Dandong and a trip to North Korea !

Next stop was Dandong (丹东). On the train from Shenyang, I chatted a little with my neighbours and someone asked me why I was going to Dandong, I couldn't answer this one really, other than because you could see North Korea from there, and I didn't want to say that to them in case it upset them, there was no justifiable reason.

I had only a hard seat unreserved ticket for the train so sat anywhere I found a place free, most were taken up by people lying gown not wanting to give up their 3 seats!! As I sat, a young girl to the side pointed at me and grabbed her fathers arm, saying 'weiguoren, weiguoren' which means 'foreigner', this is actually quite common, so no strange event for me now, but this time, as I sometimes do, I decided to fight back and with a big grin, pointed back at her and shouted 'Zhongguoren, Zhongguoren!' (Chinese). The lady next to me laughed and said something to me I didn't understand, but moments later, the young girl had swapped seats and was sitting with her (her mother) and opposite me, saying 'Hello' and 'What is your name?' as young Chinese kids tend to do. Well it ended up with me having to give a bit of an English lesson for her and she loved it, it helped pass the 5 hours by a little quicker anyway.

Arrived in Dandong, exit the station and there's yet another identical Mao statue pointing at somewhere in the distance. The station square is huge, open and strangely empty for China, barely any people around, except for a couple of hotel touts, one of which I use and find a pretty decent room with internet PC, TV, everything I need for 8 euros a night.

Next day I head down to the Yalu river, to get a glimpse at North Korea across the icy water, visually, it's pretty uninteresting but for some reason it has some kind of attraction, some kind of curiosity factor that can keep you watching the same scene over and over, purely because it is North Korea, probably the most secretive country in the world. Taxi drivers keep shouting at me here, there are abundant taxis and they clearly have no customers, so toot and shout whenever they pass you, some offered to take me to North Korea, I was tempted but I'm not sure how they would go about doing this and I guess I won't get far anyway without a visa, there must be a border control on the roads around here. Anyway I have some fun with the taxis, if they toot, I wave back at them, which causes them to immediately get excited at the prospect of a client and stop. Parked taxi drivers also have a habit of shouting verbally and typically Chinese, very loudly at me, I have no idea what they say, so I just shout something random back at them, very loudly too, they usually laugh ;)





Left: View of North Korea from Dandong.
Centre: North Korean boats in Sinuiju harbour.
Right: Another identical Mao statue! As in Kashgar and Shenyang.

Then I found out you can go to North Korean territory without any problems, you can't go onto land but you can take a boat trip into North Korean waters very close to the shore and watch closely what is going on there, so I immediately jumped on. Within metres of the North Korean land you can watch closely at what is going on in the North Korean town of Sinuiju, absolutely nothing !! One or two people sit around doing nothing, some men on a rusty old boat, walk around and that's it really, very quiet and boring !! All you can see is a close up of a heap of rusty old boats, some old factory like buildings, some cranes and surprisingly a big wheel ! A South Korean man on the boat told me that 15 years ago, Dandong, was not much different, now it has high buildings stretching out along the shoreline for as far as you can see, all kinds of bright lights shining, buildings everywhere, in contrast on the North Korean side there is almost nothing. Interestingly at night-time, you look across the river and you see absolutely nothing, there is no light whatsoever to be seen, no street lamps, no apparent lighting from buildings even, probably they have no electricity there, I don't know, but the difference between that and Chinese Dandong is overwhelming.


Left: Banknotes from N.Korea; 200 and 100 North Korean Zonks.
Centre: Pavillion on Dandong's seafron park area.
Right: Kite flying with a message if you can read Chinese.

I spent Valentine's Day in Dandong and kept having girls running after me with bunches of roses, great fun... I suppose though, they were trying to sell them, not give them to me, but...

More from Dongbei

Leaving Harbin, I headed Southwards and made it as far as Shenyang (沈阳), the capital of Liaoning province, which is the only city in China, other than Beijing, with an Imperial Palace. So next morning I visited the palace, its temples, halls and gardens and some of the streets surrounding which together form the attractive old town of Shenyang. The palace and grounds are smaller than the Forbidden City in Beijing and just about the right size so you can, if you have the time, without getting too exhausted, explore every little pathway and every building to see what there is to offer. Something that would take you a week in Beijing's Imperial Palace. It's a quite peaceful and attractive site, not over-run by tourists (at least not at this time of year), worth visiting. In contrast, the rest of the city is quite the opposite, very busy, roads full of traffic, pedestrian streets packed with people and as ever pedestrian crossings and traffic lights are of little consequence, making crossing roads a nightmare. It took me ages to get across the road to picture the huge Mao statue on Zhongshan square, which incidentally was identical in look and pose as to the one in my first Chinese city of this trip, way back three and a half months ago in Kashgar.


All pics: Towers and Halls from the Imperial Palace in Shenyang.

As well as the Imperial Palace I came across an old mansion, a protected national relic, that was the official residence and private house of Marshal Zhang Zuolin, a famous political leader and celebrity of North Eastern China. The final site worth seeing in Shenyang was the huge Mao statue.



All pics: Dragon artwork from around the palace grounds and buildings

The three provinces of North East China are commonly referred to by those from outside of the area as Dongbei, Dongbei means literally 'EastNorth'. Because of the cold weather in this region during winter, every bit of water (except it seems the Yalu river in Dandong, see later) is frozen solid for the winter months. This means winter sports for everyone, whether you like it or not as even walking along roads, it is at times more like skating than walking ;) In Harbin there were ice slides and ice rinks made along the banks of the river and in Shenyang's DongLing Park where the lakes were frozen over, speed skating tracks were marked out. People also slid around on little chairs converted to move around the ice with the help of two ski like poles, this is called a pali and were common in both Harbin and Shenyang


Left: Ice seats called 'pali' are common in Dongbei.
Centre: View form inside one of the halls of Shenyang's Palace.
Right: A typical crowd of Chinese tourists, but in Shenyang this was the only one I saw.