Located just a few blocks from the downtown train station in the shadow of Lushan Mountain, Labor Park is best known for its enormous red and white soccer ball that commemorates Dalian’s glory days as China’s famed football city. Like Dalian’s current football team, however, the park is a bit lacklustre in comparison to some of the more beautiful ones we’ve seen. It does have some pretty spots though as well as an amusement park and acres of space for relaxation. Though I read about “a game farm full of peacocks, deer, and cranes” we saw only a few beautiful cranes strutting around cramped and bare quarters and an empty pool that might have once housed otters or something of that nature.

What the park does have is beautiful flowers, lots of statues and some great views of the city. When we passed it on the bus earlier in the spring, it was festooned with cherry blossoms but now the roses are in full bloom. We saw several bridal couples having photos taken in and around the rose gardens.

Yesterday afternoon, after strolling the broad avenue up the centre of the park, between the statues of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac (I’m a dragon) to the giant soccer ball, we took a chair lift up the mountain. As we passed over treetops and even a busy highway, I was glad that I’m no longer afraid of heights. I was even happier about that when we took the glassed in elevator to the observation deck high on the communications tower at the mountain’s peak. Though the day was a bit hazy and the ever present smog hung over the city, the views from the top were definitely worth the ride up. I’m glad we waited to do this until we’d been here for awhile and seen much of the city as it was fun to pick out the various places we recognized. Sadly, the smog and the dirty windows (nothing in China stays clean very long) made it virtually impossible to get good pictures.

Today, the second day of our Dragon Boat Festival holiday, was supposed to be a beach day with one of my students but the sky is grey and it’s pouring rain so that plan has been nixed. Instead, it might just be a relax at home day.