By: Sam Maxwell
Edited By: Jay Figueredo
Note: All in-text pictures are the author’s.
Logically, I would have taken advantage of my first few school breaks in China to see places like the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Terracotta Warriors or the Great Wall. Instead, I have gone to the frontiers of China in the Northeast and Tibet.
My first trip was to Dalian and Dandong, two cities in Liaoning province in Northeast China. Dalian is located on the Bohai sea and is known locally for its Russian Street and newly-constructed Venetian canal. Historically it was known as Port Arthur and was an important port for both the Japanese and Russians. Russia received the port city from the Qing as concession in one of the Unequal Treaties China signed in the latter half of the 19th century. Following Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese war, the Russians gave the city to the Japanese. To this day, Dalian has remained an important port and is economically prosperous. We spent two nights there, but really, it was just a stopover before travelling to Dandong.
Dandong lies along the western bank of the Yalu River and the locals claim it has the freshest seafood in China and as much as I love good seafood, this was not my reason nor my group’s for travel to the Northeast of China.
We went to see North Korea. The Yalu River divides China from North Korea and from the Western bank we were able to see into the Northernmost end of a state we hear about so often in the news. As much of a curiosity as North Korea was for our group, it also piques enough interest domestically that, when we attempted to find a ticket back to Dalian on the high-speed rail, there were no seats available. In our conversations with locals and Chinese tourists, we learned that seeing North Korea offers a window into China’s past in the 50s and 60s when it was a predominantly agrarian society.
In Dandong proper there are two railroad bridges: one connects to North Korea, while half of the other was blown up by the US during the Korean War. This second bridge now hosts propaganda exhibits on the role the PLA played in preserving North Korea’s sovereignty and provides tourists a chance to walk out “into” the middle of the river to get a better view of North Korea. Besides the bridge, there are also ferries that take passengers out for an even closer look. We took one of these ferries from further upstream that allowed us to peer into North Korea and see North Koreans working and going about their daily lives. Our captain even provided us and other passengers with binoculars to see them more clearly.
Back onshore, my friends and I became the curiosity at the “Resist America, Aid Korea” war museum. This museum details how the PLA protected the sovereignty of the North Koreans from the UN forces that wished it ill. The museum was particularly emphatic about the US’s role as the perpetrator of this war. Each exhibit outlined American transgressions along with a detailed account of the annihilation of American forces at the hands of the PLA. An unfortunate casualty in a museum that was overtly anti-American, a Turkish battalion also earned a mention of their annihilation along with their American compatriots.
Yet it seemed there were people in the museum who were not anti-American. As we worked our way through the museum, my friends and I had our photos taken, videos recorded (I was only told this later as I have a habit of becoming a bit too engrossed in museum plaques) and then came one moment that I will remember forever: a little girl pointed emphatically at me and told her mother “lao wai” (foreigner). I good-naturedly turned and replied to her “nali shi lao wai?” (Where is the foreigner?). She was shocked and hid behind her mom. I figured the interaction was over and kept walking. Further along in the museum she came up to me and asked in English to take a photo with me. I of course agreed and her mom snapped a picture.
The trip to Dandong was a weird experience. I saw North Korea for the first and perhaps only time in my life, and I went to a museum that utterly denounced the United States where I had a moment of human connection with a family who either ignored or did not care about the hate and vitriol of the museum we were in. Instead, they just wanted to take a photo with the curious foreigner.
