DAY 183: Episode 4

DAY 13 - HARBIN => CHANGCHUN => SHENYANG => DALIAN (or, the day of three provinces)

This was a rather dull day really. We got an early train to Changchun, had lunch in "Favourite Land," and a short time later we got on the train to Shenyang, where we did nothing much really, but we did buy noodles, which ended up going rather farther than expected. The noodles were because our journey was 8 hours, and there's a law in China that you're not allowed to get on a train without instant noodles. But actually, our train journey ended up being only 4 hours and 9 minutes. It was a nice train too, soft seater, which we had never done before.

On arrival at stupid pm in Dalian, we got in a taxi to the Jinjiang inn, and slept rather a lot. In a rather comfortable bed. Not that expensive, and really classy. Brilliant.

DAY 14 - DALIAN => YANTAI

So, the day I had been dreading had arrived. It's also another day where basically nothing happened. We got up, got a cab to the ferry port and chatted loads to the driver, who showed us nice bits of Dalian. We bought our tickets for the ferry (which I assumed was the 3.5 hour one), had some lunch and killed some time (read: stalled) for a bit, then went to the waiting room. After a bit, we were put on a bus with the other 10 passengers, which led me to fear that we were going to be on a really small boat. We drove about 700 miles to the boat, when I was relieved to see it was a real boat. With about 3496873946791387698 people on it. We went to find out seats in the seating room, but there were none left. We were in seats 5 and 6, but the actual seats had no numbers on them. And they were all taken anyway. And not a single person in the room did not STARE. In a really obnoxious way. It was hardcore gawking and laughing at us. I'm quite used to staring, having been in China for 6 months now, but this was in a league of it's own, and was probably the worst I'd had up until that point.

So as we had nowhere to sit, we decided to sit in the corridor. Have you ever heard the stories about how the Chinese over fill their boats and they sink? Well, this one was quite full. Didn't sink, but was definitely overfull. At one point, this guy came up to me and just started blabbing (would a 'hello' or an 'excuse me' have hurt? Maybe not in China, but in the west we tend to start conversations with strangers with something other than just...mid-conversation), and as I hadn't been aware that he was talking, I didn't respond, and he assumed I didn't understand. Which annoyed me.

Well, as I really REALLY don't like boats, I just got stuck into my book (100 Years of Solitude by Gael Garcia Marquez - one of the best books in the history of time - read it).

Anyway, at just after 9pm we finally arrived in Yantai, and took the free bus to town, from where we took a taxi to the youth hostel and went to bed. There's rather a lot of posts where that features multople times.

DAY 15 - YANTAI => JINAN

Finally, a day we did things! Firstly, we went to buy train tickets and put our bags in left luggage, which was not the most exciting thing we did by far. Then we wandered around looking for Korean food, as we had heard that the Korean food in Yantai is some of the best in China, on account of all the ethnic Koreans there.

But after an hour, no joy. How bizarre. So we ate at a random Chinese place, where the waitress pointed out the western food, which I quite frankly did not want. We each go a set meal, mine Chicken Curry, Nikki's some kind of beef. We also ordered some Oolong tea, which was marvelous. Our food came as the main thing, rice, soup, kimchee-esque stuff, a green leafy veg in gravy and a weird yellow-ish substance. It had a texture between thick yoghurt and jelly that got waterier further down, and had crabstick, ham and possibly other delights. Needless to say, I didn't eat mine. The rest was really good though. The drink that came with it was weird though - cold and slightly sweet, with an almost tea flavour somewhere. No idea what it was.

Anyway, I talk about food too much. After eating, we had a look for an internet place, where we found Tracey had sent us loads of useful things about Yantai (she used to live there), so we copied it all down and went to find the number 17 bus from the train station. On the way to the train station from the internet placey, we went though a huge night market, which was cool. Loads of people were selling small (whole) squids on sticks that they fried right in front of you. Kind of gross. We couldn't find it, so we got another bus to the university. But it was the wrong university. So we got a bus to a stop labelled Train Station, and discovered that the train station currently in use is a temporary one, as they have demolished the old one and are putting a new one in its place. And the 17 didn't stop their temporarily, or so I thought. I realised after I had translated wrong, the sign said "temporary bus stop" but I read it as "temporarily stops being a bus stop." But anyway.

So we took a taxi to the Yantai university (working on assumption here), and ended up at the right place. The road the cab took had nicer views than from the bus actually. Anyway, we got there and found the Korean place Tracey had recommended. We had sea slug, a big pancakey type thing, some fried meat and possibly something else, I forget. Oh, and Kimchee of course. Problem is, by this point, my cold was at its peak, and I could nothing. But I still tried it all, and I think it was all nice, although sea slug is a small quantities food. The texture was not what I expected either - crunchy and stringy.

Anyway, having eaten, we went back to town to collect our bags and wait for the train.

DAY 16 - JINAN => QUFU

So, at 5:45am we were woken by the conductor, our train getting in at 6:15. At Jinan, we went straight to the bus station and bought our tickets to Qufu. Jinan is a total dump, as we had been told and as we had seen in our short time there, so we were on the 7:30am bus out of there.

On arrival in Qufu, we got in a taxi with a woman who couldn't be bothered. She said her meter was broken, but then only asked for 5, which is the flagfall, so maybe it was. En route, she asked where we were going to go, and then pulled over, saying we were next to the Confucius Mansion, which I had said in response. I explained that we had wanted to go to the place that I had told her (the hostel) first, and she drove on.

After another short stretch of road, she pulled over and informed us it was down the road to the left, which had a big sign in the middle of the road, which I took to be a no-car sign. We walked right down the road without finding it. So we walked right back up. Back where we started, we discovered that the sign actually said no parking. We both instinctively veered left, and it was about 40 yards ahead. Lazy taxi driver clearly just couldn't be bothered.

We checked in and went to do laundry - life on the edge! But we couldn't find the machine. So we asked at reception, and she said to go to the second floor. We found it! We only had handwashing soap, so we soaped everything up, put them in the machine (this makes more sense than it sounds, Chinese ashing machines are both strange and look like they were made by Mattell). But we had no hot water. So I tried the shower 9in the same room), but it ran cold. So I went down to the bit labelled "hot water," but the boiler was turned off. SO we washed with cold water.

Clothes clean and drying, we set off. First, the Confucius Temple where we saw lots of nice things. Having seen that, we decided to go for lunch. We found a nearby restaurant and had Confucius style Chicken and Sweet and Sour Pork with Pineapple. Confucius style Chicken is actually just a whole roast chicken in gravy, and by whole I mean that quite literally - head, feet, the works. Nummy :D

Having eaten, it was off to the Confucius Mansions, where we didn't meet the 75th descendant of Confucius. That was at the Temple, and we were ripped off by him. One scroll was 180, the other was 100, so I offered around 200. He said no, he would go no lower than what he'd said: 300. So I said no, that was higher than the price, I decided to buy them because it was 280. He said: okay, 280's okay. I think that was his way of stopping me bartering. But then, instead of my change, they gave me a picture. Then kept trying to sell us stuff. The whole place (both the Temple and the Mansion) really annoyed me, because you couldn't move for people selling you things, and a good third of the rooms were shops selling tourist tat.

We took a walk down to Queli Arch, as the emperors once did, then took our first rickshaw in China to the Confucius Cemetery. It was rather an anti-climax, it was one mound in the middle of a (really quite nice) forest.

We walked from the cemetery to a road where we could get a taxi back to the hostel, and ended up back at the hostel. We decided to mail our scrolls and some other bits back home, so I took 3 books I had read and didn't want to carry any more. On arrival at the post office, I was informed one of my scrolls was too big and I couldn't send it. However, there were some very inventive and clever ladies in this post office (unlike the one at Hongshan in Urumqi (the one from where you can send parcels)), who managed to stick two boxes together and fit it. So my parcel (contents: 500; postage: 200) should arrive around the end of March.

By this point it was 6pm, and we didn't really know what to do. So we went to check out our plans to Wuhan to our trip, to see if it was feasible. Nikki needed more notebooks for her diary and I wanted postcards. Did you know there are no postcards in Qufu? Giving up on our quest for postcards (notebooks had been acquired successfully earlier), we went to eat two recommended Qufu foods - 阳关山叠 and 诗礼银杏. The first was alright, it was sort of a pancakey folded up thing. But the other one? Good GOD it was horrible. Little yellow balls (whose identity was revealed later) in a weird silvery translucent goop. I was eating the wraps while Nikki ate the goop, and she didn't like the wraps and I didn't like the goop. When she first tried the yellow things, she swore she tasted aniseed, but I didn't. But as I was eating the wrap-esque things, I suddenly got it rather strong. Fortunately I was already full, because aniseed is one of the worst anti-foods ever.

We went home and had I showered before getting into bed. Our room was cold so we'd had the a/c on heat all day, but it suddenly made a very strange noise and just stopped it, so we turned it off and went to sleep in the coldest room in the history of time.