Steve's China Blog

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Tea

This weekend seemed to have revolved around tea. I had not planned it that way... it is just the way things turned out. First, a quick history lesson...

Dalian is considered a new city, especially when compared to the rest of China, and has only been around for a century or two. During that time it has been occupied by both the Japanese and the Russians, so you can see a lot of Russian architecture here. Also, Mao preferred Russian style buildings as opposed to traditional Chinese buildings so you see a lot of them here and in other newer cities. There is one street here where all of the buildings were built by the Russians and it is now a tourist trap called Russian Street (below).



Saturday afternoon I met up with a friend of mine and we went to visit Russian Street. Neither of us had been there before so we were not sure what to expect. Sure enough, it's a long street with a bunch of buildings that were built by Russians. In almost every building is a store. Most of them sold the same stuff, most of which is (you guessed it) Russian. Vodka, cigarettes, chocolate, dolls, watches, binoculars, jewelry, etc... They also had a lot of those little wooden dolls that you open up to reveal another little doll, which has another little doll, etc... I think they are called nesting dolls.

In the middle of all of these stores was a Chinese tea shop. Since Kaoruko and I like tea we spent a lot of time in here. We sampled a few types of tea and I ended up buying some bi lo chun (spring green tea), some xiuqiu jasmine tea, and some osmanthus oolong tea. Osmanthus is a type of flower mixed with the oolong tea to make it taste smoother. Here's a picture of Kaoruko and I (on the right) sampling some of that tea...



After leaving Russian Street we went to a Spanish restaurant nearby called Tapas. We got there a little early so we just snacked and talked for awhile. It was a really nice place, and the food we had was really good. The sangria was a little pricey, but it was good and I am hoping we will get a chance to go back there for dinner sometime.

On Sunday I went shopping for more pictures for my apartment, but ended up finding a really nice tea set. In another place I found a really nice tea set tray. I also found another picture for my apartment. It's more like a display of old looking peices of jade. I think it should look pretty nice on the dining room wall near the tea set.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Taxes and stuff

I have been kinda busy lately, so I have not posted much lately. Besides work, not too much else is going on. I'm still working on my U.S. taxes. Chinese taxes are easy... answer 3 or 4 questions, your company and the goverment figure out how much to extort from you, and they just take it. The U.S. has too many lawyers and other paper pushers to feed, I guess. For those of you who may have trouble falling asleep at night I recommend reading IRS Pub 54, Tax Guide for U.S. Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad. Enjoy!

PC? Mac? Who cares? I want one of these bad boys that is standing behind me...



This is the type of computer I work on... An IBM mainframe! I think this one is a gift from IBM to Dalian, and is used by students at some of the universities here. Pretty nice gift!

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Windy!

There's only one major drawback to living by the sea... the wind.

Monday and Tuesday were very nice, and it seemed very much like Spring. Last evening though it started to get very windy and cold. The wind seemed non-stop all night and it sounded like a constant scream at times. This morning it was still very windy and I even had trouble walking in it, it was so strong. It is still a little windy this afternoon, but it seems to be tapering off some. Hopefully it will die down and it will start warming up again tomorrow.

One funny looking side-effect of all this wind is the litter. Usually there is litter on the ground just about every where, but the wind has picked up most of it and sent it into the trees. Where yesterday the trees were kind of pretty as they started to show buds for new flowers and/or leaves, today a lot of them have peices of paper and plastic bags stuck in them. It really looks kind of strange, but most people here don't seem to care.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

International City Walk

On Saturday the city of Dalian hosted their 4th annual International City Walk. They have a 5 kilometer route, a 10 kilometer route, a 20 kilometer route, and a 30 kilometer route. I went there with a bunch of co-workers and walked the 10k route. It was a little chilly, but it did not rain as was forecasted. We started out in Xinghai Square...

This is in the middle of Xinghai Square where my co-workers and I gathered before starting the walk...



Quite a lot of people started ahead of us. Walking up a road towards Binghai Road that winds along the coast along the southern part of the city...



A look back at a bunch of people that started out after we did...



Going by the Dalian Shell Muesum...



It was a little hazy/foggy most of the day, but we still got to see some nice scenic views along BingHai Road...



A pretty good sized crowd showed up for the walk. Not too much further up around that turn there I think...



Whew! Finally finished reached the end. My friend Jackie stayed with me the whole way. She was wonderful company!



The walk ended at Tiger Beach. We wanted to catch a taxi back to town to go get some lunch, but it was so crowded that we couldn't find a taxi, so got onto a very crowded bus that was heading back towards downtown and then got off of that when we were away from Tiger Beach where it would be easier to find a cab. Eventually we made it to a really nice Korean restaurant that Jackie liked and had a very nice lunch. It was great getting away from the office, and even though the weather could have been better I had a great time.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

A few little things...

Last Saturday I went to a shopping mall here in Dalian with some friends looking for pictures for my new apartment... Yeah, I've been so busy I have not had a chance to shop for those since I've moved into the place. Anyways, we found a lot of nice pictures and I bought one. I am planning to go back and get some more later. I also need to find some picture hangers... It's amazing that I have had trouble finding any of those here. I will probably resort to nails.

I keep thinking that Spring has arrived and then we have a day like today... cold and windy. Oh well, it is warming up slowly but surely. This year's Dalian International Walking Day is being held this Saturday. I think last year's was in June, and we had wonderful weather for that. This year we have a lot of people from the office going on the walk and we are all hoping we have nice weather for it.

The bus I take to work in the morning has a TV, and they usually show cartoons and music videos (as well as a lot of commercials). This morning they were playing a music video with a lady singing a Chinese version of the Christmas carol "Tidings of comfort and joy". It sounded really good with a rock-and-roll beat, but I wonder if the lyrics were the same. I'm not sure what the communist party's ministry of propaganda would do if Christian rock become extremely popular here. Oh, wait... actually I do know.