Rah, Rah Russian Street, A Commercial Tourist Vestige of Russified Dalian

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Travel

Russian Street (Russian Lu), or as it is sometimes rendered, Russian Style Street or Russian Custom Street, is a lingering reminder of the days the city of Dalian was an outpost of Moscow. Today the connexion to an erstwhile Russia is most visually embodied in this single street to the north of Shengli Qiào (Shengli Bridge), near Dalian’s Xigang district.

The start of the street is marked by (what I imagine was once a very grand but what is these days) a large, aged Russian mansion. A sign in front of it proclaims the Russian heritage, русский. Russian Street is a longish, commercial street (with a short side lane appended to it) near the city ports. Rows of stalls line up on the inside of the street in front of the bricks and mortar shop buildings. It’s a street restricted to pedestrian traffic, although this in no way hinders the bike and scooter riders and the odd delivery van with its Russian goods.

Virtually all of Russian Street’s gift shops sell more or less identical merchandise – moon cakes in highly decorative boxes, inexpensive bars of Russian chocolate (going at 10CN¥)✺, jewellery and opals, decorative lighters, toy weapons, tanks and missile launchers❂, and above all, rows and rows of the famous Matryoshka dolls (also commonly called Babushka dolls), so many that they they were almost spilling out into the street. I noticed that China’s Matryoshka dolls are more orthodox than the kind I found in Moscow, where the vendors with unbridled commercial zeal were fast at it selling all manner of variations on the dolls-within-dolls theme (Vladimir Putin dolls, Barack Obama dolls, Lady Gaga dolls, Elvis dolls, and so on ad nauseam).

Half-way down there’s a authentic Russian pectopaH (restaurant)…a lot of visitors don’t venture much further than this point and it’s a good deal less busy than than the Shengli bridge end. Russian Custom Street ends at a roundabout with a large official-looking building of state, there are a couple of small coffee shops and a number of food outlets spread out along the thoroughfare.

Russian Street in 2019 conveys what is at best a superficial nod of recognition of the Russian presence in Dalian that was at its influential height some 120 years ago. Like that other (northern) Chinese town Harbin, Russian Street, Dalian, retains a Russian feel with bi-lingual street signage, but it doesn’t quite match the sense of “Russification” which Harbin leaves visitors with.

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✺ in Dalian’s summer swelter, they are definitely of the “eat them before they melt” kind

❂ toys of a military orientation are extremely popular throughout Dongbei, a fixation I imagine which extends countrywide (a very 1960s-1970s echo of Western predilections)

Tracing the Japanese footprint in Dalian – Qiqa Street

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Travel

The Empire of Japan occupied the of cities Dalian and Lüshan (or Lvshunkou)※ and in fact a large chunk of China’s North-East for almost the entire first-half of the 20th century. Even now, nearly seventy-five years after the Japanese were vanquished from Chinese Manchuria, travelling around the Liaodong Peninsula, you can readily find the imprint of their former presence.

A conspicuously heinous reminder of the Japanese connection with Dalian (Dairen to the Japanese) and the peninsula can be found at Port Arthur (renamed Ryojun by Japan after its victory in the 1904-05 war with Russia). Specifically this can be seen in the former Russian-built Japanese Prison (now a museum) with its “hanging wall” and other torture devices used by the Japanese Kwantung army against Chinese.

There are other threads linking Dalian to its Japanese (and of course to Russia⍟), but while in Dalian I took time to visit a part of the city with much less unsavoury and more positive connotations of the former Japanese occupancy. We took a taxi from the city centre to a fairly lengthy street called Qiqa Street, not far from the Midtown area…this street is a quaint reminder of Japanese influence and imprint on the city.

Walking along it, I can’t say that much of the architecture in this street looks particularly Japanese in appearance, although to be fair we only had time to explore the western end of the street. The street dog-legs right at one point and heads east for quite a number of blocks in Zhongshan district. However, on our abridged tour we did see a number of Japanese businesses – eateries, hairdressers, and other shops – as the presence of Japanese characters on a number of the shopfronts testify. At least one block of the street has a concentration of these shops with eateries such as the pint-sized JoJo’s Tea (light Japanese meals, run by Chinese staff).

Qiqa Lu also has several buildings unrelated to Japanese culture or cuisine including a Chinese government building and the equivocally named “Paparazzi Who’s the Murderer? This commercial entity comprises a red telephone box at the front of the premises. When you lift the receiver, a metal door to the left swings open to reveal ….? I remain ignorant as to the raison d’être of Paparazzi Who’s the Murderer? Is it a bar, a nightclub, is it a mystery/crime-themed theatre-restaurant? Having not ventured inside, I guess the answer will remain elusive….

Phone box?
Stone-faced doorman at Paparazzi’s


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※ Dalian known as Dairen by the Japanese

⍟ Port Arthur, prior to the Russo-Japanese War was home to Tsarist Russia’s Pacific fleet

Circling the Square at Xinghai

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Travel

From our hotel in Lianhe Road in the Shahekou district of Dalian, Xinghai Square didn’t look that far away on Google Maps. Wisely, we decided against footing it to the Square, as the taxi ride took a surprisingly long time to get there. Located south-west of Dalian CBD, Xinghai Square is a very large city ‘square’ (in fact it is circular in shape) comprising large lawns and hedged gardens, dotted with modern sculptural pieces depicting rowing, sailboarding, gymnastics and other outdoor activities.

Although a pleasant place to aimlessly wander round at any time of day (barring inclement weather), the best optics are had at night. The lights on the phalanx of modern high-rise, residential monoliths surrounding the largely parkland square provide an illuminating backdrop to it. At the water’s edge there’s a high rectangular concrete platform which is sharply raised at both ends to resemble a ski jump or perhaps an enormous skatepark. Many visitors amuse themselves by climbing the steep high ends by themselves or in tandem with their friends to catch the ocean views to the south – looking out over Xinghai Bay to the spectacularly long and modern sea bridge (Xinghaiwan Bridge) and beyond, to the Yellow Sea. Most, having carefully treaded and scrambled their way to the top of the ‘skatepark’, take the opportunity for the obligatory 25 to 30 selfies!

After nightfall most interest is concentrated on two parts of Xinghai Square. One, alongside the ‘skatepark’, is the brightly-lit amusement park and auxiliary restaurants, a collection of largely stock-standard rides and entertainments, a sort of Dalian answer to Brighton Pier (without the pier!). The other, which draws the bulk of nocturnal visitors to Xinghai Square, is the vast circular fountain and its colourful displays of vertical water propulsion which draws hundreds to witness the vivid spectacle and video-record the event on their phones. Providing audio for the spectacular waterworks show is a accompanying musical soundtrack, with a mixed bag of numbers ranging from melodic Classical Chinese pieces to international pop like Simon and Garfunkel.

But the biggest spectacle of the night was the mass exit at the immediate conclusion of the vivid colour water show. People who moments before had been quietly watching the performance were all instantly and determinedly making for the exit gates at a fast rate of knots – as if they had suddenly remembered another engagement they had! The exiting crowds scattered in such numbers that the handful of police on duty had difficulty in keeping them off the roadway. Waves and waves of them streamed out of the precinct on to Huizhan Road and into taxis and cars.

Footnote: at 110 hectares 星海广场 (Xīnghâi guângchâng) is the largest urban square in Asia. The name ‘Xinghai’ literally means “the Sea of Stars”

A Rural Hot Springs Resort, Dandong District Style

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Travel

Before leaving Dandong altogether for the southern Liaoning Peninsula and Dalian, we took to the country for a couple of days R & R. On a recommendation we went to Fengcheng for a taste of the Dandong type of hot springs resort.

From the advanced publicity I had envisaged a Chinese version of some kind of swanky, luxurious modern resort complex surrounded by flowing meadows, undulating hills, wooded forest* and a pleasant babbling brook. Imagine my disappointment when we arrived to discover nothing resembling a health farm or even an ashram exuding the enlightenment of the Bhagavistawama.

The ‘resort’ was in the middle of the township…a dusty side-street off the main drag, it was a series of rundown, crumbling, grimy buildings not suggesting the hot springs country recuperator I was picturing on the way there.

Not a terrorist attack but a sighter of the free entertainment available from the resort’s room windowsThe rooms were equipped with a brace of hot tubs (large, deep bathtubs really) and apparently there were hot springs below the ground pumping up thermal water. I couldn’t personally verify the bona fides of the springs’ healing powers but I took it at face value. In any case, even if the medicinal therapeutic benefits lacked evidence, it was very welcome just to relax and unwind for an hour or so each day in the heated tub. On my travels in China I haven’t encountered many baths in the hotels and appartments I have stayed in.

The local hairdressers’, in better nick than the ‘resort’

Even if it didn’t measure up to my (Western) understanding of a de luxe country hot springs resort, I have to admit that it was certainly a bargain deal and tariff: three meals a day (with the owner family experiencing authentic local tucker at varying odd times), two rooms plus the hot tub facilities for ¥150 per night. Although when the plumbing burst at 3am one night and we ended up almost up to our ankles in water that may or not been from the springs, I did have some fleeting, momentary doubts about our choice. But this can happen anywhere at any time, so I passed it off as part of the experience.

Don’t get me wrong, while the resort’s surface appearance and location may not have not been exactly the ticket, and about as far from a top-of-the-range rural resort you can get, the town and surrounding countryside of Fengcheng did have a certain attraction. A sleepy little Chinese backwater hamlet during the day, takes on a lively night-time ambience with the constant blare of street music reverberating up and down the main street of the town.

Fengcheng’s natural environs (just a leisurely stroll from the built-up area) have a lot to offer in the way of walks through wilderness, viewing pleasant rivers and streams and some dazzling local fauna. All in all our brief sojourn in Fengcheng was a chill-out, low-key diversion from the urban tourist trail.

Fengcheng, Liaoning province, is about 35 miles or so north-west of the city of Dandong

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* the best kind of forest!