Before they became famous ...

Shenyang, China

The Lonely Planet can be a good book. The maps inside can be useful. Note the emphasis. The problem is that only those streets they think are important are labelled. All others remain nameless left and right turns. Arriving this morning in Shenyang, the huge economical and industrial hub of the country's northeast, I realised another limitation. The scale. Not easy to get that right. Plus: In a city like this, insignificant little streets with less than four lanes are completely omitted from the map.
The hotel I was looking for seemed easy enough to find. Turn right from the train station, turn left, straight, left again. Can't miss it. From the scale shouldn't be more than 2 km. Even with my huge backpack that managable... Took me more than a bloody hour to find the damn place. And that only after asking various policemen and shop keepers. They must have thought I was mad carrying all that. I wanted to tear the damn page out and eat it! My back is still killing me...
Many people were also amazed I wanted to go to Shenyang at all. "There's nothing there", Chinese friends would say. And it's true, in terms of tourism the city doesn't have that much to offer. It's a huge industrial and commercial sprawl that still struggles a bit with public transport (hopefully they will soon build a subway system). So, I'm only spending a single day here. It's the home town of an old friend and I really wanted to see where she's from. But Shenyang is also the old capital of the Manchu kingdom before they went to Beijing and became famous as China's last imperial dynasty.
Still, it's by no means backwater China. The city feels vibrant, young and dynamic. There's a big university, loads of restaurants and a large pedestrian mall where the younger generation of students hang out in the evening. I'm regretting a bit that I'm already leaving tomorrow. On a Saturday. It's just a shame that there's no hostel here where I might meet someone to go check out the nightlife with. At a hotel, in a single room you're always on your own. No matter how many KTVs there are, they're no fun alone.