We had another pleasant breakfast in Mamsen’s as the ship docked in Dalian. This is a huge port city with a population of over 7million. There are high rise apartments and skyscrapers all along the city’s skyline. Fall is arriving in Liaoning Province, and with it, less heat and humidity.
We took the ship’s complimentary shuttle into Dalian, where we got dropped off a the Friendship Mall, which is a huge multi floor high end shopping mall. Everything inside is very nice, but also very expensive. Ben found a photo vest he had been looking for, but it was ¥999 or $143 USD. On Amazon.com it can be had for $25 USD. There are some very fancy gift and decorating items up on the 6th floor including a nice jade carving for only ¥18M, or $2.5M USD. For the more budget minded, there is a nice two sided silk embroidery panel with pandas for a mere ¥17,550 or $2470 USD.
We walked around the outside of the mall and found a pop-up clothing store with some more affordable items like rain coats for ¥99 ($14) and UV hoodies for ¥59 ($8.30) which would be good buys, except that Chinese sizing runs very small, and they didn’t have the 3X-5X sizes for Americans.
We descended into the subway tunnels to get inside one of the city’s many squares, which are actually round. There are interesting relics of the city’s colonial past in the form of European styled architecture scattered around the big circle.
We returned to the ship for lunch in the buffet.
In the afternoon, we boarded buses and travelled to the Wushu Martial Arts Museum, which is a huge complex dedicated to promoting China’s history of Martial Arts. At the center of the complex is a huge arena equipped with state of the art stage effects, lighting and sound effects to showcase the Martial Arts and other cultural events.
Around the periphery are galleries displaying exhibits about the origins of Chinese martial arts, its many different forms, people influential in the development of Chinese martial arts and an extensive collection of Martial arts weapons and medieval Chinese weaponry. It is the largest museum in the world dedicated to Chinese Martial Arts.
The venue appeared to have been rented exclusively for passengers of the Viking Yi Dun for a show about Tai Chi. This appeared to follow a young man’s journey of discovery as he learns the secrets of Tai Chi and is able to find a pathway to self improvement. There were some masterful displays of Tai Chi weaponry, dueling, and drills, along with some pageantry, dancing, music and stage effects. Although there was no English dialog to follow, at one point, they dropped a house on the protagonist. It was an interesting show, and a demonstration of Chinese theatrical prowess and technology as well as Martial arts.
The ship sailed away from Dalian before sunset and it was a very scenic sail away. It was also very pleasant outside for a change.
We had a meeting of passengers who will be going on to Cheng Du, Tibet, Xian and Beijing. There are apparently about 150 passengers who will go on some variation of this post cruise extension. When we booked the cruise, it was marketed as an integral part of the cruise, rather than an optional extension. But some passengers will also remain in Beijing for 5 days, while we will simply fly back home when we get back to Beijing since we spent 5 days in Beijing on our own private small group tour before taking off on the Spirit of Mongolia pre cruise extension. These passengers have been broken up into groups of 24, each lead by a different Viking tour director, who we met with for the first time at this meeting.
Our tour director is Jimmie Liu. He gave us some details about what to expect with the disembarkation from the ship and transfer from the Port of Tianjin to the airport for flights directly to Chengdu. We will be spending just one night in the. Hotel in Chengdu before flying directly to Lhasa, Tibet the next day. That means we need to start our altitude sickness premedications in the next 24hrs for maximum benefit. Some people will attend a Chinese opera performance in Chengdu, but for most of the group, ourselves included, it will be a free afternoon and evening to explore after a dinner banquet. We will most likely be a bit jet lagged, even though all of China is in just a single time zone.
After the meeting, we went up to the buffet to see if we could come off the waiting list for a hot pot table. Fortunately, one couple did cancel, so we got seated right away. This time, we attacked the hot pot like pros. The first time we did it, we split ingredients evenly between the spicy and non-spicy cooking broths, but that turned out to be a mistake because the spicy was so pungent, it left our mouths numb. This time, we used the non-spicy broth to cook just about everything and only used the spicy broth to flavor some items like tofu, and to add just a little to the non-spicy broth in our individual bowls.
We also made use of the multitude of dipping sauces and ingredients that were on a side buffet that we only discovered too late the first time around. We both ended up enjoying the meal more and spent less time blowing our noses. The weather also turned out to be perfect for a dinner on the Aquavit Terrace, with no rain or wind, even with the ship underway.
We finished up the evening with a shadow puppet show. This shadow puppet technique is from Shaanxi Province and is considered a Cultural Hertage treasure. It is the first time we have seen a performance like this. The show is performed on a brilliantly backlit screen with puppets that project full colors onto the screen with lifelike fluidity and motion. There were several skits or scenes with different characters and stories. There was even some Kung Fu, and ballet, as well as folk tales involving frogs, turtles, cranes, cats, rats and monkeys. There were even dragons. It was really an amazing demonstration of skill and imagination.
We had to put our suitcases out tonight for pickup, and will say farewell to the Viking Yi Dun in the morning.
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