China Post #19 Labor Park

This past Sunday we headed in to Dalian to check out Labor Park. We'd heard that it was quite pretty and that it actually had walking paths and was not all in your face commercial. We walked to the train station in DDA passing one of these buses along the way.

Linda thinks they are really "cute" and look like some sort of insect with the mirrors being the antennae. She thinks they are so cute she wants to take one home, I'm all for it if I can redo the interior and turn it into a camper and she is willing to "feed" it.

Here we are on the platform waiting for the train, a lot of people headed towards town and not so many the opposite way.
The trains can be quite crowded and it is difficult sometime to even get on resulting in pushing matches.

Once we reached the park after a quick taxi ride we were greeted by another large gathering of people. Notice all the paper posted to the trees?
This is a weekly gathering for parents who are looking for spouses for their kids. At the top of the list is the birth year and month. There may also be job requirements or height, but it is mostly about the persons birth signs.

Then there was another area where there were a bunch of groups sitting playing card games just above a small pond.
Mow Dylan had really wanted to get a boat in Bingyou Gou because he had so much fun on the ferry ride. So we rented a peddle boat and cruised around for a bit, Dylan did some steering.
There were some older men practicing writing on the walk way. I think they were just using water.
There was a long wide walk way headed up from the pond towards a soccer ball shaped restaurant that had all 12 of the Chinese zodiac characters along it. Since nearly everyone was stopping to take photos with their's we did the same. I find it interesting that most of the Chinese seem to have a pose that they strike when they are getting their photo taken. Here is Dylan riding his pig.
After walking around on some paths through the trees, they were still paved, we came upon some fungi. There were 3 of the same type and one fat one. Here is Dylan on the smallest.
Linda on the medium,
and myself on the largest.
There was a pretty large flower garden attached to the park that had loads of lilies? in many different colors. Here are Linda and Dylan in front of some purple, Linda's favorite, and yellow ones.
Some pink and white ones back lit.
Finally we came to another entrance from the one we took and got to see the Labor sculpture.
After the park we headed a few blocks away to an Indian restaurant we had been told about called Abashi. It was not real easy to find since the name was not on the building and the location does not exactly match what comes up on the map when I did a search. Anyway, Dylan loves his Indian food and made every effort to cram as much in as he could.
It was a long day, we probably caught the second to last train back to DDA and Dylan was...
fading fast.

China Post #18 Appearance

This may be specific to Dalian, I don't know having not traveled that much outside of the city. It seems as though the city streets are considered a garbage can or advertising space. You see people throw half empty drink bottles, cigarette boxes, flyers that they don't want, really anything on the ground. People also paint phone numbers and places stickers on the ground with phone numbers to advertise, I guess?

So it is a good thing that there are loads of these guys going around, the Dalian garbage men and women. Some pick it us and others use the garbage bikes to get it were it belongs.
If you think the garbage guy is burly, I don't know what this guys was moving about, but he can't even see the road in front of him.
Now up here is Dalian we are pretty far north and even though we are on the coast it snows regularly during the winter. Some trees do fine, others apparently not as well. I don't remember the numbers exactly but they were at least 1 and 2 million. Last year they planted 1 million? trees in Dalian to beautify the city and this year they are planting 2 million?. Now this is great and all because trees are good for the environment and air quality. However it seems like choosing trees that don't need to be replaced might be a good idea. As well as not planting them this close together...
Because they are so close and maybe not the right types of trees to be here you see government workers driving around in huge water trucks hooked up to fire hoses dumping hundreds of gallons of water on these trees, and one the leaves come in, which has now happened, when it rains the roots will get no water since the trees will form a complete canopy.

There seems to be some idea of what is considered idyllic. Outside of amusement parks in what would others wise be nice wilderness areas, it includes nice creeks with rocky shores like this one....
sculpted out of concrete. What good would it be if you could not control the flow of water to make it run at the proper level for the longest time? So up "stream" there is a dam and some piping. Here is the dam, the bigger rocks in the back ground with the writing on them,

Yep, concrete. If it does not look right make it so.

Obviously there is a long history of very high quality wood working in China and Asia in general. Lots of old temple and such were originally built with hand cut joints, no nails or screws etc. In keeping with that history, this was the railing along the top section of the road up to UFO hill....
Only problem, when they break...
Concrete again. Now don't get me wrong, it does all look very nice and there are even some sections of concrete stone that Linda and I have looked and wondered if we would get in trouble for climbing on. It is always interesting climbing on something man made that was not intended to be climbed.

Here is another example, once again on UFO hill. Something about this road cut caught my eye and made me look again.
You can see wire mesh that was installed to grow more grass on and cover up the rock.

Here is another thing that is very noticeable about the sky line around here. Buildings seem to go up in pairs for the most part.
Sometimes more.
And other times many more, there are places where you will have 20-50 buildings that are all the same. This is really no different than suburban USA really, it is just the scale that it is done on. That's all for now.

China Post #17 Beijing Backbone and Other Stuff

Beijing has long been the capital of China and because of this has a long history. The layout of the city is interesting. There are 6 or 7 ring roads that are centered around the middle of the city and roads that radiate out from there as well. The original city was built along the "dragons backbone" and this was continued with the Olympic Park. The park was built out beyond where the original backbone ended, but along the same line. The government than connected the new section in Olympic Park with the old that runs through many of the historic sights. Here is a first shot of the backbone in Olympic Park looking away from the city. Remember that the venues are split by this open walk through the middle.

You can see how the concrete is laid differently to define the backbone. This next shot is looking the opposite direction, towards the city from Olympic Park. You can see a temple or gate, I don't remember which at the end of the backbone. I believe that was the end of the original "dragons backbone".
Now, a shot from the back side of the Forbidden City overview park

You can actually just make out the communication tower in Olympic Park just to the right of the temple in the distance along the backbone. Which then means that this spot overlooking the Forbidden City also sits on the backbone. If you remember from the Forbidden City post where Dylan is hiding behind me as we overlook the City, there is a line of temple that run down the middle of the City. Those temples lay along the backbone as well.

The backbone in the Forbidden City is more prominent. It is made of large marble blocks and stone carvings as seen here.
Also, in the temple along the backbone are thrones for the emperor that are right on the backbone as well.
Then exiting the Forbidden City and making the walk to Tiananmen Square you have the picture of Mao and a flag pole right on the line.
As well as the monument itself which I've posted a picture of Linda in front of in a previous post. Beyond the Tiananmen monument is this building astride the backbone. This is Mao's tomb.
Naturally Mao's coffin lies on the backbone inside the building. Finally after walking around Mao's tomb you come to this wall. This was near the edge of the city long ago. It is hard to see in this shot but there is another temple in the distance right through the doors.
This was after leaving the Acrobat show on the first day in Beijing. You can see several people holding flags up, those are the tour guides. Then their flock all wears matching hats so that you can find your guide and they can see if anyone has strayed from the group.
So here I caught some canary's.
And some cardinals.
And finally some bluejays.
You know this system seems just fine and dandy except once you loose the group the hat and flag do you no good. Apparently one of the guides at the Acrobat show was talking about how they had lost a client at the Forbidden City that morning around 10 or 11 and had just found them by the end of the show at 6:30. Admittedly it would be very easy to get lost in the City. Also, I found a hat for one of the clients sitting on the ground up in the Overview Park.

China Post #16 Dalian Climbing

Being Wednesday evening Linda and I again arranged for an Ayi for Dylan and headed into Dalian to climb with the local group. The wall is located in the basement fitness center of the Sweetland Hotel just off of Olympic Square. Now basement might not be quite the right word since the Chinese build entire multi level shopping centers below busy intersections. There are badminton and basketball courts along with weights and a billiards area. The climbing wall is off to the side of the badminton court with a net separating it from the basketball courts. The main section of the wall is pretty much vertical with a couple of slight bulges that run the length of the wall in the third and fifth panels. The panels are about 3 foot square so the wall is pretty tall.

Then off to the right is this steeper but narrow wall. It is really too bad that there is the vertical panel in the middle coming off of a horizontal roof just below. The blue feature that runs out the middle is actually quite nice and eliminates those horizontal and vertical angles.
The local climbers are for the most part relatively new to the sport but are psyched to try stuff and improve. They always seem to be having a good time and never seem to really get frustrated because they have not expectations.

The worst thing about meeting the group to climb on Wednesday nights is that they meet from 6-8pm and the train closes at 8pm so we have to take a taxi home instead of the train, which is more expensive. On top of that the taxi drivers in Dalian never seem to want to run off the meter and always quote a price that is 1.5 to 2 time the cost of what the meter would read. I don't know if this is because we are american and they feel that they can do it to us or if they do this to everyone. Interestingly, in Beijing we never once had a taxi driver try to make extra by over charging us. Maybe it has something to do with having had the Olympics there and trying to bring things up to a standard that westerners would expect, though this means that you tip in Beijing while you don't tip in Dalian. Anyway, here is a shot looking down the street from where we are staying when we got back.
Dylan has started going to a new school that just opened this week. Since they don't have cots of food organized yet it is only for half days but will be switching to full days soon. The best part right now is that they are trying to do a "soft" opening this month and there are only 3 kids so there is lots of one on one attention. Hopefully Dylan will learn some Mandarin.

China Post #15 Tiananmen Square

For the rest of Sunday in Beijing we had started off by walking down one of the cities original streets past several historic locations to get to the Lama Temple which in hindsight is kind of like a much smaller version of the Forbidden City except with religion as its focus as opposed to the emperor. There were the standard lions guarding the gate of which there were larger ones at the Forbidden City. The female one is the one with the "animal" under its foot, as explained by an american, or with a baby lion in actuality, while the male typically has a ball.

There was another angry dragon turtle, this is supposed to be the offspring of the dragon and Linda now thinks it is so cute. Again a much bigger one at the City but you could not get right next to it like this one.
After finishing up with the Forbidden City we stopped at this flower park. Upon entering there was this rabbit, since it is the year of...
There were lilies? of several different colors, pink, red, yellow and Linda.
After the park we headed to Tiananmen Square. We had to go through a tunnel under the large road that separated the square from the flower park and the City. Along either side of the tunnel were these carved stone panels, intermixed with army guards.
Once out in the square I was actually surprised at how empty it was, not really the lack of people because it was raining, but there was the monument
And if you turned around there was a flag pole, the building with the photo of Mao is across the street.
This is the Workers on the front side of Mao's tomb, there is a matching sculpture on the opposite side of the entrance.
And this is the one on the back side of Mao's tomb.
An exhausted father and son. After having carried him for 2 straight days up and down stairs and all over Beijing I was having to take breaks every half hour or so for my feet. All I wanted was a bucket of ice water.