Life in Dalian and on vacation trips away from Dalian have kept me busy.

Let's begin with life in Dalian. Since my wife got landed immigrant visas for her and her daughter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, our life here was clearly coming to an end. Her mind during the month of July and August was focused on her return to Vancouver to continue her quest of Canadian citizenship and a separate (from him) participation in the Canada Pension Plan.

For my wife and daughter the other priority was getting to Canada in time for the new school year and Kelly's registration at a BC high school. So Yuan spent lots of time on the Internet researching rental properties in Vancouver with a view to finding a home close to a good high school.

With one thing and another Yuan decided to leave Dalian on August 20 last.

By then I had to come to terms with the prospect of staying in Dalian until late December 2005 and so live without the pleasure and joy of Yuan's company for 4 months. After telling her that I felt I couldn't do that. I resolved to split the difference by leaving Dalian to return to Vancouver no later than 2005 October 30.

In the meantime I decided to visit more of Shandong Province. So on Aug 21 I took the night ferry to Yantai. During the next two days I visited Penglai and Weihai. Photos below show some of the scenery I saw. Unfortunately I erased a 256MB flash drive by mistake and lost about 200 photos of this visit, especially the Penglai part.

Most Chinese people I have encountered seem to get the best from me.

Last Wednesday - Aug 3 - in the early AM, I picked up on a post in Danwei.com about a call for laowei to participate, all expenses paid, in a Photo Festival taking place in Tengzhou, Shandong, next to Lake Weishan.
 After checking this out in my trusty Lonely Planet Chinapedia, I found zip there about either Tengzhou or about Lake Weishan. But I know now that is not too surprising because few Chinese not from southern Shandong know anything about either the city or the lake.

And then my wife pooh-pooed me saying “”Go on, it’s too early to call that Beijing number!”  But I persisted and got her, because she is Chinese, to complete the call. Eight days later I can say without hesitation that I am very happy that she made that call to Chen Jian, as suggested by Danwei.com.

Yesterday, and about 24 hours late because of ferry interruption due to Taifeng Masta, I got back from a four day stay in Tengzhou for the 2005 Yintai International Lotus Photography Festival from Aug 4 till Aug 7.
 My bottom line here is that just about everybody I met and worked with during that time got the best out of me and I got a great China experience at minimum cost to me.

There was plenty of good food to eat, good drink and they gave me about 200 glossy prints (7X5) of different scenes in and around Tengzhou that I photographed.  

Best of all I met some of the nicest Chinese women I have known since arriving in Dalian 10 months ago. BTW I met my wife, who is the light and love of my life in Vancouver many months before I came to China.

I also met 4 interesting and amusing laowai, including a Shuchat from Montreal, Canada and a “beautiful American”. So thanks for the post and great tip Danwei!
 
Since there were 55some Chinese expert photographers from Beijing, Ji’nan and Tengzhou involved in the event, I felt that I was one of the most photographed personas in Tengzhou during those 3 days of photo shoots, some for the contest and some for plain fun. They liked my multicolored bandanas and my good humor. So I won no money prize, but the experience was the best prize for me.
 
Tengzhou is a lively provincial city, which can boast of a largish industrial base of the non-rust belt variety. Clearly, municipal administrators there work hand in hand with industry players to enhance the city and the attraction of Lake Weishan, with its extensive lotus ponds and wetlands. Waters of the lake look relatively clean. I tasted some of the fresh water fish from the lake and it was yummy.

Yintai Foods, a prominent employer in Tengzhou, has built a very attractive botanical themed restaurant and is adding at least one hotel and other leisure features in the area.  

Tengzhou is just an hour or so farther on the Shandong Expressway after Qufu and Tai’an. If you focus on the good things in Tengzhou, you will enjoy the visit.

It is so nice really!

The first photo below shows the blossoms/flowers on trees in D called cottonrose hibiscus. The trees are all over the place, on busy lus (roads), in our hua yuan (garden complex) and in the forests around town. Just delightful like a lot of roses, peonies and such in the most surprising and normal places in and out of town. China is a flowering Middle Kingdom. My kinda place!

The next photos show aspects of Dalian taken from a 400m above sea level vantage point known as Tai Xiao Shan ( little mountain).

I managed to scramble up an informal dirt trail and experienced some awkward moments as one does during a scramble over an unknown steep space. By the time I got 2/3rds of the way up, I was soaked by sweat and dewdrops on the bushes and trees I brushed against on the way up!!

Musings about being Canadian in China

There is definitely something special about being a Canadian on July 1 singing O Canada to grade 3 & 4 Chinese pupils. And my heart literally felt it last Friday at Toayuan Xiao Xue (Primary).

Don't tell the Yanks, but I also sang Oh say can you .. after repeating O Canada yesterday, July 4.

But that's not really what I am posting about this morning. My very good buddy Gerry C has asked me to comment about human rights in China before and this will be another of my feeble attempts on getting this right and authentic.

Let me begin by saying that my personal position in China, earning modest money as a primary school teacher, is that I am a guest of a great state that has more than 5,000 years of recognized civility. Not always appreciated by the alleged "freedom" promoters in US and Canada, but civil nonetheless.

So vibrant emotions about being a proud, strong and free Canadian got my noodle to thinking and this morning I read this from Stanley Crouch, an eminent US journalist and human rights critic.

"By Stanley Crouch, black American

America's dark history sheds light on future greatness

We should all be proud and happy to live in the United States because ours is a history of increasing human recognition. We are forever moving against our limits and being forced to face our shortcomings. We remain within the orbit of those American dreams, like sword points, that keep pushing us beyond what Mr. Jefferson and his boys thought, but which would not be possible without them."

I feel deeply that some Chinese human rights critic,  officially accepted or not, would espouse the same thought and feeling about China that Crouch does about America. It's not what happened before that is most important. It is what could happen, if we get things right and do the right thing more often in the future, tomorrow, next week or next year!

"Dalian Sucks": My feelings and thoughts Thanks to Derrick Chang and Ryan I read about this sad reaction to Dalian and China. And I am reassured by the following "A lot has been written on that BBS about Dalian. It's pretty much an abandoned thread ..."

The following comments are only mine and are deeply felt. I have interlaced many of his words with my own and tried to show the attributioin with quotes"".

I do not agree with Derrick's following thought: "Coming to China, for many foreigners is a step down in terms of civility and modern conveniences. You have to accept that fact." I did not at any time feel that kind of "step down". My own sense is that every city I have lived in or visited, regardless the continent, had good and bad sides. And that includes Victoria/Vancouver and certainly Toronto, ugly Cabbagetown for me!!!

On the whole I do agree with these words of his: "But China has other things to offer that these 'globalized cities' don't: great Chinese food, friendly local people (for the most part), cheap prices on just about anything and 5000 years of culture. Coming to live in China is not an easy transition on foreigners. Some people come here, hate it at first and learn to adapt (because China won't adapt to your liking), while others come here, hate it and hate it more the longer they stay. Fair enough. It's not a place for everyone. I'm probably a rare bird amongst the foreign population in China. I came here and liked it, still like it but dislike what goes on 'behind the scenes' of what most foreigners can see and experience. That's why I don't like many aspects of the country and culture. It must be stressed that overall, I don't hate the country at all, just many aspects of the culture and it's leadership. Most foreigners in China either don't know or understand what goes on or simply don't care as long as they are making enough money and enjoying a comfortable living. They have the right to be this way, of course."

I am happy to say that I too feel that I am the kind of rare bird that Derrick refers to above. But unlike Derrick I have a lot of respect for the leaders of this gigantic, quite disparate and largely peaceful country and society. The culture is different than my Euro-Canadian culture but that's the attraction for me. Vive la difference!!

..

Again I agree with the words below: "I think it would be best for you to take advice from people who live in China and have traveled to many parts of it. Most of the foreigners who don't like China I find are ones who haven't traveled around much in China and really only compare it to their hometown or other countries they've been to. They don't bother learning Chinese or making local friends. If they do make local friends, they have no clue what the Chinese are into. Chinese people are into things like going to sing karaoke, playing badminton, going for walks, eating at restaurants, watching movies and cartoons, playing cards, etc. Instead, China-hating foreigners spend most of their time in western style coffee shops, bars and restaurants eating western food and complain about how they are lonely, it's dirty outside, they can't meet Chinese people and it's not as good here as it is back home. Basically, they're not having a good time because they want the same life in China that they enjoyed back home in western countries.

As a foreigner living in China, the more you embrace the local culture, language and food, the more likely your enjoyment of life in China will increase. The same thing happens to some Chinese who head to foreign countries to study and/or work. Many don't integrate themselves into the local culture and only band together with other Chinese. Many aren't too happy moving away from China because things are more expensive and the culture is so different from their own."

Amen!!

He continues: "Of course the China-hating expats are entitled to their opinions..."

I accept that but I deplore their bad grace and lack of simple courtesy towards a people who have much to teach the western world. I completely agree with the following: "When it comes to the actual city of Dalian, I have few complaints. I left Toronto and basically the western world in search of a more interesting, livelier and challenging way of life. I found it here in China. When I go back to Toronto later this month, most of my friends will be working in the same job, same office, commute the same distance every workday, go to the same pubs/clubs/restaurants and be thinking the same thing: 'damnit I have to get out of this rut.""

I will feel the same when I go back to visit Vancouver, because from here on out I will likely split my time between the Canada/US West Coast and certain parts of China, including certainly Dalian!! And then he closes with this to mind very accurate description of Dalian and China.

And I completely agree with the following: "Dalian is a city of contrasts, as most other cities in China are. The downtown core is beaming with skyscrapers and well manicured streets and squares. Out near the airport and special economic zone 开发区 it's a bit dirtier and uglier because of the industrial activity. There are pockets of the city that aren't beautiful of course, but the shoreline of Dalian, especially the coastal road I always talk about Binhai Road 滨海路 is very scenic and beautiful.

xI laughed when the original poster wrote that Dalian has a "very short coastline path and a few green hills". Binhai Road is upwards of 30kms long!!! How long does this guy want it to be? He obviously doesn't know the city very well, out here in the software park where I live there are many green hills and they extend further down towards Lushun. Out in Jinzhou there's a big mountain that I've mentioned a few times, Big Black Mountain which can provide a nice day-long climb and hiking expedition.

The beaches are gravel and small stones, don't come to Dalian expecting Thailand in terms of beaches. The water isn't even warm enough to swim in until early August! Chinese don't like to sun tan (white skin is considered beautiful in China) and lie on the beach anyway, so it's not a big deal for them if there isn't fine white sand.

Chinese rave about Dalian because it IS one of the best cities in China to live. Perhaps not the most modern or happening cities (Shanghai), not as rich in culture or historical as others (Beijing/Xi'an) but in terms of general cleanliness (air/water/ground), scenery, low cost of living and laid back people, it's hard to beat. The top communist party members in Beijing like to vacation on a resort in Dalian and I heard rumours Jiang Zemin was vacationing (read: hiding out) at the resort during the SARS outbreak of 2003!

People speak pretty standard putonghua too, which helps with language study. Dalian feels a lot like my home in China; whenever I traveled around China, returning to Dalian has felt like returning home. Dalian and Chengdu are the only two cities I'd prefer to live in if I had to choose:

Dalian for the cleanliness, climate (a tad windy in the winter but nothing a born/bred Canadian boy can't handle), language (good pronunciation of putonghua), northeastern food (did I mention before I love dumplings?), oh and the pretty girls.

Chengdu for the ancient history, spicy food and close proximity to the most beautiful parts of China (Jiuzhaigou, Tibet, Xinjiang, etc), oh and the pretty girls.

Comparing any Chinese city (excluding Hong Kong/Macau or anywhere in Taiwan) to any city in the west just isn't really fair. No city in China would probably rate up there with London, New York, Singapore, Paris, etc., not yet at least. But if Shanghai is the 'international city' that China is aiming to present to the world, all hope is lost. HAHA I'd rather it be Beijing..thankfully they'll be having the Olympics in 2008 and hopefully Beijing can show the world more Chinese culture and history than Shanghai ever could!"

Amen Derrick Amen, I couldn't have said it better.

And to those expats who can only bitch, complain and act as if the Chinese are a sub-class of humanity, "You most probably didn't have much of a life when you left "home" and if you continue acting as you do, you won't find much to go back to in the end. Try to open your mind to a bit of civility and a better sense of human values!!!"

And my last word to you is "your words and thoughts suck, so try to get a better grip on yourself and live a little"

I guess that I should have opened another category for this post, but I am lazy and won't do that.

In mid-February this year we got an envelope telling us to be at the Immigration Section of the Can Embassy in Beijing on June 16 at 9AM. Note the advance notice seen by us as delay in the process for us!

During the first few minutes of that interview we learned that our sponsored by me visa application was considered straight-forward, on paper, by CIC. But there was the awkward fact that Y is 41 and I 69 going on 70. Now it is our own joke that I am younger then she. But that's our joke and bureaucrats don't really get that!

So the young CIC visa officer did ask Y, when I was invited to step out to the waiting room, if she worried about my "old age". In her usual style, Y took over the interview from the 3 CIC staffers who were behind protective glass and simply said that she loves and I love her and that's the whole story.

Well the long and short of this session was a positive conclusion, which I accepted at first! They gave us a ticket that was IDed as a Status Check and we were told to come back for the visa documentation no earlier than 1:30PM. We went off to a much enjoyed lunch of cold beer (2 bottles) and roast Beijing Duck. The food was good as was our mood, until we got back to the CIC "waiting room" at the Embassy.

Of course, we didn't expect to get our stuff right away, but when the clock ticked over to 2:30PM and our invisi number seemed elusive on their summoning board, our mood slipped from good to worried and as time slipped by grim. Yuan considers that CIC officers are more biased against Chinese applicants than neutral, as they claim to be!! But proving the case is not only sticky it is not the done thing in China!

I had set up a 3 PM meeting with a possible publisher for my word scratching. 3PM glided by and it wasn't until 4PM that we finally summoned by the anonymous invisi voice and electronic waiting ticket number to room 8, where we got our much anticipated and very large envelope. In it we found, in spite of Yuan's worst fears, all the right documents and there were more than just two visad passports. There was that large multipart form that the landed immigrant must produce on original entry to Canada.

I guess they are convinced that they know what they are doing. The new legal immigrant wants to get that plastic re-entry card. And the form is the only way to get it. So be it!!!!

Luckily for me that publisher was a Chinese gent and rec eived graciously at 4:30PM. It was a good interview and we finished our day in fine style at Tiananmen Square, a Boatse resto, Starbucks at Cofco Plaza and then that great place the Beijing Train Station.

Then she got me a soft sleeper berth on the night train (10 hr ride) back to Dalian while she used her upper triple deck hard sleeper. Wasn't she sweet? But the main thing is that once again our good karma held and All's Well that Ends Well, as Shakespeare famously wrote!!

I have to make a comment about what I see happening on the streets of Dalian these days. It's Spring and at this time of the year in all developed countries those hardy souls among us who repair streets, sidewalks, sewers et al come out in their usual regalia, work clothes, trucks, backhoes, shovels, picks et al.

It is a bit of a sight to behold here in Dalian, which is really part of the developed world, more than of the developing world, but not quite as polished as you find on typical city street in let's say, Vancouver or Victoria. Here they tend to wear very informal work clothes, mostly because I think that contracting out is very widespread here. In fact, the other night we saw some men, naked to the waist, digging a trench on the sidewalk of the main drag not too far from home.

Many workers are hired to work on digging trenches and such right off the street. Oh, I didn't tell you that here in Dalian hour/day workers congregate in certain well known parts of the city hoping to be picked for a project by a contractor or any Chinese Tom, Dick or Harry. And many of them have their own power tools with them. Needless to say these Public Works laborers/workers don various kinds of dress. There is no dress code there. And then when the work seems to be done and the road, or whatever, is leveled or paved, another group comes around to dig a new hole and do something that was missed first time around. They do that in China too!!

Traffic gets snarled, while roads are partly or completely blocked. Then the usual bleeting of horns goes up many notches here in China as drivers get upset, try to maneuver around the mess or whatever seems to be the thing that they feel like doing. And I must say that many times it isn't obvious what any driver intends to do or is doing at any given time, snarled traffic or not. It's just a lot louder when traffic stops moving in its Chinese way.

The first photo below is an early morning scene, that I took from our smallish balcony, of the street that is a semi-circle around the Peace Plaza, a shopping mall behind our apartment complex and very handy for us. In the middle of that photo, work is underway to repair something in the middle of the roadway. One of the 412 buses, which wend their way from their terminal next to the shopping centre to the southwest of here, is working around that blockage, which is embellished by a car that is athwart the street (God alone knows why). While early morning pedestrians walk by with little concern.

The street at the top of the photo is a main drag one way to downtown, Georgi (Gorky) Road (Lu in Pinyin). You may be able to detect a small obstruction in the middle of the street which was a repair site about a week before I took this picture. Just a minor street in Dalian South, Shahekou District.

The two other photos I have added below show the same street scene this morning as I type this post. I began my post at about 6:13AM, which was not long after the truck in the second photo arrived which horn honks and worker chatter. They dumped the earth and then voila 30 minutes latter (the third photo) they were gone and the street is back into its usual vocation of a street behind a shopping plaza, which has few underground bays for goods to be delivered. Stuff piles up on the sidewalk!!

And then there is sidewalk work

If its sidewalk work that needs to be done (there must be something different that drives that process in China), then you can count on the work being done over several weeks with lots of ways of making it harder to use the sidewalk all that time. And if you step into the side of the roadway to walk easier, beware of the buses, taxis and ubiquitous bikers, motorized and not!! The interesting thing in China is that cycles, scooters, and bikes of all sizes can come at you from front, side and back.

It was apparent a few weeks ago that sidewalk renewal was underway in the Zhongshan District, where the Taoyuan Primary (Taoyuan Xiaoxue in Pinyin) is. This is where I teach Oral English to grades 3 and 4.

Many sidewalks are quite easy to maintain, renew and dig into in Dalian. Often the sidewalk itself is just a bunch of uncemented bricks that sit on a levelled dirt surface. Easy to pick up and easy to replace, but they don't get around to the replacing that quickly. Most of the sidewalks around the school have been dug up for the last month or so!!

With all the talk there is here about how "free enterprise" reigns in private and public Chinese affairs, I have no reason to doubt that somebody must have a "profitable contract" for the renewal of sidewalk bricks since there seems to be a systematic process of pulling up the bricks, changing some of them and then putting them back into place all over Dalian this Spring season.

Street Voyeurs

There is one thing that typifies this kind of street activity in China. There are lots of men and women who don't seem to have very much to do during the day (their not busy teaching grade school like yours truly). Consequently any street event, construction or accident causes a gaggle of folk to stand, comment and even shout about whatever is happening or has happened. Of course, my wife Yuan has to ask me what or why I am looking at some of this. But she is good about it and not rarely she asks the people standing or those working what's what and then tells me about it.

Oh, there is another interesting thing about public works in China, at least in Dalian they work at all hours day and night and it seems almost 7 days a week. Yuan tells me that there is a policy of shift work, but it's a fact that there are lots of willing hands here, as evidenced by all the people who stand on those special street corners looking for hourly/day work!!

Yuan and I celebrated Golden Week and the first anniversary of our first meeting. That night a yea ago we met on a park bench looking out over English Bay in Vancouver BC, Canada.

To celebrate we went to the local 5 star hotel for an Alaskan Seafood buffet. The hotel is the Dalian Furama and it's in the financial district here. Two pics of her and me below.

This was the second time I ate at the Furama. The first time I was part of the wining and dining exercise put on by the Headmaster of the school I teach at now. That was an interesting event since we ate in a private room on the 22nd floor. That meal was very good Chinese cuisine featuring seafood from the sea floor around Dalian. I and a young Chinese university student (foreign languages) were the only English speakers in a party 6. It was the third time I had been out on a social event since my arrival in Dalian with food the main feature of the event.

Then during Golden Week we lunched on the 56th floor of the Dalian World Trade Centre and got neat pics of downtown Dalian and its port area. Again see below. The views were quite good, in spite of Dalian's (which is the most livable of all large Chinese cities) incipient air pollution which is there unless a strong wind and cold front from the sea has cleaned out the air.

Later in that week Yuan and I went for a walk on part of Dalian's south coast road. We got a few interesting pics there also. The beach we were on looks out to Korea Bay, which is part of the Yellow Sea. The local story is that going to see the Buddha statue below should help a couple get a new baby. Neither of us are preggies yet!!

Now that spring is here, we have seen lots of fruit tree blossoms, lilacs and wisteria. The grass is greener, leaves on bushes and pine trees are green and trees are greening also. Dalian is beginning to look like a garden city. Fresh vegetables and fruit is in abundant supply. I have added a pic of blossoms near our apartment complex, Xin Xiwang Huayuan or New Hope Garden Apartments.

This week most working stiffs in China, like me, are enjoying a spring vacation that is defined known here as Golden Week. It is initiated on May 1, the celebration day for all good international socialists. It is a national holiday period and apparently is the cause for a mass outporing of in-country tourists of over 130 million holidaying Chinese citizens and many times fewer foreign workers (including yours truly).

To avoid the perils of long distance travel by train or plane during a holiday period, we decided to indulge in some local tourism. This consisted of visiting a local hot spring spa, Dalian Chengyuan Hotspring Resort. The first photo below shows a view of the property from our 6th floor hotel room. The Buddhist Temple (real monks) is at the top of pic. The second photo shows Yuan, checking in with Poul Goldschadt and Sanford B.

The resort was just a $6 CDN taxiride from home, including lots of stops on the way. It was in the "countryside" as opposed to being in the city, which is a significant distinction in China. City people are richer, more cultured and look different than country people. About 75% of China's citizenry live in the countryside (which is the term we use in teaching Oral English).

The third photo below shows a view into the outskirts of the city from the small "shan" (mountain) that is part of the hiking area on the resort. The water in mid-photo is a reservoir for Dalian drinking water. Since winter time is the dry season here, not much rain or snow, the water level in the reservoir is quite low (2/3rds of capacity).

The extensive grounds occupied by the resort, spa et al (about 400,000 sq. meters of land) were decorated with lots of blossoming trees, fruit and lilac, as well as 3rd growth forest, scotch pine +. It was also decorated with many Disneyworld kind of statuary and many outside ponds, that didn't look very salubrious, dying and dead turtles and dead fish! Very China, really! Apart from that the site seemed to be reasonably clean and taken care of.

There were lots of Chinese on the site who seemed to be in a few groups, including one group who were there for a class reunion event. These visitors seemed to enjoy the site, the hotel and the spa. There was a generous number of Hondas and Audis in the parking areas as well as a few tour buses. Sort of a typical resort site.

The "3 star hotel" showed signs of being frayed at the edges, lack of hotwater in the bath, (but lots of too hot water at the spa), no functioning bar (only beer, tea and cola service in the hotel lobby). But it was livable! The food service was acceptable and we didn't suffer any digestive upset, which is a lurking menace for over-sensitive Western digestive systems in China.

This winter has been a long one in Northeast China, in fact in all of China. And we have experienced a coldish spring, although we have had no late snowtorms, yet!!

So it is with some pleasure and anticipation that Yuan and I set out last Sunday to visit a park on the way to Lushun (Port Arthur in Manchuria terms, which was the site of a great battle between Japan and Russia in early 1900s).

Longwangtang Park is average size in Chinese terms. Unsurprisingly in China, the central statue was a dragon and other wall paintings in Taoist themes were also prominent. And in typical 21st century China the way in was a narrow roadway through a small village. Of course, there was a traffic jam on the way in. But we had bussed to the village and took a pleasant stroll through the village to the park. Lo and behold there were a fair number of blossoming fruit trees and a few magnolia.

We did a tour of the whole park, including walking over a pedestrian way looking down on what seemed to be a water reservoir. And we found a small pond were a few people were casting simple fishing lines into the water. There didn't seem to be much fishing action though. Just casting the line and waiting!!

The bus fare was a reasonable 4Y to go and 3.5 to return. The entry to the park was 15Y per. In fact, all parks in China have entry fees during Spring, Summer and Fall seasons. The villagers provided some light entertainment in the park. There was a mock wedding party complete with costumes, music and a sedan chair for the "newlyweds".

Since the park was quite busy, families and groups were spread out, some playing group games, others picniking and others resting after picnicking. And of course lots of photo work by park visitors, including yours truly (see below).

The ride to the park took about 45 minutes and about 35 to return to the suburban bus depot in South Dalian. Local buses can provide unpleasant surprises for the Western visitor. Lots of rural Chinese use these buses to bring food back and forth. On the outgoing bus, we couldn't miss the strong aroma of old fish. But it was not too overpowering. The buses are the smaller variety and are full of strong rattles. But the cost is reasonable and the service quite frequent. The countryside outside of Dalian looks dry, even after a few days of April rain/showers. We did enjoy the outing though!!

Let me be clear about one thing for my Western culture readers. Things like this park in China are not at all like anything comparable in Canada or the US. The last time that I have seen as much garbage and trash scattered about was in Italy and it would be difficult for me at this time (20 yrs later) to say which public space was dirtier, the one in China or in Italy. Oh, I mustn't forget my experiences in Algeria, where public space was quite dirty with human and animal feces, as well as other kinds of vegetable and packaging trash, scattered about!! In my mind, the aroma in the air of much public space in China is more reminiscent of the Algeria I visited 30 yrs ago.

But having said that, I did enjoy this outing and will likely enjoy other outings. But I try to be open and transparent by not applying Western standards when I visit Chinese sites. They are disctinctly Chinese and not Western. End of caveat!!

I just read a review of Orhan Pamuk's description of the special grime of Istanbul grimmiest cities . Well since I live in China now and will for a few more months and since I have visited Istanbul recently (2003), I feel that I can comment on comparative city grime.

My general impression of city grime factors in my experience with Montreal and its grime, Rome, Florence, and Milan, Paris, Bordeaux, and Toulouse, Algiers and Oran and their city grime, and even Kuwait with it's old Arabic grime combined with new and modern grime. But in my mind today, I have never encountered grime on such a wide scale as I have in China.

To begin with there is the grime of the many residential buildings in a city like Dalian, which is characterized by many Chinese as an examplar of "easy and nice city environs" and is on the Eastern coast of China, in fact is described by Dalian city fathers as the Vancouver of Eastern Asia. Some of that grime is because of human use/abuse, some because of bad construction, like flaking stucco and paint on residential buildings, a generous covering of coal dust and fine debris in the air from all the destruction of unused or prematurely aged buildings, trees decorated with dun colored plastic bags in the city and the countryside, and finally much simple neglect. All considered city grime I see here everyday does seem to be more pervasive and more variable than I have encountered before, except perhaps in Algeria.

In my humble opinion, Istanbul is grimy but a long way from the grimmiest i have seen in over 40 years of travelling the world!!

But it is a possible that the grime in one's city seems to be worse than the grime of other cities!! Which leads me back to Vancouver, where I recently lived on the East Side, or the allegedly grimy side, which includes Vancouver's Chinatown area.

I have been viewing photos of Vancouver's Chinatown area in my iPhoto library collection which I recall with some fondness and all I see are pictures of flowers, plants, bushes (rhododendra) and trees. In fact, my photos show little downtown city grime and much color!!!

So in my mind city grime is in the eye of the beholder! And any writer thinks that the grime in his city is the worst of all or so Pamuk seems to want to say!!

Lest anyone think that I am being especially negative about the city grime that I have seen in China, it may be that I am indulging my writerly self and seeing more grime than I would if I were other than this writer!!! City grime is everywhere and I am sure that if I visited more countries, like Afghanistan or Bangladesh I could discover more grime than I had seen till then!! City grime will never end nor ever be the worst ever. There can only be worse elsewhere!!

The famed NY Times journalist, globetrotter and chrystal ball analyst, Thomas Friedman, has a piece in the NY Times this weekend giving an urgent wakeup call to Western parents to prepare their children for a flat world - The world is flat after all! -

My sense is that Friedman is describing a major globalization "tipping point" that he claims is already past. He describes the new phase of globalization in which businesses in China and India begin to compete directly with Western Business, like Dell and HP. Since I live in China and will continue to for at least 6 more months I have a visceral and highly personal sense of China that probably isn't visible in the board rooms of outsourcing vendors in Bangalore and Guangzhou. The China that I see is grimy, littered with lots of plastic bag garbage in the air and on the ground, wasteful of its (and the world's) scarce resources, seemingly happy with its lot, hard working but there are many signs of egregious waste and festering poverty.

Yes they study hard in the schools, including the one where I teach in Dalian. They study English diligently in K to 12, tech schools and universities. And there is lots of emphasis on English on TV, but the looniness of this ever so thin veneer of English is well portrayed in the Internet website www.engrish.com. The fact is that many educated Chinese men and women have in-depth knowledge of English grammar in a rule based sense but a pitifully inadequate ability to carry on a sustained conversation about even ordinary everyday subjects.

The story has now popped out that those prolific Chinese/Taiwanese factories in Southern China are experiencing a troubling and possibly persistent shortage of workers. Meanwhile in Dalian too many educated and experienced engineers and technicians are jobless and have been for quite a while. There are lots of "rough edges" in this economic powerhouse.

And I keep wondering everytime I walk by another empty office building or apartment complex why within walking distance there are large construction sites and big plots of the city land razed for new construction. What will happen here when the capital for construction runs out as it must, eventually?

On a more personal level a non-trivial and not much talked about issue in China is the degree of control that parents exercise over their adult children, male and female. It's not unusual to hear that he or she feels caught in a dead end job or marriage just to please or appease the parents and leave for a new better life elsewhere in China or abroad.

Another negative aspect is the amount of featherbedding in government and state enterprises. It is no wonder that many of those state businesses are considered a blight on the economy and worth little to China.

I haven't seen any evidence of an easy or frictionless move from a poverty ridden country to a major world economic powerhouse. There are lots of "bumps in the night" and that is not surprising if one considers that most world class economies got to be so with lots of ups and downs as well as twists and turns. But this government says and is showing signs that it will pay attention to the distribution of national wealth without overtly curbing the expansion of private wealth and capitalist enterprise, or that's the theory!!

Of course I have heard many stories about the pervasiveness of "grey money" that any bureaucratic or economic agent in this economy strives to get in whatever way that he/she can since their official salary can't cover their living expenses let alone the cost of buying and operating all those shiny new Benzes, Audis, and Bimmers or upper 6 to 7 figure price tag of residential real estate. In fact, lots of new pricey residential property is empty.

My sense is that journalist-experts like Friedman see very little of real life in countries like India and China. They live and eat in 5 star hotels, are driven around in shiny new black cars with heavily tinted windows to meet with successful capitalists and glib officials and don't have much time for stories about real life here. Having said that I realize that there are lots of blogs that try to give a more authentic picture of what life really is in these countries.

Life for Yuan and I is taking a TV star turn these days. Since the Headmaster at the Elementary School where I teach is a full time promoter of his school and its English program, I have been on local TV (for about 2 seconds) and today there was a piece in the local newspaper with me and a colleague while we were helping out with their English Festival event.

But Yuan’s daughter seems to be launched on a much more serious and TV star course. She and Yuan are going to Beijing for a 6 day test for an upcoming teen TV sitcom program. Of course, even a minor success in China means an audience much bigger than the biggest hits in North America. So Yuan and I are doing our best to stay cool about these distractions. Her daughter needless to say is excited and energized in a way that Middle School graduation could never do.

So for the next 6 days I will be living on my own in our apartment in Dalian. I will explore the streets of Dalian on my own. This will mean that I will have to fend for myself in stores and restaurants which should be a good thing for me.

Since it is now Spring here in Dalian, I decided to change from the Winter theme for this blog and change my photo. The new pic was taken by Yuan while we sat in the Vice-Principal's office at the KaiFaQu Middle School for a job interview. I didn't take that job but decided to keep and use the photo anyway!

I continue to teach classes Grade 3 and 4 at the Toayuan Elementary School and I am finding the experience stimulating, at least for now!

We have discovered reliable sources of Holland cheeses, tenderloin beef, fine red wines, sweet and Dijon mustard and crusty bread - white and whole wheat. So life feels more complete. I haven't found the Dalian version of English Bay or Stanley Park yet and I don't expect that I will find either here!

This is now being written on a Mac Mini OS/X platform. I bought this one in China and I figure that with the sales tax difference and currency conversion rate we have now that I have paid no more here than I would have in BC. So we are back to the OS/X platform, ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

Our PC was creaking anyway with system blackouts every other day and even sometimes twice in one day. So we pretty well had to do something and here we are!

We did not change our monitor but had to get a USB keyboard and a USB mouse. The HP 3325 printer now works with this platform with a minimum of fuss. In fact, the conversion has gone well.

It's kind of strange to be the breadwinner again. But Yuan has her own hands full with her mother and daughter. She is happy that I made it easier for her to come back to China but we won't stay here longer than we have to, depending on CIC's response to her visa application.

This week I was asked to teach a Grade 10 class and I realized that I prefer to teach Grade 3. The students seem to be so interested and participate in my teaching process so readily and easily that I know now that I would rather teach Grade 3. A discovery!!

I had to come to China to make that small, yet fascinating, discovery. Here I am, a cynic and sometime sophisticate who still spends lots of time reading all kinds of political blogs and I would rather spend 35 minutes with 9 year olds than with 16 yr old children.

I guess that is what an adventure is really about! Discovery about myself and my connections with others. I haven't taken any pictures yet at the school but I expect that I will before too long.

I think that part of my role there is to help the Chinese teachers with their English since they are the primary English teachers and none of them has much experience with foreigners who speak English. But the fact remains that their English is many times better than my feeble chinese!!

But that's China, or that is the Dalian version of China!!

I started teaching at the Taoyuan Elementary School (their words) on March 3. I will be teaching Oral English to 2 Grade 3 classes and all the Grade 4 Classes at this school. It seems that I will be doing spot service at other schools under the purvey of the Dalian University of Education. Today I completed my 3rd day of teaching and I am reasonably happy with the result of my efforts. I have been using lots of questioning and repetition of English pronunciation to give them some sense of the sound of the words.

No great teaching theory here!! Just some common sense and it seems to be working, so far. I am not the only foreigner teaching Oral English at this school. There is an American and an Irish laddie.

I added a photo below which I found on an Asian website (maybe Chinese). The image is so beautiful that I couldn't resist it!!

Globalization is a dirty word in many quarters, like labor unions in the Western World. Since I am living my own small global living adventure in China, I have met with an American, several Chinese and a biology teacher in Jinzhou, an industrial suburb of Dalian, who comes from Inner Mongolia. Each have their own version of a global living story that they tell.

I guess that this percolated through my conscious mind into my subconscious enough that the other night I had a long, or so it seemed to me, dream sequence that involved reading and writing about something that my subconscious mind titled "global sociability" and my conscious mind meditated on and renamed "global sensibility". Put in other words, it is for me a personal sense that I can find reasons or I can encounter people who have reasons to leave their home city and country to go half way around the world to find an alternative life.

After reading a bit about Chinese out migration from China before and after the Peoples Republic was established in 1949 and recent in migration from Western countries back to China, I realize that the Chinese have always been ready to seek fortune and a new life situation. That has been so for at least 300 years or if we can believe that wild Australian amateur historian, even as long ago as 1421.

To me this seems like another version or possibly the human context of globalization, which usually refers to manufacturing and trade in the business world and now involves the work and life styles of ordinary people like me and Yuan.

Off-shoring usually refers to moving some business or trade activity to another country for econmic reasons. I realize that today people in China and Western countries are willing to off-shore themselves for work or life reasons.

Today, 2005 Feb 16, we woke up in Dalian with a blanket (about 8 cms) of real snow on the ground. Till now we have a had a few dustings! A photo below shows how the shopping mall next door dealt with the snow in their parking lot.

The second photo shows the effect that a minor fireworks blowout has on a covering of snow!

Spaces is so simple minded!! I just typed in a paragraph and it was lost when the loading of the second photo below completed. I guess what I did wrong was to click on Publish to load the photo and then typed in text. The photo was 'published' and my text was lost! So henceforward I will not publish until I have completed text entry along with photos that I have added.

Dalian seems to have little or no equipment to clear snow away. Road salting is used to melt snow. Driveways, sidewalks and parking areas are cleared by people power with shovels and hand plows, many of wood or simple wood planking!! Snow tends to be collected into piles with cleared space in between each conically shaped pile of snow.

If I understand tomorrow, Feb 15, is the last day of the Lunar New Year/Spring Festival celebration. In Dalian this celebration is marked by fireworks and firecrackers at all times of the day with attendant noise and gunsmoke. Right now fireworks are going off just outside our apartment at 8:23 AM and they are not the first of the day. I have added some photos below showing scenes of the fireworks event put on during 5 nights by the Dalian Municipal government.

The first photo shows some of the crowd at Xinghai Square which faces Korea Bay in the southern part of the city. This park is dominated by several large pieces of real estate, two large International Exhibition Halls one of which is just being finished, a large castle structure that houses a shell museum and is built on the side of hill dominating Xinghai Bay and the Square. Then there are large condos, five built and many being built. The whole area is probably 4 by 2 kms or 8 square kms. Kinda big I would say.

The first official night Yuan and I saw a really spectacular display of fireworks but we didn't have our digicam. The display lasted about 25 minutes and I saw the most intense and colorful display I have ever seen, including the Festival of Fire events in Vancouver. What I have attached below is a feeble sample of what we saw that first night. But it was cold, like -20 with windchill and the crowd was large but well behaved considering. Public consumption of alcohol is rarely seen in Dalian. So teenagers were rambunctious with their own fireworks stuff but not rowdy!!

But over these 6 days I have to say that the sound effects are like a city under artillery fire that sorts of starts in one end, then moves to another, then another and then back to the beginning. And some of the sounds are big boomers. Needless to say the air is pungent with the smell of burnt gunpowder and the it looks smoky all the time. Apparently Beijing outlawed private fireworks about 12 years ago, but Internet reports are that Beijingers are restive and question why they should be deprived of the fun and chance to "ward off the evil spirits" like the rest of North China does at this time of the year to start of the new lunar calendar year.