Welcome to Dongbei

Chocolate Mao and his equally sweet followers

Dongbei 东北. Manchuria 满洲. The rust belt of China. Whatever you want to call it, my wife and I returned home this afternoon from a brief stay in Shenyang 沈阳 in Liaoning Province 辽宁省, one of the three of the northernmost of China's 22 provinces. Why Shenyang? I could gradually reveal the answer over the course of several blog posts, but that would be too interesting. I chose Shenyang as a destination for the following reasons: it was the seat of the Manchu emperors prior to their relocation to Beijing 北京 in 1644; it's close to the North Korean border (more on that in a subsequent post); the city played a prominent role in Chinese history during the first half of the 20th century; and there is an American consulate there, where we have friends posted. With the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday 清明节 falling on a Thursday this year, I arranged to take the Wednesday and Friday off as well, so that my wife and I could spend some time in China's north. 

And so Shu-E and I found ourselves on Wednesday morning at the Beijing Chaoyang railway station 北京朝阳站, giving ourselves enough time to get through the security checks before boarding a high-speed train. Team China piqued my curiosity, but unfortunately there wasn't time to go in and have a look:

Chinese main railway stations all seem to look alike:

Two hours and forty-four minutes after setting off from Beijing, we pulled into Shenyang. The dystopian rust belt scenery that greeted us was the first indication we weren't in Kansas Chaoyang 朝阳区 anymore:

I wasn't allowed to photograph the front of our train while standing on the platform in Chaoyang (though the cop was nice about it), but there were no such issues at Shenyang railway station 沈阳站:

First impressions of Shenyang upon exiting the station was that it was, um, a tad on the gritty side. Or as Shu-E described it, we were now in the "real China":

Walking from the station to our hotel we passed by this Japanese-inspired beer garden. Alas, it's only open during the summers, a pity as I have fond memories of boozing it up in rooftop ビアガーデン on humid evenings:

While my wife was checking us in, I went to use the restroom and noticed this sign. It turned out North Korea's national airline had an office in the same building as the hotel. Seeing as post-pandemic travel in and out of the DPRK is still limited, I couldn't imagine business was brisk:

After dropping our things off in the room, we ventured out in search of lunch. At Shu-E's suggestion, we took a DiDi 滴滴出行 to Korea Town, an area home to many denizens of China's ethnic Korean minority, and spent some time trying to choose which of the numerous eating establishments to patronize:

In the end we went into a small Korean food court:

Not the healthiest of meals, but I was on holiday:

We also shared a seafood scallion pancake:

After lunch we had a look in a Chinese/Korean supermarket. "McChicken flavored nuggets" (or so says Google Translate). I say "America, fuck yeah!"*:

*

I may have left the chips on the shelf, but the street stall takoyaki たこ焼き was too tempting to pass up:

From Korea Town we walked to the West Pagoda 西塔, one of four located in the cardinal directions surrounding the Shenyang Imperial Palace 沈阳故宫. The pagodas were initially constructed in the 1640's and were reconstructed in recent years:

The tower in the back is a car elevator parking lot. There was one in my neighborhood in Tōkyō's 東京 Setagaway ward 世田谷区 that seemingly appeared overnight, and dominated the main shopping street. I can't find it on Google Maps, indicating it was torn down at some point after I had moved on:

From the temple we next headed to have a gander at Shenyang's Mao Zedong 毛泽东 statue. There are surprisingly few of these North Korean-like renderings of the mass murderer Great Helmsman left in modern-day China, though the dictator is still held in high regard, both officially and by many in the general population (though the skateboarders practicing in the plaza behind Mao's back didn't strike me as being deferential). This particular paean to the Chairman is noticeable for the peasants, soldiers and workers striking heroic poses as they work together to build the New China:

This opium smoking slacker, however, seems content to let the others do the hard work of creating a workers' paradise:

Someone on Facebook remarked that it looks like everyone was made of chocolate, and now I can't get the image of a cocoa Mao out of my mind:

The square where the statue stands is surrounded by a several historic buildings dating from when Mukden (as Shenyang was once called) was a center of heavy industry in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo 満州国. Behind my wife stands the Liaoning Friendship Hotel, which was originally known as the Yamato Hotel when it first opened in 1930. Mao once slept there, a la George Washington:

The view from our room at the North York Hotel 北约客维景国际大酒店. Our first day in Shenyang would come to an end with meeting up with our friends (plus another couple from the consulate) for an enjoyable meal of local dishes at an other empty restaurant on the hotel's 6th floor:

As most of you are probably aware, my wife's homeland was struck by a large earthquake on Wednesday morning local time. We heard the news while waiting to get on the platform to board the train at Chaoyang station. Shu-E shared these videos and images with me via Line while we were en route to Shenyang. Fortunately, her family all live on the opposite side of the island from Hualien 花蓮, and so were all fine. The same goes for my friends and acquaintances still living in Taiwan. Having spent most of my life in California, Japan and Taiwan, it's a reality of life I'm well aware of. Hopefully, I'll never have to experience a tremor large enough to make the world's headlines: