Walked south from the hostel to the beach.

Western style building

Big Clam at FuJiaZhuang Park

The beach

Walked southwest towards Xinghai square.
Dalian Safari

Castle

Back to XingHai square

Lunch, HunTun and Tomato Egg noodle (10 Yuan~USD$1.40)

Visited the Dalian Modern Museum. The museum is about the development of Dalian from a backwater small village to a big city today.

Took bus 16, a double decker bus, from the southwest part of the city to the northeastern part.
View on bus 16

Dalian Tram

Land reclamation

RenMin Square where office of the municipal government is located

Japanese style building at south of RenMin Square. Dalian was a colony of Japan in 1930s and there some old Japanese style building still remains.

As a coastal city, Dalian is famous for its fried squid
Fried squid, 4 Yuan

Olympic Square

Flag lowering ceremony as the sun goes down

Went to the train station and got on a bus to Dalian port at 10pm.
Got a ferry ticket from Dalian to Yantai 2 days ago on the train, (130 Yuan~USD$19, 6.5 hours boat ride, hard seat).

The boat, DeYinHai is huge and can even fit a thousand passengers, trucks and cars.
Sleeping berth cost 260 Yuan, but usually they provide last minute discount for just 180 Yuan

Hard seat 130 Yuan

I just took a hard seat since it’s only 6.5 hours ride. The boat should have left the port at 11.50pm. However, the boat was delayed and left slightly before 1am.

Arrived at Dalian train station at 12.40pm.

View from the train station. The sky is blue and clear here.

Dalian is the second largest city in Liaoning with a population of around 3 millions. Dalian is a relatively new city dating from 1898. The city was colonized by British, Japan and the Soviet before the city was returned back to the Chinese government. As a port city, Dalian develped very well under the leadership of the mayor Bo XiLai, moving away from heavy industries to tourism, commerce and IT outsourcing. Dalian has recently become an important center for information technology offshoring and business process outsourcing, similar to Bangalore in India. It’s also the financial center for Northeast China. Dalian commodity exchange is one of the only 3 commodity exchange in China.

View while waiting for bus 702

Tried to find my way to the only one youth hostel in Dalian recommended. Took bus 702 to TaoYuanShanZhuang and found the hostel after an hour. Melly Hostel (38 Yuan~USD$6).

View Dalian in a larger map

Dalian is quite hilly and greener than a typical Chinese city.

Lunch, beef noodle (7 Yuan~USD$1)

Took bus 404 to XingHai GuangChang.

Took the light rail to the last stop of Dalian western area. At the west part of Dalian, there are quite a few universities and there is the Dalian software park. Dalian is sort of the Bangalore for Japan and there are many outsourcing firms servicing Japanese companies. Intel is also opening a new fab in Dalian, actually I do have a friend, WangMiao who was just sent back by Intel to Dalian the night I am leaving the city.

Tianjin street, famous for street food

ZhongShan Square

Dinner, chicken rice (8 Yuan~USD$1.2)

Around TuanJieLu, there is a street with many Russian style buildings

Dalian has influences from other cultures and even some signs are in Japanese, Russian and Korean.

There are many shopping malls in the city center.
One of the transparent shopping mall.