Dalian, A Taste of Home?

In China, almost everyone gets one week of vacation to celebrate the 1 October, the National Day.  And almost everyone goes away, either back home or traveling, during that time.  Starting on September 30^th, airports, train and bus stations in the entire country become crowded with the rush of 1.3 billion people traveling from one city to another.  Therefore, making plans in advance for this particular holiday is especially important in order to beat the rise of ticket prices (from my own personal experience, I can tell you that a mere few seconds’ worth of hesitation will cost you well over 500 yuan when trying to purchase tickets online).   So with one week at my disposal, I knew I wanted to make it worthwhile.  While most people in my program had made plans to go to Shanghai or Xi’an—two cities I had already been too—I did some research beforehand and made up my mind I wanted to go to Dalian instead.  In all honesty, I hadn’t really heard much about Dalian.  No one had ever recommended it as a must-see city in China, nor had I read anything particularly interesting about it in my travel book.  In fact, after telling my Chinese teacher here in Beijing that I was going to Dalian for a few days, his eyebrows quickly disappeared behind his bangs and he looked skeptically at me for some time before exclaiming in Chinese: “What the hell for?  There is nothing there.”

“有啊，周杰伦！” I yelled out excitedly.  “There is!  I’m going to Zhou Jie Lun’s concert in Dalian!”  Zhou Jie Lun, or Jay Chou, is arguably the most famous pop star in all of Asia.  He even received recognition in the West for starring alongside Seth Rogen in The Green Hornet, possibly one of the worst films I have ever seen but, then again, Jay Chou is no actor, who cares about his poor choice in film?  He’s a musical genius, a musician, and a fantastically good one too.  So when I read online he would be performing in Dalian the first weekend of the National Holidays, it felt as if my prayers had finally been heard.  I invited Kristi, my roommate, to come too, and without a moment’s hesitation she agreed, as I knew she would given she shares my profound love for Chinese music.

Our departure day finally arrived.  At 3:30am, Kristi and I hailed a cab from the South Gate of Peking University and were at the airport in 25 minutes—a drive that would have taken at least one hour in daytime under regular traffic conditions.  We drowsily checked in our bags and waited for our 7:30am flight to Dalian.  In about 45 minutes, we had landed.  I looked out the window and was shocked.  Only about 100m away, there were hundreds of identical western-looking homes lined up in neat rows one right next to the other.  It was a picture straight out of a Martha Stewart magazine, only in a northeastern city of China.  Later on, as we drove through Dalian on our way to the hotel, I kept staring out the window in awe, thinking perhaps I had boarded the wrong flight.  Had I?  The roads were lined with Oriental plane trees, French architecture-inspired buildings and elegant squares.  Lush lawns, sculptures and fountains were specked across the city.  It felt as though I had flown not into a Chinese city, but rather directly into Europe.  However, maybe because the roads and buildings seemed a little more rundown and less picturesque than the typical Parisian streets, not Europe either but somewhere in South America.  Chile, perhaps?  What a strange coincidence that would be, I thought, to fly halfway across the world only to find myself back home.   Under the heading for hometown, my passport reads New York, USA.  However, I lived in Santiago, Chile for most of my life.  While the Chinese street signs and flags and people of Dalian are a dead giveaway that place is, in fact, in China, I couldn’t help but see the similarity between the Liaoning peninsular city and my own neighborhood in Santiago.

While in Beijing and up until that point, I hadn’t felt anything remotely similar to this feeling of familiarity, which seemed to have hit me so strongly upon my arrival in Dalian.  Sure, the Beijing skyscrapers and construction sites were shocking at times and it sometimes reminded me of the Manhattan skyline, but nothing ever served as such a direct reminder to anything I personally knew.  That is, until Dalian.  On Saturday, as we rode a bus down one of what seemed to be the larger roads in the city, my mind kept racing with memories from back home.  The street was lined with Oriental planes, the landmark tree of Santiago.  At that moment, I couldn’t help but laugh.  The cobbled-stone Dalian street we were driving down was an exact rendering of Pedro de Valdivia, a street in Santiago I frequently walked by.  Everywhere I looked, there were squares with wide lawns in front of official government buildings, and all the architecture was European in style.  They looked exactly like the Chilean “plazas,” a congregation of lawns, squares and government buildings.  I knew Dalian had been occupied by Russia, but I didn’t realize the extent of Western influence until this point.  It was strange, I’d never experienced so many déjà-vu moments in such a short period of time.  In all of Dalian, I counted only two buildings that depicted the traditional Chinese architecture.   I didn’t know whether to feel sad for this city or excited about its obvious future.  I decided confused would suffice.  And now that I think about it, it’s what makes most sense.  Looking back on my trip, I realize that in only a few days I traversed through an even wider gamut of feelings than I had during my one month in Beijing.  Dalian gave me a sense of familiarity, recognition, awe, inspiration and bewilderment.  Not to say that Beijing has given me any less to think or wonder about.  In fact, with the little I know of both places, I still prefer Beijing, and feel certain that it would be my first choice if I decided to live in China in the future.  However, no matter how much more exciting Beijing is, there is much to salvage from a place like Dalian.  Least of all, how outward appearances can be so incredibly deceiving.  By the third day there, I hadn’t ever felt more like a fish out of water.  Clearly, while Dalian architecture claims Western modernity, I realized its citizens know very little, if anything, of modern Western culture and rarely come face to face with non-Chinese.  Indeed, I had never been so openly stared at in my entire life.   And you all thought Beijing was bad…hah!