Dalian update: confronting the Big Black Mountain

The long Easter, or better Tomb Sweeping Day, weekend, was spent mainly in Dalian in the end. The weather forecast was not very tempting for Sunday and Monday, and the bigger trip to Anshan and Qianshan NP was recommended to us for a bit later in the year, when the scenery has turned predominantly green. Instead, I discovered on Friday that there is a nature reserve dotted with several taoist and buddhist temples only 40km outside of Dalian centre in the Kai Fa Qu Development Zone. Turned out this was also the place the French people had planned to visit. Very well then. It got rather late (3 a.m.) on Friday, and what I had feared materialised as well: the French couldn't make the agreed meeting time (8 a.m.). In fact, Henry also overslept so I was on my own watching Dalian come to life on a Saturday morning. Somebody had managed to drive his car in the ditch besides the main road. Street vendors selling fruit and flowers for Tomb Sweeping Day appeared with their carts from little side alleys. I bought the previous day's China Daily at the Heishijiao busstop (getting the actual day's paper is not straightforward...), and hit Amici. No word from the French, Henry would meet me at that coffeebar by 9 a.m.

The Google story keeps inviting comments and letters from China Daily readers. Interestingly, the majority of viewpoints is not flattering for Google. "Life was fine in China before Google, and it will be fine after Google". Google only ranks third behind two Chinese search engines in mainland China, and many Chinese will indeed not miss the western world's market leader. I also read the other day that Google was actually in a crisis here after the Google China CEO resigned at the end of last year. Latest figures were disappointing and the guy fled the sinking ship. In other words, this winter Google was looking for a good way to bail out of the mainland without losing face. Right now, all Google search traffic is redirected to the company's Hong Kong site, which funnily offers less censorship than the mainland engine. My Gmail and related products all still work well. I do not even need to switch on the VPN on most days.

After a solid (and cheap!) breakfast (1,5 euro for coffee, two slices of toast, omelette, sausages, tomatoes and lettuce), Henry and I took off for our hiking trip to Daheishan, aka the Big Black Mountain. It was quite a long way to get there. First by bus to the main railway station, and then head for the LRT train, which is probably the closest Dalian comes to 'big example' Hong Kong so far. A brand new, modern and convenient train that connects the city centre with the Development Zone. A Dalian subway system is currently being built, by the way. The LRT train does not seem to have the proper velocity yet, though. We both had a tendency to fall asleep during the ride. After about half an hour we arrived at Kai Fa Qu, where motorcyclists were immediately offering their services. But 50 kuai did seem a lot to take us to the Daiheishan nature reserve. Someone with a car who had been listening in on our conversation with the motorists, sneaked up on us and whispered 30 kuai, hao ma?

At the park entrance we heard people speak American English, and it was clear rightaway that we would not be hiking and visiting the temples alone. Still, it was good fun. The hike was very steep in parts and a good exercise by all means. There were some nice views along the way, even when the landscape is still barren after the winter period. Quite high up, considering we started at sea level, we suddenly stood in front of the Chaoyang temple. A rather large Buddhist temple complex with some interesting features and the compulsory scent of incense in the air! Unfortunately, the place was crowded with day tourists like us, so we'll have to soak up the atmosphere on some other occasion. We continued climbing until a T-junction. Left was the Guan Yin Pavillion, but right was a super steep staircase leading all the way up to the summit of Daheishan. We took a right.

After a couple of hours in the reserve, we called our driver from earlier on to pick us back up and headed back to the Kai Fa Qu station. However, not without a nice bowl of hot vegetable soup!

I have made some pictures of Daheishan, which you can see via this Picasa link:

Dalian - Daheishan

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