As promised I heralded a new year with a pretty painful rendition of Madonna's 'Like a Prayer'. Alex helped keep some sense of harmony and we skipped between Chinese and English 'toons' and amused ourselves for hours on the night of the 15 June 2012.
I thought I was 35 and then shocked at the idea of being 46 then sobered by the realization of reaching 45. This is half dad's age when he died. I was eerily awoken at 7am by my phone telling me Dad is 92 today!!!
Dalian was 'underinspiring' and gradually as we learned to lower our expectations of secluded sandy beaches and settle for pedalocycles and endless stream of wedding couples grimacing thro photo shoots then we began to relax and enjoy the Chinese beach holiday experience.
The group highlights were practicing taiji fan in various parks, going through 42 & 24 move form and being corrected by an 82 year lady, our Korean BBQ, dim sum bithday lunch in posh resto, and braving a blind massage and finding an elbow sadistically pressed into my neck, shoulder, occiput and then the agonising twanging of tendons. I should have followed Alex's lead and said it didn't hurt in the hope that the man would move on to a less painful area to torture. Actually o had faith that my gall bladder headache an 'jing zhui bing' neck and shoulder pain would be worse then better the next day and so it is, fortunately or else thus hard sleeper back to Harbin 9hrs15 would be agony.
Simone and I had our last 24hrs alone together - or so we thought... - before her 6 months sejourn in SE Asia ends and I return for my final 61 days in Harbin! For the first time it felt like we were actually on holiday together. We found great baskets of steaming dumplings at a pedestrian market, found some Chinese herb spray for Simone's rhinitis, went back to the wedding beach for a little lie down only to have some men walk up the beach proudly flaunting their sea kelp bounty and rock up right next to us to dissect and sell their wares. This drew a crowd of health seeking buyers and suddenly we also became a item of interest. Before long a group of 15+ doctors and anesthetists on holiday from Tianjin joined us for an hour. Great for my Chinese but exhausted me. As I succumbed to sleep Simone was engaged in discourse with a sweet history teacher my age who was retired due to nervous health problems. The only problem I could see was his belief in Christianity and that Cortez and his men had freed Mexicans from the tyranny of Aztec rulers - who were like the North Koreans. He even knew more History of Helvetica than Simone!
The other interesting local we met was on a light rail link to seaside development hell - the beach was made of crushed rubble and washed up rubbish and the backdrop was a tired-looking Disneyland complex and random tourist trains and horse and carriages (with attached poo baskets).
It's funny how locals talk to us in Russian - thankfully my Chinese is better than my Russian!
Ooh! Lights out so it's Pimsleur Mandarin level 3 or sleep!
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