something Axis-of-Evily, like playing Hacky-Sack or fishing in the river at low tiede. The nefarious bastids, evil hacky-sack, too, I'd wager.






This is the most Eastern part of the Great Wall. The river is the border with North Korea, beyond are North Korean fields where they are no doubt growing evil rice. It looked like a very understated border - I kind of expect with the Evil Chinese (are the Chinese still evil? I can't remember...) and the Evil North Koreans that there'd would be all kinds of blofeld shit along here and machines for making poisonous clouds that can rain acid on white babies and rockets aimed at the West but I didn't see anything. Then again, they're kind of friendly and it's bit like the US / Canadian border at Windsor, them being evil together and that. Having lots of guards would only get in the way of their evil plotting against us, right?




See? as if to prove my pint - this is the border check when you come into China. Looks like a cafe if you ask me. Probably come over for a cup of tea and a chat about killing the imperialist, capitalist scum down in Taiwan....while trying to buy D&G fake bags, of course.



The bridge on the right is the remains of the one the US "accidentally" strafed during the Korean war. North Korean left it this way. Later the Chinese rebuilt the bridge on the left. At night they're both lit up, but the one on the left is lit only half-way because the North Koreans can't be arsed making it look pretty at night. Of course, I think that's because evil plotting's easier to do on an unlit bridge, isn't it? And I suspect the Chinese made their side all schmancy just to show off....




Look! North Korean fisherman doing some evil-fishing!




Behind me, the Great Wall and on the right, North Korea. On me, big, fat eyebrows I borrowed from Neko Case.