If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On...

In Dalian, being starved of good art, food, wine, music and conversation, I headed to Shanghai last weekend and got an overdose of it all, thanks to an overly gracious host who is long on the guanxi.

I was a butterfly, dreaming of being a man. I never wanted to awaken; but then again, I'm not sure if I ever have.

Bliss!

Old Dalian

After living in Dalian for more than a year, I came across an older part which has little changed in over a century. Looks more like it's Charles Dicken's Victorian England than colonial Russian relics in Manchurian China. Below is a map of the area of old Dalian I believe I was in.

Dalian Forest Zoo

Life is generally absurd. So I thought I'd post this picture of a couple of Dalian Forest Zoo neighbours sharing a picket fence: a Siberian Tiger and a Llama.

Last October, I visited the third largest city in Russia's Far East, Komsomolsk-na-Amur, where if you wander outside the city borders, you could get attacked by one of these giant cats, as they are still about, untethered, hunting in Siberia.