Traffic Rules
The policewoman stands atop her little traffic throne, sunglasses shading her eyes, her right palm facing outwards to signal the oncoming traffic to stop. The white gloves on both of her hands protect her delicate fingers from the Sun. They fit snugly. Perhaps she painted her nails in the morning. She can’t let her superiors see the polish. Against regulation. It doesn’t matter. She’ll just keep the gloves on. Maybe it’ll be odd to wear gloves around the office, but it will make her feel daring, like she’s taking a risk. Minx. Hellcat. Tease. Her skirt flaps gently with the elements. Although it’s a long skirt that tries its best to erase any of her sex appeal, the policewoman obviously has it. She wouldn’t have been hired otherwise. No skirt could be frumpy enough to completely erase the seductiveness of Dalian’s female traffic policewoman standing in front of the government headquarters directing traffic. Different modes of transport squirm their way around her in an ceaseless flow of worship, and she never changes the expression on her face, always maintaining an ice-cold veneer of professionalism. Empress. Dominatrix. Leather. The cars and buses await her silent commands and bow down to her like a goddess perched upon her small traffic island. She is a symbol of the city, Dalian, tigress of the Northeast.
As our tour bus floats by the traffic policewoman, I cannot take my eyes off of her. She’s like the Terminator. I imagine that she doesn’t even blink while she’s on the job. The Chinese guide tells us that the city government has height specifications of at least 172 cm for their female police task force. I was told to look out for these commanding policewomen before coming to the city. Dalian has a reputation to uphold.
“The girls are tall there….you just keep your eyes open, sonny. There’s nothing like watching one of those tall Northeastern girls sucking on an ice-lolly in dead winter.” I seem to remember a dirty old geezer reminiscing this sentiment to me once. Tall and straight, the officer plants her feet on the traffic circle as if the balance of the world’s gravity depends on her immobility.
Olympic Memories
Our bus glides by the main traffic cir cle in a few short seconds. The tour also takes us past 
Dalian’s Olympic Square. In the middle of the square visitors can stand in front of a statue of a sprinting Liu ChangchunW, a pioneer for Chinese olympic athletes. Asked to represent the Japanese puppet state of ManchukuoW (1932-1945) in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic games, Liu Changchun is seen as a patriotic hero for his refusal as he stood fast and boycotted representing a government of invaders. After hearing of his refusal, General Zhang XueliangW agreed to sponsor Liu as China’s first ever athlete to join the Olympic games. As a child, he was known for his tenacious speed, finishing the 100 meter dash in 11.8 seconds while in primary school.
While passing the sprinting statue of Liu Changchun, I notice that where there used to be a stadium in front of the athlete, there is now only an gigantic square. Behind the square it 
appears as if a bomb has dropped from the sky, decimating the stadium that once stood in the place of the rubble that now piles up before the runner. It’s as if an air targeted Dalian and deliberately pinpointed the stadium in order to make way for Liu Changchun giving him another shot at the hundred meter dash. I’m told that beneath the square lies one of the largest shopping malls for electronics in the city. I have no time to shop, however. The bus continues its way past Liu Changchun, leaving him forever frozen from the starter’s pistol pose. I promise him that I’ll return to take a closer look at the damage that awaits him in front. For now, however, I stay on the tour bus as it makes its way out of Dalian and towards the nearby satellite city of LushunW, home of one of the bloodiest battles of the Russo-Japanese War.
Chinese Tour
As the bus continues it’s route towards Lushun, the tour Chinese tour guide tells us about the 
places we are going to visit during the day. The first one is a Qing Dynasty artillery. Lu Shun, also known as Port Arthur, has played an important and convoluted role in China’s mixed up recent military history. Due to its strategic position on the Liaodong peninsula, it has been the site of international conflict by foreign aggressors on numerous occasions. During the Russo-Japanese war, the Japanese and Russians lost thousands of troops fighting for territory over this area in a country that wasn’t even theirs. My destination today is to visit the site of 203 Hill, named ’203′ because it is 203 meters above sea level. I never studied anything about the Russo-Japanese war during any history class. I never even heard of this war prior to visiting Liaoning. Something about the idea of two foreign powers fighting over turf in a country that isn’t rightfully theirs draws me to the site, however, and I feel like I need to go. The fact that I’ve never heard of this war makes me want to know something about what happened there.
This tour, however, does not go to the battle sites, however. I purposesly chose a Chinese tour bus with Chinese tourists just to see what the experience would be like. Prior to going on the tour I didn’t even look at the itinerary. It was cheap, and I just assumed that the tour would take us past one of the most famous battle sites of the Russo-Japanese War. I was wrong.
When we exit the bus at the site of the Qing Dynasty artillery, I’m reminded of the beaches at 
Normandy as we walk around the ghost barracks and tunnels. The small manmade caves seem so crude and dirty with the smell of mildew. At the top of one of the manmade earthen dunes, under which soldiers would have been stationed awaiting the Russians, the Japanese, the British (the Americans?), I can only wonder at how hopeless and miserable it would have been to man these stations. The conditions must have been horrible. And the Chinese government was in a downward spiral at that time during the tail end of the Qing Dynasty. As with most dynasties, when they fall, it’s not a pretty fall. The butt end of the dynasty bleeds the country dry with excess and corruption. Maybe a famine or flood in one part of the country participates a revolution and uprising of bandits. Anyway, the end is always messy. Emperors don’t want to go down. The Qing Dynasty was having enough problems in Beijing at the time of the Russo-Japanese War. Lushun must have seemed like a long way away during that time. Best to leave the Russians and Japanese to have at it.
The guide takes us around the different artillery displays, explaining how the guns here were once used to protect the port from attack. I notice the other members of the group beginning to lose interest in the history lesson and head over to the ubiquitous souvenir stands to browse the gifts that one can find at any site. There are hats and t-shirts, Buddhist statues that have nothing to do with anything on the site, even small lighters made up of spent bullet cartridges made to look like the shape of a small tank. I turn around to look at one of the ancient, rusting cannons which sits atop a platform facing the sea. There’s a sign that reads, “please do not climb on the relic.” Tourists line up to take their turn scrambling up the gun, ignoring the sign and straddling the weapon between their legs in a symbol of phallic rebellion. I walk up to the tour guide to ask him about the rest of the tour.
“Hey, so we’re not going to 203 hill?” I ask.
He scans the crowd counting the number of tourists to make sure everyone is here.
“Nope…sorry. But you’re not missing much. There’s nothing to see there. It’s just a hill.”
Nothing to see there, or nothing to buy?
“Hmmm….that’s too bad….I’d like to go there, anyway. You think I can leave the tour and go?”
He purses his lips for a second.
“Well…yeah…but you’ll have to sign something saying that you’ve left this tour on your own free will, and you’re responsible for getting yourself back to Dalian. Why don’t you come with us to the next site, the snake museum? It’s closer to the spot you want to go to.”
“Uhhh…ok…snake museum, huh? I heard there was a snake island. Does this tour go there?” I remember reading about an island where there were lots of snakes (not native). Basically, to make a tourist site out of nothing, someone had the idea to fill up a small island with multitudes of snake species in various jungle-like enclosures.
“We can’t go there anymore. Someone was bitten, and it’s been closed to tourists ever since.”
So much for Snake Island. The museum will have to suffice.
Double Headed Terror
It’s in the the snake museum that the tour starts to feel like a Chinese tour. After entering, we’re told that we should not exit the same way we came in. We’re supposed to stay on a one-way route. I’m not sure why at the time. Are the snakes watching us? Will they attack if we divert from the pre-planned course of action? I decide not to argue and just to with the flow. Suddenly I find myself face to face with a sign 
displaying the “double headed” snake. I’m transfixed, staring at this sign, wondering how many double headed animals there are in existence. The sign itself interests me more than the actual live snakes on display later on in the museum. Imagine…a snake with two heads! It could have kissed itself, loved itself, argued with itself. If it had talked with itself, no one would have thought it was out of its mind(s). How did this image happen to find its way to Lushun? Where have all the double headed snakes gone? Perhaps there is a direct connection between the double headed snake and the double headed reign of terror inflicted upon the land and the Chinese nation during the Russo-Japanese War. (This may be a bit of a stretch). In any event, with regards to my educational backround in both history and zoology, the Russo-Japanese War and the double headed snake are both phenomena that I never had any previous knowledge or acces to prior to arriving in Lushun.
As we walk into the next room, a man is standing there with a snake in his hands. My first instinct is that perhaps one of the snakes has escaped its enclosure, and this hero has nabbed it just in time. It’s only when I see him offering the snake to tourists that I realize he’s just charging money for visitors who want to have pictures taken with a snake. It’s not for me, however. The memory of the guide’s words regarding the incident on Snake Island still ring fresh in my ears. If it had been a double headed snake, however, I’d be emptying my pockets.
After walking the gauntlet of hawkers selling snake relics, it’s back on the bus. Despite my instinct to flee, the guide tells me to stay with them a bit more. Apparently we’re heading to a shop that lies in even closer proximity to 203 hill.
“After going through the shop, I’ll give you that form that you need to sign,” the guide tells me. I
consent. It’s hard being a guide, and he’s losing a customer. The next part of his job is, sadly, one of the necessities of being a Chinese tour guide: shopping for commission. Because guides are paid such a low salary and Chinese tourists do not tip, the only way to make any real money is from the commission that the souvenir shops pay the guides after their customers make purchases.
We roll into a gigantic parking lot that is filled with buses from other tour groups. Beside the parking lot is a large, non-descript modern building that looks like it used to be a warehouse for electric generators. The guide opens the door of the bus.
“Alright everyone, we’ll stop here for the next hour. Just like the snake museum, please leave the building through the exit, not the entrance.”
“An hour…jesus…that long!” Another tourist looks at me and shakes his head. He and his girlfriend hold hands with each other. In his other hand, I notice a small creature crawling on his hand. Upon closer inspection I realize the creature is a miniature turtle.
“Where did you get that thing?” I point to the turtle in his hand.
“Oh, I bought it outside of the snake museum.” The turtle makes slow progress towards the young man’s arm. I wonder how long it will survive. As I walk through the door of the gigantic shopping warehouse, I wonder how long I’ll surive.
The warehouse itself reminds me of a casino in Las Vegas. Overstaffed with bright young 
workers, we’re greeted with a hearty “WELCOME!” upon entering. Rows and rows of cheap jade jewelry are laid out in bright, shiny, display cases. None of the customers seems to really mind that we’re going shopping now. It’s just part of the experience. It’s what one does on a tour. I follow behind an elderly couple: man with pot belly, blue collared shirt, and grey hat, and his wife with a blue dress with flower-like frills around the collar. They look at a display case with jade, and the attendant takes out some jade to show them how to tell the difference between fake jade and real jade, scratching selected pieces on the glass. The couple seems mesmerized, completely taken in by the attendant’s spiel that she has given over and over, time after time. I leave the couple and suddenly feel like I want to exit the building. I turn around to go out the way I came in, but I’m stopped by another employee.
“I’m sorry, you have to keep going forward,” she points in the other direction.
I turn around and discover that, like a Las Vegas Casino, this warehouse has been designed so that finding the exit is actually quite difficult. There’s no straight path to the exit, and I have to wind my way around in a sort of mazelike manner as barriers have been constructed in order to funnel all of the customers past the main display cases with the various jewelry and kitsch. I’ve had enough, though, and I need to find the exit. After many twists and turns, I find my way back out into the light. Our tour guide is outside near the bus, directing customers towards a cafeteria for lunch.
“Hey….I’m ready to go,” I tell him.
“Hmmmm….ok…wait a sec.” He reaches into the little pack he carries around his waste and pulls out a slip of paper.
“This form provides evidence that you have willingly withdrawn from today’s tour and (company’s name) will not be held responsible for your return trip to Dalian. By signing this form you agree to free (company’s name) from any reponsibility towards your person. You leave this tour in good will and good faith.”
I sign my name on the form and shake the guide’s hand.
“Thanks for the tour. It’s a tough job, isn’t it?” I ask.
“You know it, brother,” and with that, I take off past the cafeteria, around a fence, and out into the streets, looking for the ghosts of 203 Hill.
