Wèi shénme bù?: My Chinese Holiday - Part 2: Just a hop, skip and a jump away from North Korea

We arrived in Dàlián in the early morning, and then went back to my apartment to chill out for a while. Initially, we’d planned to go to Dāndōng over the weekend, but changed our minds and decided to spend just the one day in my city before leaving for Dāndōng the next morning. We went via coach, which took about 4 hours to get there (but then 6 hours to get back for some reason). For those who have never heard of Dāndōng, the most notable thing about the city is that it lies on the border with North Korea. And what with China and North Korea being ‘friends’/trading partners, there is a functioning bridge (as well as the historic bridge) that goes from China into this mysterious country over the Yalu River.

So we arrived in the afternoon in very dreary weather, and because Dāndōng isn’t particularly touristy, there aren’t any hostelworld hostels available so securing our accommodation for the night was priority number one! According to the Lonely Planet guidebook we were using, there were a couple of budget hotels about so we set off on foot in search for one and (as always) Lonely Planet delivered and we were sorted for the night. Calling the place we stayed a ‘hotel’ would be generous, but beggars can’t be choosers now can they, and it really wasn’t that bad at all. Just a bit musty. As we didn’t have a huge amount of time left together, we decided that two days and one night in Dāndōng would be enough.

After resting a spell, we headed out to the Korean War Memorial Museum to make it just before it closed. If you Google this particular tourist attraction in the city, you’ll see a lot of ‘anti-US’ comments attached to it – and having now visited the museum, I’d say that’s fair! The museum itself commemorates the Chinese soldiers who fought to aid North Korea in the Korean War against the UN in the early 1950s (if you want a proper history lesson, you know where to search!). Told from the Chinese perspective, this museum was a particularly interesting visit because of the way it retold events with incredibly biased language. Now maybe I’ve just never noticed this sort of thing in museums at home before, but I would definitely say that the language here was much more emotional – for lack of a better word. For example, all of the exhibition labels referred to the United Nations as ‘the enemy’, which I feel doesn’t happen at home – museums tend to refer to the nationality/name of the opposing force right? Also, phrases such as ‘the enemy was still swollen with arrogance’ appear frequently throughout the museum exhibitions. Another interesting observation was that the number of Chinese or North Korean casualties was never mentioned; only rough figures of the UN forces that had been ‘wiped out’ appeared. All in all, an interesting visit!

After the museum, the weather was still pretty rubbish, but we decided to take a little wander along the boardwalk on the border. I have to say how surreal it all felt there; despite it being pretty foggy and cloudy we could see across the river into North Korea. LIKE ACTUAL NORTH KOREA. North Korea! So very strange. We didn’t stay too long but then headed to a supposedly North Korean restaurant for dindins. According to our Lonely Planet guidebook (and various internet sources) apparently, North Korean women are sent over into China to work as waitresses and the like because they earn so much more compared to what they would earn in North Korea. Also APPARENTLY to spy on the North Korean businessmen who are sent out of the country. But who knows! Anyway, the restaurant we went to had waitresses wearing traditional Korean attire and good food!

Day 2 we were up early because we really wanted to get a better look across the river into North Korea. Once again, we wandered along the boardwalk and as luck would have it, it was a bit clearer than the day before. We stared for a while trying to make out what we could see on the North Korea side of the river – I wish we’d had binoculars! According to Google Maps, across the border from Dāndōng is a North Korean city and we could make out what appeared to be a Ferris Wheel (an amusement park?) and various buildings. We also saw some moving vehicles and cyclists! But little else I’m afraid. There were the options of walking along the historic bridge, or taking a boat ride along the river to get a better view, but we opted not to do these.

After leaving the boardwalk, and still having a little time to kill, we headed over to Jĭn Jiāng Shān Park. Similar to many Chinese parks I’ve seen, it was very pretty and had traditional architecture about the place. Pretty much after this we had to skedaddle to the bus station and buy our tickets back to Dàlián!

Part 2 in photos: