I've always been led to believe that Chinese military bases are things to be avoided. They tend to lead to getting arrested, deported, flung in jail, or merely vanishing entirely, all of which are not really things on my to do list right now. My last year in China I survived quite happily without finding a single one (well, I used to laugh at the barracks next to my school who seemed to practise crawling all the time they weren't playing bugles). However, this time, no matter where I go, they seem to appear...
There is a military university which I accidentally climbed into just over from where I live, but it really started with the trip to Daheishan, a stunning mountainous area just outside Dalian proper. Having ascended umpteen perilous steps of doom up into the mist, we found a base just sitting there, complete with basketball courts in the middle of nowhere. Dandong had military bases aplenty - from the guards on the bridge over to North Korea to mysterious green khaki buildings behind a public park to the warning sign on the border next to the Great Wall. More mysteriously, despite the warning sign, there was no base to be seen...
Then again, perhaps a trip to Lushun (formerly Port Arthur) was not the best way to avoid military bases. Until VERY recently, it and apparently even parts of the area where I am currently living were off limits to foreigners, due to the extreme tactical importance of Lushun's harbour. Its history as a principal battleground of almost every war to grace these parts over the past hundred years or so may also have contributed.
Lushun hence turned out to be a bizarre mix of standard Chinese flat blocks and ex-colonial buildings with plaques declaring them 'Mainly Preserve Architecture of Dalian', including a very fine ex-Russian palace, presumably rebuilt by the Japanese, now a (shut) museum. It also featured statues declaring the friendship of the Russian, Japanese and Chinese peoples, whilst simultaneously trumpeting the glorious Chinese victory over the forces of imperialism and elsewhere a snake museum. With seals. And fake dinosaurs. Oh, and a few warships sitting at harbour in the bay, which I carefully did NOT photograph, a military base which we carefully did NOT enter and yet more military stuff over on the other side of the bay.
We did climb a mountain to find a 'Glorious Victory' monument built by the Japanese (according to the captions by the use of Chinese slave labour in order honour war criminals and imperialism - ever with the unbiased signeage, then, China), and facing it what looked supiciously like yet another a military base. On closer inspection though, it turned out to be an old rocket launching base, now with a display of Chinese military equipment from presumably either the Second World War, or the Civil War. I went and stood on a rusty boat platform to survey the terrain until I felt the metal start to give way beneath my feet... As a day out, it was gratifyingly surreal, and I made it home in time for tea and jazz bars later as well.
However, China, I am getting tired of finding military bases. Please hide them better in future.
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