A Seaside Fourth

Quite unintentionally, I passed another Fourth of July in China last week. This year's festivities went down near the oceanside city of Dalian, China's northernmost "ice-free seaport."

That morning we had risen, again, on an all-night sleeper train and thereby began a week of rapid travel throughout Liaoning and Shandong Provinces. After arriving at Dalian's train terminal, which disappointingly looks like every single other train terminal in China, we were hustled onto our tour buses and taken to our hotel farther down the coast. Much of Dalian's fascinating history was unbeknownst to us.

As it turns out parts of Dalian, or "Port Arthur," were occupied briefly by the British. During the Sino-Japanese War it came under Japanese control. Later the Russians obtained rights to it, and it became Russia's largest trading city on the Asiatic coast, linked by rail to the Trans-Siberian line until the Japanese again invaded. Immediately after Japan's surrender in 1945, the area passed into Soviet control. Only in 1955 did the last Soviet soldiers pull out, leaving the city to Chinese authority. But, like with many things in China, Dalian's outer appearance gave little indication of such an exciting or tumultuous recent history.

My only view of Dalian proper came when I volunteered to pick up 75 KFC orders for the group with our tour guide. Before boarding the ferry to cross the Yellow Sea towards Shandong, our American-born caucasian guide Shane took three of us on the hurried lunch-mission. The ferry had docked much farther from the city than he anticipated, so we had precisely ten minutes in the city to pick up our waiting order before taxiing back to the industrial-looking ferry port. Again, though, the city appeared superficially the same as every other large Chinese city I have seen.

But I didn't mind because the day before we had enjoyed a pleasant day of swimming in the ocean. I had never expected, ever, to go swimming in a Chinese body of water. It proved too tempting, however, and I am still healthy a week later. Our crumbling hotel happened to face a surprisingly aesthetic rocky beach, just a few hundred yards from a man-made sandy beach occupied by several Russian tourists.

It was also a day for other firsts - my first visit to a Chinese theme park. Visions of dilapidated death-traps were dismissed when I beheld the impressive facility, known as "Discoveryland" (发现王国). It is something of a cross between Disneyland and Six Flags. For example, "Discoveryland" is written in the same font as is "Disneyland," and there is a large tower in the middle with turrets. The roller-coasters were very modern, and at least on-par with those at Six Flags in the United States.