Dāndōng - Take Two!

Alright, so recently, despite the cold weather my friends and I decided to venture slightly more north to the city of Dāndōng. You may recall that I’ve already visited this city - back in the summer time when my friends from home came to see me - but as it sounded fun and the plan this time was to see Dāndōng’s section of the Great Wall, I decided to go again!

Once again we went via a 4-hour coach journey – slight hiccup when we missed our 7am coach but as a couple of my friends actually speak close to fluent Chinese, we were able to switch tickets for a later one. Phew. After arrival, we checked in to our hotel (pretty snazzy – and it offered a free breakfast!) then headed out to the Wall! As there were so many of us, and taxis in Dāndōng are cheap as chips, we just jumped in a few of those instead of taking a bus to the entrance. It was about 60 RMB for the ticket on to the wall and compared to those just outside Beijing, this section was very short! But the main attraction was that it was RIGHT next to North Korea on the border. We didn’t spend too long up there as it was a relatively short section, we didn’t have a lot of daylight and it was bloody nippy! But it was still good! And following the Wall round to a certain point you are standing right on the border between China and North Korea – crazay. Post-Wall, we had to hang about a bit and hire a couple of minivans to take us back, but only at about 10 RMB each so not bad at all really!

The evening was spent eating, drinking and being merry, and then the next day we went to the Korean War Memorial Museum. This I had seen so wasn’t too fussed but went along anyway. With a little time to kill before catching our coach back to Dàlián, some of us paid the 30 RMB to walk along the Broken Bridge across the Yalu River. WELL WORTH IT! Firstly, unlike my first visit, it was a much clearer day so we could see more of the North Korean city across the way; but secondly, going along the bridge meant that we were (a more realistic) swimming distance from the North Korean shore! And we saw people! Actual North Korean people – men (we think) fishing in the river. Fascinating! We also witnessed a couple of minivans and buses crossing the functioning bridge – possibly for tourists? Who knows!

One thing I did notice during the evening of Day 1 in Dāndōng was how the Chinese side of the river was all lit up and neon-y, whereas the North Korean side was pretty much pitch black. It was very bizarre. The neon, rainbow lights on the functioning bridge also seemed to stop midway along – presumably signifying the border. No electricity for them!

Here are the photos:

Walking up to the Wall entrance

Group pic!

The Wall

Is it just me, or do I look like a miniature
person here? Damn it.

THE BORDER! Had I ran across that frozen stream,
I'd have been in North Korea (but I'm not mad)

North Korea

The functioning bridge - all half lit up

Sculpture in front of the entrance way of
the Broken Bridge

The entrance to the bridge!

Very bright day! China on the right, North Korea
on the left

NORTH KOREANS!!!
They didn't respond to our calls of 'Ni hao'

North Korean city across the way

Minivans crossing the bridge!

Where the bridge 'broke'!

And that’s a wrap really! Just a ‘weekend’ trip, so didn’t have a huge amount of time – but I don’t think you really need to in Dāndōng. But getting out of the city and doing something exciting has inspired me to actively plan my visit to Hā'ěrbīn and the annual Ice and Snow Festival next month – so stay tuned for that one!

I’ll be seeing ya

xoxo

An EF Halloween

Greetings readers!

As I’m sure you were all aware, All Hallows’ Eve has just passed us. Obviously China doesn’t really celebrate this holiday – but being a language school, EF had an activity on for the evening, which I was SUPER excited about. The idea was to have various rooms set up and decorated, each with a different foreign teacher and activity for the students to do. I chose to do face/mask painting; other activities included musical tombstones (musical chairs but for Halloween), the classic close your eyes and put your hand in a box and say what you feel game, dressing students up as mummies and others. The plan was simple: split the students into groups (8 in total with about 16 students in each) and with careful time management (each teacher was only allowed 12 minutes to run their activity before they were supposed to pack the students up and make way for the next group), move them out of each room so the whole evening was only running for two hours. This idea was obviously easier said than put into practice!

But before I get into that, I have to say the most fun part of the evening was dressing up and getting ready with my co-workers. Now the school ‘chose’ Superheroes as the theme for the staff to dress up as, but this theme wasn’t really stuck to – we had vampires, Hermoine from Harry Potter, some comic book villains and more. I decided originally to go as Storm from the X-Men (the school provided our costumes – though all I requested was a white wig), but then to add that little something Halloween-y to it, changed to Zombie Storm (see below). I went a bit mad on Pinterest and Youtube in the weeks leading up to Halloween finding the best tutorials on how to do my face and make realistic looking zombie bites/wounds – I don’t know why, but I was super into this holiday this year! I really freaked some of the students/parents/Chinese staff out with my costume too which was great. Anyways, as I have - quite frankly - awesome nail painting skills, people assumed I’d be good at face painting, so I spent the first part of the evening painting the faces of my colleagues which was fun. Then the mayhem commenced…

It wasn’t TOO bad to be honest. Firstly though, the main problem I encountered was that most, if not all, of the students did not actually want their faces painted. Boring bastards! But the school had given me these masks as an alternative for the younger students, so I just ended up using all of those, and the others could just paint their hands/arms. Such funny kids over here. Then the worst part of the evening was the timing issue. Twelve minutes is not a lot of time to paint anything really – especially when you have to explain what we’re doing/hand out supplies before anyone picks up a brush. But the event flew by and before I knew it, I was handing out sweets and saying goodbye. Thank goodness. Afterwards a few of my friends and I went to a Halloween party at a popular bar in the city which was fun – but I couldn’t stay too long as I was working the next day. Bummer.

So that’s Halloween in a nutshell! Now I’m curious/apprehensive about what the school will plan for their Christmas activity – just hope we get to dress up again!

Here are a few pics for your delight:

Practice bite!

Contouring

My rotting zombie skin

The final costume! Apart from getting
an egg head with the wig, I think it all
worked out nicely!

Storm and Snow White (aka Michelle)

Storm and Poison Ivy (aka Dylis,
aka one of the nicest people to work with!)

Painting in action

This kid wanted a spider web

More in action

And again!

Two of my favourite students - Vicky and Cici
They were pretty freaked out by my costume

Staff pic!
(Excuse my awkward smile)

P.S. You may have noticed a difference in font/effects on my photos – I’m writing this post on my new laptop (MAC!) so still experimenting with everything on here until I find things I like.

Until next time

xoxo