"Lived there for a year teaching ESL" a Dalian Travel Page by charbay

A clean, modern city that is tearing down everything old and rebuilding. The city is only about 100 years old. Strong Russian and Japanese influences due to the previous occupations. They advertize them selves as having great beaches - not what we think of as great beaches, most are fine rock at best and some pebbles.
People are friendly and just starting to get use to the influex of foreigners.
They still have little patience with your attempts at bad Chinese, so I found sometimes it was better to use hand signals and a dictionary if it was important and not just the polite remarks like thank you (shay, shay)
Take a camera and take your pics the first month you are there, as what seemed unique at the beginning becomes routine and you don't even see it with the same eyes.