Welcome to Shenyang, China
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Yeah, at first I didn't know where it was either. Shenyang is 8 hours Northeast of Beijing by train. It's the capital of Liaoning province, just North of the Korean peninsula -- the North Korean border was a few hours away. The map shows cities covered in this gallery.
Shenyang was described to me as a "small" inland Chinese city of about 7 million -- a smoldering industrial center redolent of Pittsburgh or Detroit. It's actually a sister city of Chicago.
The Lonely Planet guidebook described it as "a dismal mess of socialist planning
best avoided by most travel itineraries." Like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
the only thing I would add to that is "mostly."
Shenyang's geography lands it on the edge of the Gobi desert, flirting with Inner Mongolia and well within the legendary realm of Manchuria. Like Beijing, it gets pummeled by storms of yellow dust in the Spring and turns deathly cold in the winter.
Springfield? Well, Shenyang isn't too far off, and I'm not altogether convinced that those running the nuclear program there are more competent than Homer Simpson (I could not verify if the cooling towers here were for a nuclear or for a coal burning facility). Taking photo like this could have landed me in jail, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Shenyang houses some serious military interests. The local government moved us foreigners from the sixth to the third floor of our hotel because the higher elevation supposedly offered us a compromising view of a military office North of the hotel. According to one watchdog group, there is a missile silo outside Shenyang containing armed nuclear warheads. There were frequent flights of fighter jets over the Northern end of the city where there is certainly an airfield. (more info...)
Shenyang sprawls with seas of concrete and glass and flashes of a past culture that was nearly extinguished by the Cultural Revolution and its religious industrialization. The water dragon with the sphere in his mouth was one of my favorite images in Shenyang.
Private homes are virtually unheard of in China. When I taught an English lesson about how to say your address, the children were baffled; the example in the textbook used the address of a house, but the children (and the teachers) could not conceive of one family living in one home. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the Chinese so rarely send or receive mail -- the apartments don't always have numbers. I was once awakened by the mailman going door to door trying to find the intended recipient of a package.
More than anything else, Shenyang reminded me of the the Old West with its ruffians, whores, and swingin' door saloons. There are watering holes popular with the foreign crowd (and hookers), centered around the consulates and the downtown Zhong Shan Square. If you know where to go, you can buy a wife, hire a hit man (hits $200 and up), or get supplied with various illegal drugs -- technically a risky business since convicted dealers are publicly executed and their organs sold. Kidney anyone?
For the Walk Through Tour
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