My Faith in Humanity Restored

It was three in the morning and we jumped into the first taxi we could find. We showed the driver the leaflet we'd picked up for the Dalian Youth Hostel, grudgingly agreed to a price of thirty Yuan, and were whisked off into the darkness at breakneck speed. After ten minutes on the highway, he pulled over to the side of the road for no apparent reason. We looked at each other uncertainly. The driver then took his mobile from his pocket, pointing to his watch then to the leaflet for the youth hostel. Quite sensibly, he'd decided to phone ahead to find out if the place was still open. It wasn't. Someone, probably the night watchman, answered the phone, but refused to let us in. We'd have to wait until nine o'clock in the morning.

Without another word, the driver gunned the engine and sent the car hurtling towards the bright lights of Dalian. As he drove through the city centre, he even gave us, tour guide style, a running commentary on the major sights. Not that we understood any of it. For all his good sense, the driver did, however, overestimate our wealth. The first hotel we stopped at was five-star and, on hearing the price of a room from the sleepy night-receptionist, I immediately had us walking out back to the taxi. Way above our price range! On realising this, the driver then made it his mission to get us the best deal possible on a Dalian hotel at 3.30 in the morning. We toured the city remorselessly, stopping at hotel after hotel. The driver and I would go in, knock on the reception desk to awaken the sleeping night staff, then the driver would haggle with them for a few minutes. If he thought we were being over-charged, he'd grab my arm and lead me out of the hotel swearing under his breath. There was one priceless moment when, after the driver had tapped ever louder on the desk with a pen, the drowsy little girl behind it lifted her head by degrees, hair, forehead, eyes half-shut, nose, sour mouth, pert chin, appearing in staccato segments from beneath the counter. She looked at us uncomprehendingly then asked us what we wanted. 'What do you think we want?' asked the driver, who looked at me then burst out laughing. He eventually found us a clean, affordable three-star hotel not five minutes from the city centre, which was still a little above our usual Spartan budget, but for a good morning's sleep we weren't complaining. He shook our hands with a beatific air of satisfaction, and refused to accept any more than the thirty Yuan we'd agreed upon beforehand. I glanced furtively at the meter, and saw that it was over fifty.

Our emotional journey, inner as well as outer, in that it comprised of a sea change in our outlook from cynical mistrustful backpackers to hippies with a true love of humankind, wasn't over yet. The next day, we decided to head to a place along the coast, of which our guidebook gave a good review (i.e. cheap and clean). We did like the place we were in, the Dalian Baolian, but really couldn't afford it. We asked the pretty young girls in blue blazers at reception for directions and, considering we were leaving their place to spend our money elsewhere, it really was nice of the manager to come out his office and offer to drive us there in the hotel mini-bus. We accepted gratefully. Twenty minutes later, we are standing in the lobby of this new place arguing with a woman, who ironically speaks excellent English, about their recently adopted policy of No Foreigners Allowed. The argument went something like this:

'No foreigners allowed? Why?'

'No why.'

'But what's wrong with us?'

'Nothing.'

'So why aren’t we allowed?'

'No why.'

Out of desperation, we asked the Baolian manager if he could drive us to the Dalian Youth Hostel. He could, he told us, but the youth hostel wouldn't accept us either. This didn't make sense, but sometimes it's better to relax, go with the flow, and see what happens, than start a fight. This was the right thing to do. We were taken back to the hotel where, after half an hour's tough negotiations, I'd got the price of our room down by more than half, and felt very proud of myself. Sixty Yuan per night, for a three-star hotel! The manager even threw in breakfast, offered to book us train tickets back to Harbin, and drive us personally to the station. What a guy. I inwardly high-fived the taxi driver who had, purely through a stubborn will not to see us ripped off, taken us to this lovely little hotel. For the first time on our travels, we felt like we'd got a proper bargain, instead of being ripped off because we were westerners. And we almost felt guilty.

Tam wanted to go shopping. Danuka wanted to wander along the cliffs. We negotiated the rest of our day in the middle of a street to the accompaniment of a band of singers, drummers and cymbalists, dressed in bright green, blue and red traditional clothes, celebrating the winding down of Chinese New Year the only way they knew how: noisily. Sick and tired, I plumped for the sea, leaving Tam to fend for himself. Danuka and I took a bus to Tiger Beach and walked from there all the way to the south side of the city. It took three or four hours and added new layers of tiredness to my legs, which began to stiffen up with lactic acid, but it was worth it. The coast road follows the curves and twists of the sheer, impressive cliffs, and provides a fantastic view of the Yellow Sea down below, dotted with numerous little island outcrops. The beaches are clean, white, mellow, quiet, probably because to get down to them entails a steep dangerous slide of two or three hundred feet. Small groups of pot-bellied middle-aged men were stripping off to take a bollocks-constricting swim in the cold water. A couple had annexed one beach for their marriage photo-party, the bride surreally strutting about the cold sand in full white dress and veil. The islands lay in the green effervescent sea like sleeping curled-up animals and, as the day wore on and the light faded, they seemed to shimmer and float like ghostly Laputias in the gloom.

That evening Tam and I went, as usual, for dinner and beer. It had become customary for us to sample the local beer of each new province we entered (Dalian is in Liaoning province). During the evening we encountered a filthy unwashed madman in long coat and beanie hat, who stared menacingly at us through the big restaurant window as we ate, really putting us off our shrimps, then jumped out at us as we left, making us nearly shit ourselves; a cute barmaid in a bar aptly named 'Happy Smile', who phoned up her English teacher for me to chat to, telling us as she did so that she was a really bad student (her teacher agreed); and another barmaid, drop-dead sexy rather than cute, in a warren of back-streets full of brothels, the bar a country and western pastiche with fake wooden panelling and red lampshades where the girls wore cowboy hats, the barmaid a short-skirted, gravel-voiced goddess called Sun Xin (pronounced: soon sheen), who asked us for the phone number of our hotel and promised she’d give us a ring, but didn't.