This is the sign of the building block we live in:

 

No parking, Use for emegency services.

Man hole cover, with chinese symbol in the middle.

This is what road signs look like here… (and of course obscured by the tree)

 

The local power relay substation:

 

Which has some crazy cables going into it:

Crazy power cables going across the street:

Crazy telephone cables:

Quite what a sumo wrestler is doing above the sign of a Chinese restaurant, I don’t know… maybe it’s a Japanese? the one on the right seems to be playing the traditional Chinese Erhu.

 

Something that might be considered less than wholesome, which I haven’t actually seen open:

Dalian Double Seven Member Club? I don’t understand the need to translate things directly into English, I have no-idea what type of club that is.

 

Looking rather old no? I guess it didn’t get much business, as it’s closed now.

 

Park attendant sweeping:

Woman shoe fixer… there seems to be many of these kinds of people here.

 

One of the many people here in Dalian that clean up the streets.

This is where we put rubbish, the poor people rumage through it to find recyclables (paper, glass, plastics) to sell to the recycling plant, and the government picks up the rest. There are no wheelie bins or personal rubbish bins, yes … you just dump your rubbish on the street.

Today I had another English Tutoring session with Moon. 10:30 to 11:30. She is doing much better than before, we spoke about what she had been doing since her last lesson (saturday morning) which had been dance lessons and maths. She had also played some games with her friends, which as I gather was much like truth or dare. Her father offered me some beer, which i gladly accepted, and she read with me correcting her, and checking she understood what the text was about.

After the lesson I’ve been moving some data around my hard disks and computer, so I could burn some DVDs on my little EEE PC, as it seems to be more reliable than my normal laptop. I have so far burnt 6 dvds…. (need the space).

I have also used google reader to provide me with updates on various peoples blogs, for which I am very grateful. This is a good service, which has brought much reading pleasures of my girl-friends blog (when she fails to tell me she’s updated it), the Top Gear Blog, various tech commentators, a few official google blogs, news alerts from home (curtesy of google news and google reader working together), mac mini news alerts (been waiting for an official update before buying) and various others.

Alastair

I’ve decided to give myself some achievable targets:

1) Make regular posts on my blog, and make the current posts more coherent. Topics to include the following:

a) Some info about my everyday activity here in China

b) English translations of Chinese branding … like a restaurant called “Best Food” and signs that say “Hope your satisfaction will lead you to come here again”

c) Whatever it is I’m working on at the moment

d) Some reviews of the tv I occasionally watch

2) Review and alter text on my two current websites… http://clarkalastair.co.uk/ and http://aboutme.alastairclark.com

3) Review and publish some of the pictures that Miao has taken of me and the surroundings.

4) Work on some way to update blogger, wordpress and drupal at the same time, and decided which one I want to stick with.

On the train back to Dalian. Miao’s Eldest Uncle’s daughter still has school so is not coming back with us. So no luck with going to the theme park. I hope she can come later. The holiday was on the whole very pleasant, partly the over eating and beer consumed, but also the company of Miao’s family who really seem happy with me. My stomach got a little upset yesterday, perhaps as a result of the Korean BBQ meal we had with her eldest uncle on Thursday, and meat that wasn’t cooked thoroughly enough. Perhaps just with the over eating, and drinking the beer with food.

The train is now passing through a mountain pass with trees covering the sides, its very green and pretty. The farms between Shenyang and Dalian seem very big, and grow alot of sweet corn. Getting onto the train in Shenyang was as crazy as it was at Dalian, and before that going from Shenyang to Dalian the first time. The train we are on is a slightly cheaper one at 55yuan pp which takes 4hrs. The train was over booked, as seems standard practise, and there are many people standing. Some lao tai-tai (middle aged woman) is sat on a huge foldable chair in the aisle next to us and is talking away with Miao’s mother. I feel quite glad of this as it will keep her occupied and make the trip a little more interesting for her. I have been playing Worms on my PSP, and Miao has been texting her friends and interjecting in conversation as and when appropriate.

Miao and I had a very nice day today. We visited something called the “Martials Mansion of Zhang (Jang) Xueliang” He died 2001 at the age of 100, and was important in the history of Shenyang and the north eastern provinces (Dongbei). It cost 50 yuan each to get in, so we decided to just walk around it. There was this really ugly fake old knarled tree made out of concrete that had plastic plants hanging from it. I thought it was real at first as i couldn’t believe someone would actually sculpt that out of concrete. It was really out of context, the trees around the building were Pines. We found not only 1 but 2 doors that we could easily have sneaked into the grounds, but felt a little sheepish. The wall around the grounds had various mottos and advice for the people from the government, such as “Work Hard” “Remember the 1 Child Policy” and the like, with little pictures to illustrate. After that we walked to the 130 year old Catholic Cathedral that was built by a Frenchman. It was really very small, (there are bigger churches around Imperial) but very traditionally Gothic. Unfortunately the most we could do was look through the gates at the base of the cathedral, as they were not letting people in. We even had to wait for them to open the doors at 2PM. We also looked around the shop, which sold the normal kinda stuff, rosary beads, Bibles (in Chinese), and various commentaries and prayer books. Nothing in English.

It was a very hot day and we were desperate for a rest somewhere cool, so we went in search of the Air-conditioned Mac-Donald’s, where we happened upon Miao’s mother who had met her younger brother’s wife in a Pharmacy buying some cream to treat a rash I have on my foot. Here I had a big-mac and coffee (free refills) and Miao had a ham-burger and coke. We shared a french fries. I have to say the anticipation was better than the resulting food, and the coffee less good even than the coffee I had in KFC waiting for Miao’s mother in Dalian train station a few months ago. I think I need that kind of reminder to tell me how good, tasty and healthy Miao Mother’s food is. After the meal we spent what felt like an eternity in the Pharmacy looking at every kind of face and skin cream on the surface of God’s green Earth. To then proceed to a cheap clothing center to inspect all the clothes it held inside. To end up buying nothing for anyone. We then went onto the next fun activity of looking in a novelty clothes and knick-knack store. We saw lots of interesting little things, and I told Miao about my maternal grand-father’s love of elephants, and my maternal grand-mother banning them from gifts. Miao now has it in mind to buy elephant presents for him in the future, irrespective of my grand-mother’s desire.

This evening we had a meal with some of her photography club mates in a restaurant that Miao couldn’t initially locate. I was desparate for the toilet, and the location process I found a little uncomfortable. Needless to say it was quite a relief when we found it. We had an enjoyable meal, and came home quite late.

Yesterday we spent the morning and some part of the afternoon going around a factory outlet shopping center looking for thin trousers for me as the ones I have are a little thick for summer. This has especially become necessary as I’ve gone down a trouser size, and the only thing from keeping my trousers from falling down is my belt.

We were also looking for a hat for me, but apparently people’s heads in China are either small, or I just have a big head, we didn’t find any hats appropriate. We did have another success however, and find a shoulder bag that I thought was ok to wear. The woman first tried to sell us it at 280 yuan, and as we were walking away she kept lowering the price to a bottom of 80 yuan. We all thought this rather funny, that she had tried to charge so much.

My items took maybe an hour or two to find and purchase, we then went on to finding a pair of shoes Miao liked and thought were cheap enough to buy. This process seemed to take forever, and we seemed to visit every shoe shop in sight, believe me, there were alot of them.

We had some lunch in a restaurant nearby on the high street, I was a little suspicious of the place, as both waiters had cigarettes in their mouths almost all the time, even when serving us, they were blowing the smoke into our faces.