Dalian University
I spent several days in the "San Francisco of Liaoning Province," staying clandestinely in a university dorm room with friends of a friend. Each room had 4 raised beds with desks underneath, but the women's dorms sometimes housed more students per room. 2 adjacent rooms shared a bathroom, but I never did figure out where the shower was. The 3 others in my room didn't shower during my stay.
More amazing to me was that even in the dorm for computer scientists, the lights and power were turned off at 10:30pm, terminating any pending downloads and forcing a gravitation towards bed. The official explanation was that this action conserved electricity, but in reality, it was probably calculated to reduce the amount of after-hours plotting by student activists of the type that marched on Tiananmen in 1989. I told my room-mates that I couldn't remember a single day in my college career when I was in bed before midnight, let alone by 10:30. They shrugged from behind flashlights and said "get up earlier!"
Ge was a cordial host with a loud, breathy laugh. He taught me a couple Chinese guessing games played between 2 or more people. When my Chinese comprehension became muddled, he would throw his muddled English and hearty guffaws into the verbal stew.
During the vacation, we spent a day down on the shore, visiting giant plastic photo-ops with our fellow comrades. We ventured out into the open ocean in a rented rowboat that carried a cargo of swimmers and non-swimmers. We boys clamored up a nearby hill to overlook the boats below. Dalian has an impressive aquarium, housing large, kissable fish -- I rate it right up there with the Monterey Aquarium in California.
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