After visiting the Great Wall in Dandong, we took the bus back to town. The bus didn’t have any seats left, so we sat in the bus-equivalent of a trunk, behind the last row of seats. I’m not quite sure if that’s legal, or safe, but I chalk it up to a “when in Rome” sort of situation.
Apparently the ticket taker asked my friends if I was American. Most of the people on the bus found some opportunity to look at me. I was the only non-Asian on the bus.
We arrived back near the hotel and ate our lunch quickly at a nearby restaurant. It was a cafeteria-style restaurant—you look at prepared food, choose what you want, pay, and eat. It was different because all of the other restaurants I’ve been to in China have been of the sit-down-and-order variety. For lunch I chose fried rice and some sort of sticky rice pastry thing. The pastry was too oily, but fried rice is always a safe bet (maybe not as warm as I wanted it to be though). My friends chose leng mian, “cold noodles,” which is a North Korean specialty—a fine example of Dandong’s blend of Korean and Chinese culture.
We left the restaurant and ran across a nut seller. Her cart was piled with heaps of roasted chestnuts. The seller was an elderly woman with a tanned, deeply creased face and blackened hands (from the roasting I suppose). Her fingers grabbed the chestnuts and funneled them into a bag. She kept looking at me until she finally told me that I was pretty. I couldn’t help but question if my beauty was really just my exoticism (there really were very few foreigners in Dandong).
We walked back to the hotel, peeling the chestnuts and making games out of throwing the shells into nearby trashcans. We walked past a construction crane lifting two men to the top of a tree. The men shook the tree and down flew dozens of tiny ball-shaped fruits. My roommate said that the fruit is used for traditional Chinese medicine. I decided to film this and made the very smart decision to stand near one of these trees. A fruit pelted me in the face and I learned my lesson. A few Chinese people—mainly elderly women–were hurrying around collecting these fruits next to the people who I think were officially collecting them (they had brooms, masks, aprons, and looked a lot less greedy). The whole scene looked fairly peculiar. My roommate was surprised because she had never seen people use this method (machines) to collect fruit before.
A nap at the hotel, a cab ride later, and we were at “The Memorial of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea.” First of all—the title has an interesting choice of words. Second of all—my roommate and her friends thought it was “very interesting” to bring an American there. Unfortunately the museum portion was closed, (shouldn’t have napped!) so we just ended up walking around, looking at statues and a nice collection of Korean War planes and tanks that were sitting in the back.
We walked down near the outdoor planes and tanks exhibit where a woman was herding (I can’t think of a better word) a bunch of white pigeons around. Apparently she had raised them so they followed all her commands. A few of them flew onto my arms, pecking my hands for treats. She tried to charge us three kuai for taking pictures, but my roommate said she didn’t think the lady really thought we would pay.
We walked back up to the memorial and saw a group of Chinese high school students running around the main monument in uniforms (P.E. class?). My Chinese friends and I walked down the other side of stairs and played “shitoujiandaobu” aka “Rock Paper Scissors.” If you won with Scissors, you climbed down two steps, Paper was five, and Rock was ten. I plan on spreading that game around in America when I get back.
