This is Part 2 of a series of posts about my trip from Changchun (长春), where I lived and worked last year, to the Liaoning (辽宁) Province. Read on if you like attention to detail, and check out the other parts of the story as I get around to writing them:
The travel agency had told us the seven a.m. departure time would be strictly observed, and en route to the departure point we knew that we’d be arriving late. No one had woken up on time, we couldn’t find a cab, there was an argument with the driver about the best route to take–and now there was a palpable sense of worry in the cab that our all-inclusive trip had been flushed down the toilet.
The taxi screeched to a stop at 7:05 in front of entirely empty buses. The tour guides welcomed us, Don’t worry, your bus didn’t leave. In fact, you’re the first to arrive!
They gave us our seat numbers and we climbed aboard the impressive bus. There was air conditioning and drop down televisions and curtains that opened and closed across the tinted windows.
After a half hour of waiting for the other passengers to arrive we realized that Cindy and I had left most of our groceries at home and had brought a baguette, jerky, spicy sausages and shrimp-flavored rice cakes. An eight hour halitosis-filled bus ride from hell loomed in my mind until Michael and Faye offered to share their water and food.
The bus didn’t end up leaving for another hour and a half, so I passed the time checking out our fellow vacationers as they came aboard. (Here I am with one of them:)
The other passengers were a mix of families and older people–other than some under-tens and a babe in arms, we were the youngest people on the tour.
Our tour guide was a skinny college student who was guiding his first tour and lost his balance and fell down the steps of the bus the when he stood to make a Welcome! announcement.
Surprisingly, the tour guide wasn’t the most entertaining of the passengers. That distinction fell to the only guy who wouldn’t sit in his assigned seat.
I never asked his name, but I noticed him when he got on the bus because of the spy-grade binoculars he wore around his neck and the cap on his head, which looked like it had been run over by a tractor trailer. By his appearance and mannerisms one could guess that he didn’t have all his marbles. Just like the mildly crazy in America he wore stained khaki trousers that flapped freely a little above his ankles and were somehow obscenely awkward at the crotch.
He was the only person traveling alone, and his assigned seat was a crappy one–in the middle of the back row. He ignored it to sit next to the window, where he could put his binoculars to use. During the drive he discovered that the rear window slid open, providing an entirely unobstructed view of the countryside, but also sucking all the cool air from the a/c out of the bus.
The driver finally kicked over the engine and we quickly were out of Changchun and in the countryside, which was amazing. Other than when we drove through tunnels, there was never a time during the eight hour ride I didn’t see corn being grown. No hillside was too steep or rocky for at least a few stalks of corn to grow.
Farmers worked their fields by hand and with horse-drawn plows and carts. Occasionally you’d see their houses, which were single story brick or stone buildings with back yards surrounded by stone walls. Each back yard had a cherry blossom tree in it that was in full bloom. Close to the houses were family graves; tall and narrow headstones with glittering streamers tied to them to scare away evil spirits.
During the first leg of the journey there were no fewer than a half-dozen times when the bus started to warm up and the bus driver got on the intercom to say, “Close the goddamn window, you’re letting all the cold air out!” I’d look back through the window to see a pair of binoculars retracting inside the bus and hear the window slide closed.
…to be continued
Justin, the developer of Chinese Pera-Kun for Firefox, has released 
We’d come up with the idea of going to Dandong for three reasons: (1) its border with North Korea; (2) the easternmost terminus of the Great Wall is there, and (3) Dandong has a supposedly fantastic anti-American Korean War museum. (To give you an idea of the bias that’s reportedly on display in the museum consider the Chinese name for the Korean war: 