Monthly Archives: July 2006
My Baby’s Bendy
Today is the 7th day of the 7th month in the lunar calendar, and as such is the Chinese Valentine’s Day (乞巧节, qi3 qiao3 jie2). There’s a couple different myths that surround the origins of the day, and I can’t be bothered to repeat them here. For me, the significance of today is that it’s …
The Muslim Brotherhood: An Education
Ok, I don’t have much time as I’m about to head out on the links with my dad for a day of what I assume will be rather punishing golf, but I wanted to make mention of this link that my buddy Hek sent me. It’s a column by the rather informed and well-spoken Mike …
My Bestfriend’s Wedding
My bestfriend’s married. Wait, let me say that again… Cory Is Married! I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this marraige thing for the last few weeks but I’ve not come any closer to reaching any sort of enlightment about it. What I’ve been trying to do is understand the significance of the day …
Freezing Point, Dead But Not Forgot
“I actually only did not think that human rights ought to segregate according to political position. The Nationalists, the Communists, the Democratic Progressive Party, any fucking party … if human dignity is not your core value and if you permit human rights to be determined by those in power, then you are just someone that …
Waxing Candles
So it happened. I knew it would, I’m not naïve. I had, however, assumed it might come at 30 +, but nope… 29 is the magic number when you switch from candles that denote your age to the more euphemistic two or three that mark your transition to “old”. Yesterday I entered the last year …
The Journey West (via the North East)
I woke early Thursday morning to finish last minute packing and get to the airport for my 9 a.m. DLN-PKK flight.
The packing went smoothly (and until now I’ve only noticed one thing I forgot), and Mags and I got to the airport without any trouble. We planned it so that we’d have a lot of time to relax at the airport and have a long goodbye (something we missed out on the last time I left her).
The fates had other plans and we promptly learned that all morning flights had been cancelled due to fog (this was in stark contrast to the bright sun shining just through the airports automatic doors).
Though this seemed to expand our goodbye (a good thing), taking the offered 11:40 am plane (arr. 12:40) didn’t leave me much time to run screaming “wait wait” through the Beijing airport for my 1 pm flight to New York.
Customs Be Damned
Right, so I made it. Pizza and friends await. Details to come.
You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello
Nothing like a flood to mark a departure. I woke up this morning to a rather disturbing water-leaking-in-the-wall noise coming from behind the shower, and knowing full well that there was going to be a knock any moment to turn our apartment’s water off I did what any man would have … I jumped in …
How To Spot A Jap
It’s no secret in Western countries it is oft whispered among the Whities that when it comes to Asians, “they all look the same to us”. I had always assumed this was just our inherent racism, and once you got to know the cultures and such, it would be much easier to say what nationality …
Dalian Is A Beautiful City
I’ve lived here in Dalian for about a year and a half and in that time I’ve heard the following line more times than I care to count:
“Dalian is a clean and beautiful city.”
It must have been written in the “How to Properly Promote Dalian to Foreign Visitors and Residents” pamphlet that’s handed out by the local Public Security Bureau, as it is always repeated with the same grin and toneless inflection of blind belief.
By all accounts Dalian is a beautiful city – for China. And that’s the key. By the standards I was raised with though… it can be quite a shithole. Now I know I’ll get some flack for that … people shouting that it’s a developing country and all the crap I’ve heard 1.3 billion times by people using some of the tried and true CCP tactics of rinse and repeat … and my point here isn’t to argue that – it’s simply to show that not everything is quite as shiny as Labor Park or Fu Jia Zhuang.
Now, to be fair… Dalian has some parts that are absolutely stunning. Natural beauty that could go up against some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen and hold its own. These, of course, are the places that have had limited touching by the mass population that likes to leave their squid sausage wrappers and sunflower seed packages pretty much everywhere but a trash receptacle. I’ve featured these more scenic spots a few times here, but today I’m going to focus on the underbelly that’s not as often shown, because quite simply it doesn’t take as nice a photo.
For those visitors to Dalian that don’t stray from the well manicured downtown core… here are some photos of the neighbourhood I most recently worked in – well out of the eye of tourists, and therefore also off the radar of any officials that might lift a finger to help clean it up. I got bored, so they feature some synthetic lomo digital editing I’ve been playing with lately … please don’t start with photo integrity arguments, k?
