Spring Break

Over spring break, I did a week-long trip with several other students to Dalian and Qingdao. Dalian is the southernmost city in Northeastern China (Manchuria) at the end of a penninsula west of Korea and east of Beijing. It was a Japanese colony for many decades and was one of the first cities in the Northeast to develop during the 1980's. It's often called "the Honk Kong of the North," but I think that's exaggeration. We went to the beach there, which reminded me a lot of Coney Island in my native Brooklyn, complete with the amusement rides and tourist traps. Also tried karaoke bars (not the sleazy ones), northeastern food, and even found a restaurant called "Brooklyn".

Then we went to Qingdao across the bay in Shandong province. We spent several days there enjoying the warm weather (much nicer than Harbin), clean streets (also a nice break from Harbin), Qingdao beer (not as good as Harbin beer), food, beaches, and old historic German architecture (about as impressive as Harbin's old Russian buildings). We split into two groups, one which hiked the large, imposing, and historic Tai mountain, and one which spent about hour and a half hiking the easy and relaxing Laoshan mountain. This mountain was supposed to have a waterfall, but China's worst drought in 200 years had taken its toll. I wanted to feel bad about not getting to see the waterfall, but I knew some people had lost everything in the drought.

While at the beach, I tried playing volleyball with some retirees but I was too bad at it to keep up. Two days later we were in a train station and this security guard walks up to us and says, "Hey, I remember you, you're that guy that was really bad at volleyball I played with the other day."

All in all, it was a great trip and a nice break from Harbin and schoolwork.