Dalian update: Nei Menggu photos online

The well-known Dalian beer festival is on this week. Many Chinese and German beer brands are sporting their goods in several tents at Xinghai Square, with performances of all kinds to entertain the visitors. Mainly mini-skirted girls singing and dancing about, but the chinese covers of German schlagers are not ignored! The last show ends already at 22.30, so the whole festival remains quite pleasantly civilised.

Edward, a Briton I know from university, asked me to come along with his friends last night, so I went to take a look. Edward is only one year younger than me and worked in Japan for six years before coming over to Dalian to learn mandarin. His friends were also from university: mainly Japanese and Korean. Previously I never spoke with them as their level of English is very limited, but yesterday it turned out to be perfectly feasible to have conversations in chinese ;-). Travelling in parts of China where they never or hardly ever see foreigners really does wonders!

Upon my return last night, I uploaded pictures of Inner Mongolia on my Picasa page. Here they are:

Nei Menggu - Alashan Zuoqi, Wuhai, Hohhot & Huitengxilu