Monday, April 11, 2011

China Post #3 Thoughts on Dalian and Sculptures

Well we have finally settled in enough to get out and about. This weekend we headed to Golden Pebble Beach on Saturday with one of Linda's local co-workers and on Sunday we headed into Downtown Dalian, which it turns out is actually 3.8 million and not the 2 million I thought it was, still a small city by China standards, though I wonder if that includes the area where we are or not.
Anyway on the short walk to the train station we had to go past an area called 5 Colour City, which has a bunch of shops, bars and what not and also some weird artwork. This cat with a pen is on one corner.
And this snail on another,
There is also a staked pumpkin pillar, a pair of ants and a mural of the Cooookie Crisp dog (thief)

Speaking of odd sculptures. On Saturday at the beach there was a section of road that was shut down as there was scaffolding in the road so that people could finish up construction on 10 or more large sculptures of sea creatures. Most were pretty normal, a giant crab and other animals. Then there was this one in a round-about. ( whoops, I forgot to rotate it)
It is a volleyball fish head alien in a bikini, Linda pointed out that it kind of looks like Fiona from the Shrek movies.

Here is Dylan in the sand at the beach.
The other reason they had the road closed down was that they had dumped a bunch of sand in the road to add to the beach.
In addition there was no good way to get the sand onto the beach so there was a section of sidewalk torn up to get the sand moved onto the beach, it is surprising that there was not an access point for this already and it seems as though they just tear up the curb each year and rebuild. This also seems to be the case with planting of trees in town. Apparently whatever is being planted can't really survive the winter up here and in addition the trees are getting put in way too close together. The trees have no leaves and already their branches are hitting each other.

Here is a feature on the coast near the beach called the Dinosaur drinking the Sea, looks pretty cool.
One thing I'd been curious about since we landed was the cars with the little red ribbons tied to them. You can see this car has them on the mirrors and wheels. Apparently it is a superstition and brings luck, people tie them to new cars and cars of those with a new drivers license.
And finally, what is the deal with banks here? Most of the time it seems as though every other building is a bank, how does that work? Here is one corner in particular that is really over run.

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