Steve's China Blog

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Satellite images

Google Earth is a pretty neat program that allows you to view satellite images of just about anywhere on Earth. They have updated their satellite images for a lot of places in China, including Dalian, so I thought I would post some images up here on my blog. I've included reference points to places that I have mentioned in past posts, so you can get an idea of where they are, and if you have Google Earth you can go find them and zoom in, tilt, etc... and get a better view of places in Dalian.

This first image is of all of China. Dalian is located on the east coast between Beijing and Seoul, Korea...



This next view is closer into Dalian. Lushun is to the southwest of Dalian (it may be hard to tell since the program put the names on different sides). I have not figured out where Golden Pebble Beach is yet...



Here is a view of most of the city...



This is a view of where in the city I spend most of my time, either at work or at home...



Next is a view of the Dalian Software Park area where my office is...



This view is south of the Software Park area which is between where I work and where I currently live, and includes where I use to live...



This is a view of the area around where I currently live...



This is an image of the main-downtown area...



If I mention a place in Dalian, and you want the coordinates just leave a comment or send me an email and I'll try to provide them to you.

Friday, June 23, 2006

Feetsball

It's finally Friday. I think this week I have gotten more computer virus attacks, email spam, unsolicated porn ads, etc... then I have gotten during the entire time I've been in China. Even with all that garbage going on it's been a fun week. I usually am helping friends and co-workers with their English language skills, and this week I have gotten some new requests to help explain American slang terms they've encountered. Some of them are pretty funny, such as the message someone got that they would go to "change jail" if they made changes without approval. No one here knew what "change jail" was.

The World Cup is still going on and just about everyone here are soccer fans. Since China is not in the World Cup this year you see people walking around with shirts and/or hats of whatever country they are supporting. A lot of people are rooting for England, Italy, and of course Brazil. I do not know a lot about soccer (they call it football, but I won't), and I know even less about the World Cup. My friends here were shocked that I did not know that the World Cup is only played every 4 years! Didn't I know all of the names of any of the players on the U.S. team? Not one name?! Hey, I'm a Redskin fan! I can name a bunch of them... what do you want? I am really starting to miss American football.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Summer Outing

This weekend I went to BuYun mountain and BingYu valley near a town called XianRenDong along with around 300 co-workers. The trip took a little over three hours by bus, and here are some pictures -

Here are some of us gathering in front of the office in the morning before the bus ride out...



This is during the bus ride out of Dalian. Most of the countryside north of Dalian is farmland...



... and big rice paddies...



More than half way there we stopped for a quick break. I bet who ever cleans the bathroom at this place hates seeing 7 busses pull up.



...back on the road. Eventually the farmland started giving way to mountains, so we new we were close.



Here we are at our hotel in XianRenDong. It's not the greatest hotel, but it is the only one that can handle 300 guests. The rooms hold anywhere from 2 to 5 guests and come with beds and a TV. Everyone on each floor shares a single bathroom and there are no showers. Ritz Carlton it is not.



Here's lovely downtown XianRenDong and one of the horse handlers. There were about a dozen of these guys who would let you ride their horse for a few minutes for 20 RMB.



After lunch we headed up to the mountain. Good thing it wasn't crowded...



Anways, it was very scenic...



They also had a little buddhist shrine. Those big sticks there in front are incense you could buy, but no one seemed to be buying any.



Here's a nice little walkway along the river. Nice place to take a picture...



Let's follow this crowd. They look like they know where they're going...



Along this part of the river there are two ways across. The slippery rock bridge...



... or the rickety wooden bridge...



Here's a look back after taking a small boat along another part of the river...



Ok, who let the decedant western capitalist in?



Towards the end there is this little waterfall that was pretty neat. There's a walkway underneath it, and that's how you cross the river back.



That's about it for the pictures. I also took a bunch of video and I am going to try and edit those and upload them some how.

Saturday night we returned to XianRenDong and had a party. The hotel got us some lambs and cooked them over a big fire out in the street and we all sang, danced, and drank beer until everyone decided to go try and watch the World Cup... where we proceeded to drink more beer until the early morning (USA vs Italy was at 3:00am!).

The next day we all headed out to some hot springs nearby town. Everyone was pretty much beat from the day and night before so that most people just hung around and relaxed. It seemed everyone slept on the bus ride back to town. I know I did!

Friday, June 16, 2006

Name change

I changed the name of the blog from "Steve's Dalian Blog" to "Steve's China Blog" recently. Why? I'm not going to tell you! I know something you don't know! Na-na-na-na-na-na!

Actually, I could just be doing it for the heck of it but you may never know. :)

Thursday, June 15, 2006

I'm still around

I have not posted anything in awhile. With the nice weather and the new sleep schedule I have found a lot of little things have been keeping me pretty busy lately. Not much worth posting about though.

The World Cup has started and even though it's not that big of a deal in the States it is very big here. The problem is that the games are played in Germany this year, so they don't start until 9:00pm here. You can tell who has been up all night watching soccor. I tried to stay up and watch the U.S. team play the Czech Republic, but called it a night half way through the game since I had to get up early to go to work the next day.

Found a pretty funny story about al-Qaida in Iraq here. Enjoy!

Friday, June 02, 2006

Dragon Boat Festival

Wednesday was Dragon Boat Festival day. It is one of the oldest holidays still celebrated in China. Some people say the Dragon Boat Festival started with the ancient worship of the River Dragon and the dragon boat races. Others believe it began in memory of one of China’s famous poets, Qu Yuan. More information about the legends can be found here, and is a pretty interesting read.

As far as I know we do not have any Dragon Boat races in Dalian, but the holiday is still observed here with the eating of machang (a rice dumpling wrapped in leaves, also called sticky rice in the west). In this part of China the people also wear multi-colored thread around their wrist(s) and/or ankles(s), and they keep them on until the next rain. In other areas they wear the threads in their hair, or around their necks to hold pendants or such. Someone here in the office told me I should wear the threads to protect myself from demons. I told them I wasn't afraid of demons, and I asked what the demons wore to protect themselves from me. They didn't know how to answer that.