20250822 Friday August 22, 2025. Qianshan Scenic Area Hike, Lamb Roast

We were up at 5:15 a.m. and headed down to the lobby at 6 a.m. for our planned hike, but it was raining heavily, so we weren’t sure if an alternate plan was necessary. The weather forecast predicted the rain would end by 9am so we headed out because it would take 3 hours to get to the mountains. 

The rain was very heavy, causing a lot of urban flooding which caused garbage cans to float in some places and nearly swamping some smaller vehicles. Commercial traffic on the highways all ran with hazard blinkers on. 

As we got closer to the mountains, we stopped at a restaurant for breakfast. We were told it was a buffet, but the food was all in full-sized serving portions for family-style dining. This caused a bit of confusion as we got to the end of the buffet area where Tom’s family members paid the bills for the plates. It turned out to be a situation where everyone ended up shopping their dishes around each of our tables so that food didn’t go to waste. 

The food was good and plentiful, but had we known it was family-style dining and not a buffet, in the American sense of the word, we would have chosen foods differently. 

The forecast ended up being accurate. The torrential rain let up, and by the time we arrived at Qianshan Scenic Area, the rain had ceased and had cooled things a bit, so the temperature was in the low 80s. 

The Qianshan Scenic Area is a huge, highly developed park with some areas resembling a theme park, but we were going to do some hiking trails led by one of Tom’s uncles. We ended up dividing into two groups with DaQing and Andy taking Janet on lower-elevation touring of some temples and walks around the streams, while Tom’s uncle led everyone else on some serious hiking and climbing.  

There are several temples scattered amongst the very mountainous terrain, connected by trails largely paved with granite blocks and caved into steep rock faces.  There are steel handrails installed in many places where the trails are very steep and require scrambling up rock faces using footholds chiseled into them.  

This was a great adventure for the kids, and Ben also enjoyed the challenge.  It was very similar in many ways to the Grand Canyon Track in Australia’s Blue Mountains, with its thousands of granite steps, but this trail was much narrower and harrowing enough to make some kids cry.  There were a couple of passages where you had to shimmy through sideways and at a steep angle to get through cracks between boulders or rock faces.  Looking at a map, we covered over half of the trails in 3.6 miles with 1,223ft elevation gain.  It took us 3-1/2hrs to get back to the parking lot.  There are several temples including the Dragon Spring temple, which apparently is one of the most sacred Buddhist temples in China.  

When we started hiking, there was a little coolness from the rain and heavy cloud cover blocking some of the sun’s UV rays, but towards the end, the sky cleared and the sun came out just as we had finished the rugged trail parts and were coming down through the Dragon Spring temple.

We ended up about 2 hours late for the lamb lunch at the GAO Family Mansion in Wazigoucun, about 2 hours south of central Shenyang.  This was an elaborate feast featuring a whole roast lamb, cooked in a special earthenware charcoal oven.  This also featured two of the largest beer bottles we have ever seen.  It is traditional to serve this beer in bowls instead of glasses.  It’s a good thing it is only 2.5% alcohol.  Our group of 20 plus diners did barely manage to drain the bottles making multiple toasts around the huge round table, which is a local tradition.  

Drinking that huge amount of beer meant making two unscheduled bathroom stops— one at a highway rest area, and the other to dump a Gatorade bottle filled with recycled beer on the side of the road just outside Shenyang.  

We got back to the hotel in time for Ciara and Tom to move into the bridal suite.  This was a HUGE upgrade from their tiny original room.

The hotel had set out decorations for Ciara and Tom’s wedding and also set up the stage and runway for tomorrow’s ceremony, so we got to get a better feeling for the proceedings tomorrow.  During the rehearsal, the wedding organizer had described things, but it was much better seeing the room set up for the actual ceremony.  

Although Ciara and Tom had originally planned to do a spa night tonight, it was late enough by the time they got moved into the bridal suite that the spa was rescheduled for Sunday.  

The big day kicks off at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow with Ciara’s makeup.  It will be an interesting, if not hectic, day tomorrow.

20250821 Thursday, August 21, 2025. Seoul to Shenyang

20250821 Thursday, August 21, 2025.  Seoul to Shenyang

John, Price, and Franklin made an early morning run to buy gimbap rolls for takeout breakfast, which they ate in their room with tea while they finished up packing.  Last night, the three of them ventured into the spa, which had separate men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor hot and cold tubs, and interested enough, they were filled with naked people, so when in Rome…. 

Kim Chun Soo, the Jumbo Taxi driver who took us into Seoul from the airport, was back to return us from the hotel right on schedule.  It was reassuring to know he had tetris’ed our luggage into the back of his Grand Starex minivan before.  We were fortunate that traffic heading to the airport was pretty light because traffic heading into the city was jammed up pretty badly.  We got to the airport about 8:15 a.m., and had to wait an hour before China Southern Airlines opened their check-in counters for our Shenyang flight, which was scheduled to depart at 12:45 p.m.  We got checked in smoothly despite not being able to do so online.  The check-in counter supervisor told us China Southern Airlines doesn’t do online check-in.  It would have been nice for their website to say so instead of putting travelers into endless dead-end loops.  Franklin was the only one in our group relying on China’s 10-day visa-free travel, so he had to produce his hotel information and China departure flight information.  It took quite a bit longer for his check-in process because of this.  Our family all had 10-year China tourism visas in our passports.  

There was a bit of a line and delay getting through security.  Customs was all done with facial recognition and fingerprint scan in automated kiosks.  It wasn’t until after getting through customs that Ben realized he didn’t have his backpack, which had his phone and wallet inside.  That set off a little panic, but fortunately, he was allowed to go back through customs after speaking with a supervisor.  The supervisor held Ben’s passport while he recovered the backpack, which had been pulled off the belts and placed under a counter out of sight.  Ben had to talk to one of the people working the scanners to get them to pull the suitcase out.  Ben had to sign for it, but didn’t have to open it up or do secondary screening.  Ben’s suitcase and Janet’s suitcase and backpack had all come out of the scanner. Ben’s backpack had gone into the scanner first and must have been diverted for secondary screening, which is why Ben didn’t realize it was missing after we grabbed Janet’s stuff off the scanner belt.  

We got to the gate area about 10:15 a.m. so we had plenty of time to kill at the airport.  

We had lunch in the terminal where there was a burger place that had a burger, fries, drink, and a pair of chicken nuggets for 10,000KWN, which is $7.15 USD. The same meal at a US airport would be at least $15. Food in Korea has been surprisingly affordable. 

We had anticipated not getting a meal service on the 90-minute flight from Incheon to Shenyang, but as soon as the doors closed on the plane, even before pushing back from the gate, the flight attendants broke out bag lunches featuring a hot chicken sandwich with mixed nuts and a banana.  

As the plane taxied down to take-off position, the flight attendants then snapped everyone’s seat backs and tray tables into upright and locked position in double time. They buckled up into their jump seats just as the pilot pushed the throttles forward. They were a precision and well-lubricated team. 

We landed in Shenyang a little early, but it did take nearly a half hour to get through Chinese customs. They were particularly picky about having a contact name and number in China. The phone number Viking gave us to use was not recognized by the customs officials as a valid Chinese number, so we had to use the Liaoning Hotel’s number. 

Those of us with Chinese tourist visas pretty much breezed through the Chinese customs, but Franklin was traveling on the new 10-day visa-free option. This ended up requiring a different China Arrival card and proof of his return flight. Other than that, we had to get electronic fingerprints and facial recognition scans and got waved through. 

We were relieved to see that our Nomad e-SIM has been working seamlessly between Korea and China to allow us to use WeChat, WhatsApp, and Google Translate with NordVPN. The only apparent problem for Ben is the AppleNews app doesn’t work, which is a bit puzzling since Google News works. 
We’ve been able to stay in touch with Ciara and Tom through the WeChat App, and we’re greeted by Ciara and Tom with Tom’s family and Ben’s Wuhan cousin DaQing. DaQing came with his two daughters, BenChen and KeXin.

They had hired an 14-passenger van to pick people up from the airport, but it had a row of seats where luggage would normally be loaded. So we stacked up the smaller carry-on suitcases on the back row of seats and stacked the large ones by the door, and were able to carry arriving guests in just a couple of trips. The hotel is about a 45-minute drive from Shenyang airport.  Shenyang’s main highways are well-maintained and modern, and the city is also quite modern with dedicated lanes for scooters and bicycles along some main streets.  

There is a big central square with a huge statue of Mao in the center.  He is pointing at something in the distance, which happens to be the Liaoning Hotel just outside the big traffic circle around him.  

The hotel was grand in its era and has hosted many celebrities over the years, including Chairman Mao himself.  But the building is showing its age, with the furniture and fixtures all showing significant wear and accumulated damage.  The grouting in the bathroom is well past needing to be redone.  

Escape hood in closet. 

The rooms and hallways also smelled of cigarette smoke and there ash trays and matches in every room. Coming from the Fraser Place Namdaemun Seoul, which was a 4-star hotel, seeing the rooms in the Liaoning was a bit of a disappointment.  But we are here not for the hotel room but to spend some time with Ciara’s new in-laws’ family in China and to explore a part of China not commonly visited by American tourists.  Another big selling point is the affordability of the hotel.  Its rates were a fraction of what we paid to stay at the Fraser Place Namdaemun Seoul.  

The weather was quite hot and humid.  The hotel’s air conditioning wasn’t quite up to the task of cooling and dehumidifying the room to our liking, but it was tolerable.  The temperature never got below 78°F but it was less humid and more comfortable than outside. 

Shortly after getting checked in, we had a wedding rehearsal.  The Chinese ceremony is quite different from American ceremonies, containing several rituals that are new to us.  The director of the wedding activities did speak English but communicated mostly in Chinese with one of Ciara’s friends translating for us.  We got just one run-through of the ceremony and will have to rely on the event staff to herd us through the proceedings on Saturday.

After wrapping up the rehearsal, we had dinner at a local Shenyang restaurant called the Big Cherry.  Some of Tom’s aunts and uncles shuttled guests from the hotel to the restaurant, making multiple trips, even though the restaurant was just 1 mile from the hotel.  

We had a private dining room with Karaoke set up and a huge round table with the biggest lazy Susan I have ever seen in the center.  We were treated to a multicourse feast hosted by Tom’s parents.  This featured many local specialties including two different cold noodle salad dishes. There was also a fried eggplant dish where the eggplant had been stuffed with pork and shrimp meat.  This were quite delicious.  

Guests had been arriving from all around the world during the course of the day. Amber, a cousin of Ciara’s, arrived during dinner and navigated from the airport to a subway station very close to the restaurant.  They arrived just as uncle Franklin kicked off Karaoke with Taylor Swift’s Love Song.  

The restaurant shut down the karaoke and we left at 10pm.  By that time, we were pretty zonked out.  We walked back to the hotel from the restaurant.  There were street food vendors along the street just in front of the restaurant.  The temperature had cooled into the lower 80’s and the humidity had also dropped a little, although we could see flashes of distant lightning in the dark skies.  

Tomorrow we get off to an early start with a 6am bus pick up at the hotel to head to the mountains for a hike and lamb roast.  We’ll have to keep our early rising habit going for a bit.