I’ve only been to Dalian once, and that was way back in 1992. I was studying Chinese in Changchun at the time, and a classmate and I decided to head to Dalian for a weekend getaway at the only western hotel in the city, a Holiday Inn. Western food! CNN! It was great.
It was also a great language learning weekend, because it was where we learned the lesson that when speaking Chinese, tones really do matter!
Back in those days, there was no such thing as a round-trip train ticket; you could only buy a ticket from City A to City B in City A! Upon arrival in your destination city, the first thing you had to do was try to buy a return ticket. This meant standing in long lines at the station ticket office before even heading to the hotel.
With our trusty and slightly beat-up railway timetable in hand, we got into the long line. Based on our reading of the time table, we decided to buy tickets on a train that was leaving at 8:00 p.m. the following day. This shouldn’t be difficult. We knew how to say 8:00 p.m. (ba dian).
When we got to the window, we told her what train we wanted, and she confirmed the time. “Shi ba dian ma?”
We heard “is 8 o’clock?” and replied “yes.”
The next day when we arrived at the station at 7:00 p.m. we discovered, much to our dismay, that the train we had tickets for had already left, at 6:00 p.m..
In confirming the time with us, she had said “shiba dian ma?” (18:00 hours?—6 o’clock), but we had heard “shi ba dian ma?” (IS 8 o’clock?)! shiba (with a rising tone on shi) means 18. Shi ba (with a falling tone on shi) means “is 8.” We had not heard those tone distinctions!
We mustered all the Chinese we had in our brains to persuade and cajole the stationmaster to sell us tickets on the 8:00 train. In the end we were successful, but I think that’s just because he wanted to get the pesky foreigners out of his hair.
I thought about that weekend recently when I ran across this time-lapse video of Dalian. I can assure you that it looked nothing like this when we were there!
The Dalian Christian Fellowship has some helpful resources on Christianity in Dalian, including the following:
- Christianity and Christian Churches in Dalian City, Liaoning Province, China PR
- Churches in Dalian Times for English Worship Services
Another interesting post is at a site called Dalian Living, titled ”Spiritual Condition of Dalian.”
I haven’t been to Dalian since that spring of 1992; perhaps it’s time for a return visit.
Image credit: Wikimedia
Joann Pittman
Joann Pittman is Vice President of Partnership and China Engagement and editor of ZGBriefs. Prior to joining ChinaSource, Joann spent 28 years working in China, as an English teacher, language student, program director, and cross-cultural trainer for organizations and businesses engaged in China. She has also taught Chinese at the University …View Full Bio
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