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.