China never ceases to awe me. This time, while we were approaching our docking location in Dalian, we were intrigued by the city’s shoreline, a long stretch of low rise buildings in the Western style backed by high rises:
The Liaodong peninsula has long been settled, of course, but the city of Dalian was founded by the Russians as Dalniy in 1898. The harbor was known by the British (and military history fans) as Port Arthur. The Russians lost Dalniy to the Japanese in 1905, but not before designing the town’s layout and establishing its Western and Russian architectural style. The Japanese held Dalian as part of its Manchurian domain until 1945. The Russians moved back in, ceding full control back to China in 1955. The city is now a major port, with a population of seven and a half million.
Our tour bus didn’t transit the area with most of the Russian architecture, delivering us to the Dalian Wushu (Martial Arts) Museum, with artifacts of martial arts weapons through Chinese history.
And, now, here are a few(?) summary comments on our cruise.
As I began this post, I am awed by China. Perhaps our coming inland excursion will modify this impression, but I doubt it. The incredibly fast and overwhelming development from third world status to a state at the very forefront of technology and infrastructure is hard to fathom, especially as an engineer. It’s one thing to accomplish this in micro states such as Singapore or in petrodollar states such as the Emirates, but in a nation of 1.4 billion that as late as the 1980’s had a GDP less than that of Haiti?
When I asked the best of the onboard speakers (in my opinion) just how this was possible, she suggested it was a combination of debt and a huge trade surplus that funded the change, but this can be only part of the answer. For one thing, the inventiveness, industriousness and energy of the Chinese people has been released. For another, China has been educating five and ten times as many scientists and engineers as has America. We may have a large lead in producing lawyers, sociologists, historians and artists, but few of these can design and build bullet trains. (My friend William, who transitioned wonderfully from engineer to artist, being the exception. I assume his sculptures won’t collapse.)
Of course, this economic and scientific explosion is also made possible by an authoritarian government which technically owns all land and has no qualms about displacing millions of people for a project. This all works, one might add, only if the government doesn’t overreach or make a major error in its direction.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, we in the West willingly transferred our technology to China (and less willingly our military technology). One can only hope we can learn something from the Chinese, begin with producing more of our own scientists and engineers, and become competent competitors rather than fearful adversaries. And perhaps China itself will find it has too much to lose now to be the initiator of a global catastrophe. Time will tell. Meanwhile, we should start with reestablishing a quality K to 12 education for all our young citizens followed by a university or trade school education where an A means A level work and B is no longer given to someone you would not trust to tighten the bolts on your airplane door.
How about Viking?
As a reminder, the Yi Dun is a Chinese owned and operated cruise ship, with all the positives and a few negatives this implies, the chief example of the latter being occasional communication problems. Port talks were not up to snuff and the lecturers ran the gamut from poor to excellent.
The friendliness and attentiveness of the staff was outstanding. Excursions varied in quality and the “included” excursions (meaning those for which there was no additional fee) generally mediocre. Excursion transportation (typically buses) were roomy and modern beyond, on a few buses, a highly annoying buzz when seatbelts were not fastened. (I blame this mostly on the fellow passengers who seemed oblivious to the cause despite announcements. To be truthful, I could not hear the high-pitched buzz, but it drove Frances and a few others crazy until the offenders surrendered a “who, me?”)
Food varied from OK to excellent and we enjoyed the variety of restaurants. Frankly, we enjoyed the main restaurant as well as the several specialty ones. The Chinese cuisine is also excellent, I presume a must given the number of Chinese ancestry passengers on board. A Chinese women at a neighboring table complimented my addition to “dan-dan”. In fact, I was having a hard time getting the noodle bowl chef to fix mine like those of the Chinese passengers he was serving. I finally asked the hostess (who knew our names from the beginning, which may or may not be a positive thing) if she could get this desire communicated. She brought me a fully fixed up bowl which, of course, I added to the bowl I already had instead of replacing it.
Internet access on board varied from adequate in ports to occasionally non-existent out at sea. Thus far we have not had access restriction problems for Google, WSJ, and NYT. We are using VPN but I don’t know if this unrestricted access is due to our VPN connection or to the fact that shipboard wifi is not as restricted as on mainland China. We’ll find the answer to this question when we head inland.
Would we book with Viking Ocean Cruises again. Well, It would be too late for me to say no. We have been long booked on a Med cruise with Viking this coming January. The ships are not too large to feel lost in and are configured to have many intimate settings, including restaurants. We will continue to put itinerary and trip timing somewhat ahead of brand in most cases. This may change as, in the coming years, our itinerary wishlist shrinks and our pursuit of, er, comfort increases. The ideal for us remains smaller ships and small group excursions. Smaller ships also can visit ports unavailable to larger ships.
Now it’s on to Chengdu, where we hope to start with an evening of Chinese opera and a morning view of the pandas!
