Haigang contains several business and shopping districts, the coal, commercial, and fishing ports, and a number of tourist attractions, as well as a lot – really a lot – of hotels, which all get very busy. As do the restaurants, some of which are very good. Although QHD is not famous for its cuisine generally, it is known for its seafood and fish restaurants. There are two fresh fish markets – one in Haigang District and the other (more famous) in Beidaihe.
Haigang district stretches from the coal port in the east with its access to the main railway line for coal trains from Shanxi, past Ocean College in the old workers residential area of Hedong, through the centre of town out to Yanshan University, before the main coastal road turns off to Beidaihe. North to south, it includes the main railway station, People’s Park, (fish-) canning factories and the Snow brewery (unfortunately it doesn’t produce very good beers, though not the worst – that ‘award’ goes to almost anything from the Blue Cowrie [Hebei Lanbei] group of breweries. In fact, any beer with the word ‘Blue” in the name is probably best avoided), to the commercial and fishing ports, and a lot of beach. The beach basically stretches from Shanhaiguan to Nandaihe (about 40-50km), interrupted by the port area; though some of it is rocky, most of it is sand. There are large areas given over to tourism (especially around Beidaihe/Nandaihe), but parts of the beach are protected for the wildlife, since it is on the migration route for many bird varieties (which means there are also lots of bird-watchers, often in groups from Australia or the UK), and some areas are still littered with local fishing boats.
The first semi-usable beach in Haigang is at Ocean College, but it’s a bit close to the coal port and not very clean. There is a small bathing beach at Hedong (with a Holiday Inn and several seafood restaurants), neighbouring “The Place Where Emperor Qin Sought Immortality”, which is flanked on the other side by the old Customs offices and Port Authority.
It is not too far to walk from Ocean College into town, and the pictures below are from my first such walk in March 2007, soon after I arrived in QHD. There have been quite a lot of changes since, mostly upgrades. The route is not really very interesting, since it’s along the main road. There is a lot more traffic now than there was then.
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Places of interest in Haigang
“The Place Where Emperor Qin Sought Immortality“
New Railway Station
People’s Park
Sea World and the Dolphinarium
Beach walkway to Beidaihe
Ocean College
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Arriving in February 2007, I was met at Beijing Capital Airport very early in the morning and driven the 300-odd kilometres to the college. Fortunately, I was very tired/jet-lagged from the long flight, so at the time I wasn’t able to ‘appreciate’ just how scary Chinese motorway driving can be – the real reason the airline had provided earplugs and a blindfold.
I was taken to my temporary apartment, while the one that was to be my home for the rest of my time in QHD was being redecorated. The temporary flat was the shabbiest, filthiest place I’d ever seen (up to that point!), with a good quarter-inch depth of coal-dust and grime (mostly oily coal-dust) on every non-vertical surface.
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One of my future colleagues (a teacher) cleaned a path through to the bed while I had something to eat downstairs – my first jiaozi (translated as ‘dumplings’ for some reason, these are actually filled pasta packets, a lot like ravioli, but with more varied fillings). This was actually my second meal in China, since we had stopped at a motorway service station on the way from Beijing. The first one was pretty poor stuff, but fortunately forgettable – I did say it was a motorway service station.
After the jiaozi, I tried to sleep until it was time for dinner. Dinner was semi-formal, in the sense that the head of the English department and the Dean (who was boss of the whole college) made speeches and several toasts were made and drunk. A bit like me by the end; not so much made, but definitely slightly drunk. This was my first encounter with erguotou, a white spirit, especially popular around Beijing and in Northern China, of various strengths, generally between 40% and 60% ABV. I would later discover the delights of fermented mare’s milk from Mongolia, which is even stronger (in one example 78%), though it tastes smoother.
Following an extremely fitful night’s sleep, I spent the next few days cleaning the apartment and wondering just what exactly I’d gotten myself into. On the Monday, I had my first teaching classes – ever.
It took a month or so of classes, informal dinners with my new colleagues, and a change in the weather, before I was able to move to the proper accommodation – before the paint was fully dry, because I was in a hurry to escape the filth – and settle down a bit.
At least the new place came with a view of the sea, which was often fascinating. Not to mention a fully-functioning shower in a clean toilet, a two-ring gas cooker, fridge-freezer, washing-machine, an air-conditioner (which I don’t think I ever used), a steel door, and bars on the windows (“For your safety, teacher”. To be fair, I did hear that some burglaries did take place from time to time, and I was only on the first floor). Later, the college added a TV and a microwave.
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The photos above are from a day or so after I moved in. Those below are from sometime later, when I’d become a bit more organised.
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About the weather: somehow it hadn’t registered with me that February in QHD would mean snow and ice, after all it’s almost on the same parallel as Valencia, and the reason it has a big port is because the sea water never freezes (not completely, anyway). Almost everything else does. Except indoors, where it is usually very hot. Apartments are heated by a centralized, city-wide system of coal-fired power stations (there is no shortage of coal in QHD). The temperature within an individual apartment is controlled by opening or closing either radiators or windows (no thermostats). Basically, the heating is either on or off whenever the local authorities decide, generally on a week or two after the temperature drops below freezing (the coldest during my stay was -24C), and off a week or two after it rises above 20 degrees Centigrade (the hottest during my stay was +32C, though it was a bit hotter in Beidaihe). Any snow is just left until it is worn down by traffic or melts away naturally – only the main highways are cleared.
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No football today 
Lots of people fell on the ice at this gateway. No-one thought to clear it.
In principle, the port at QHD is there because it is ice-free. Early in 2013, this was not entirely the case.
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Another interesting thing about QHD weather: winter and summer are both long, but spring and autumn last about a week each.
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The college had limited facilities and a lot of students, so it was a common sight to see clothes hanging from the window ledges of the dormitories, or on good days from various railings.
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The college backs onto a small beach, between the coal port and what was then a bit of waste ground on the way to the main port.
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Return to list of Haigang Places of Interest
The fish market in Hedong.
The name Hedong means “east of the river”. There is a fresh fish market in Hedong, to the west of Ocean College and just on the east side of the bridge to the rest of Haigang. People also fish from the bridge (and from inflatables – which I think are probably the inner tubes of tractor tyres – on the river) when the boats are not unloading. The boats themselves didn’t look particularly seaworthy.
The fish market used to just be a few tables with baskets of fish laid out on the pavement by the bridge, but the local authority’s efforts to tidy up the place has meant that it is now a semi-permanent roofed structure. However, the fish are still hoisted by pulley directly from the boats.
Most nearby restaurants simply fetch their fish and shellfish from the market in the mornings and afternoons, which avoids the need for their own refrigeration or fishtanks, which means there are some very small restaurants, with just one to four tables indoors and a few more on the pavement outside.
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Dongshan
The nearest tourist beach to Ocean College (though it was still very much a local’s beach in 2007-2009) is Dongshan, a left turn from the main road into town, a hundred yards or so after the bridge at the fish market.
There are a lot more tourists about nowadays, but for the locals it was considered a good place to take wedding photos (which in China are not necessarily taken on the day of the wedding, but by appointment before or after, and at locations, which are not necessarily where the wedding takes place). Sometimes, couples (and their photographer’s team) have to queue for their selected spots.
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“The Place Where Emperor Qin Sought Immortality”
The name comes from a legend that the Emperor Qin sent a group of youths off to sea from here to find the elixir of immortality. There is also a story that the youths discovered the islands of Japan and didn’t come back. Now a major tourist attraction, the site looked a bit forlorn when I first visited in 2007, but a lot of work has been done since then, including new access restrictions on the beach side.
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Is it the largest bronze statue in the world? Maybe, I’m not an expert. It’s certainly impressive enough.
There’s more here besides the large bronze; a temple, more statues, interesting stones with calligraphic inscriptions, an indoor section with scenes from the story of Meng Jiangnu, and a garden with displays representing each of the Warring States. Not to mention the beach and boat-tours to Shanhaiguan and Beidaihe.
City centre shopping and street-food
The city centre is a busy place. The map here is already out of date in some respects, for example the big department stores have changed ownership and have become indoor ‘malls’ with multiple smaller shops inside. There used to be food halls on the top floors, which were good as well as cheap (again, multiple small businesses) and also very busy. There were and still are a lot of small to medium-sized restaurants in the centre – most of the larger establishments are further out, although there are a few in the area of this map, notably the “Pilsner Beer and BBQ”, and the “Brazilian Barbecue” (so-called because of the pictures of Brazilian footballers on the walls; otherwise it’s indistinguishable from any other Chinese barbecue place, except it’s indoors and brews its own beer – using German equipment).
Behind the big shops on Hebei Dajie and Wenhua Nanlu there are a lot of street food stalls, some now looking semi-permanent; at one time these were just bicycle-stalls, but the powers-that-be decided that looked untidy and sent the boys round to chase them away. More on that topic elsewhere. The food here is really pretty good, with a great many variations on stuffed pancakes, stuff on skewers, and sweet stuff.
Tanghe Park
Tanghe Park runs alongside the river (this is called the ‘Tanghe River’ in English, but since He means river, that’s really Tang River River; like the ‘Bohai Sea’, where Hai means sea). It’s in four sections, separated by major roads.
The end nearest the sea is not interesting for visitors, but the new Customs House is at one end of the bridge separating it from the second section. The other end of the bridge leads on to the city centre.
On the city side of the second section is a popular public park, with boats for hire, rides for children, fishing in the river (there is a fish farm at one point, but plenty of people fish upstream of the farm). Lots of locals like to go there.
Further inland, there is another major road crossing the park, after which it continues on both sides of the river. This section is famous for its ‘Red Line’ (aka ‘Red Ribbon’), which has won an international award from the American Society of Landscape Architects, and was chosen by the readers of Condé Nast Traveler magazine as one of the seven wonders of the architectural world. There is a small exhibition area at the end of the Red Line. A few people fish on the other side of the river from the Red Line, but they have competition from the birdlife.
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Across another main road, the park continues. If you cross the bridge here before continuing along the riverside, you will eventually find the back way in to the Botanic Gardens. Alternatively, carry on along the river and cross at the next bridge, turn left, along the bridge, then left again and you will find the main entrance a short distance along the road.
The Olympic Stadium
QHD was one of the venues for the qualifying rounds of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I arrived in February 2007 and took part in the recruitment of volunteers (mostly students), interviewing them to check their English was good enough for them to assist visitors. The interviews took place at the still-under-construction Olympic Football (Soccer) stadium. Somewhere, I should still have my volunteer’s wristband, but I can’t find it, so it has probably been lost.
The stadium was built next to an existing stadium for basketball (equally impressive, and to the right of the first picture below. As far as I could find out, the hooped shirt on the figure has nothing to do with Celtic FC), and has only been used since the games for exhibitions and trade fairs, but not football, as far as I know. There is now a supermarket underneath. It’s kind of a pity, because it was a pretty good stadium; I watched a game there between the women’s Olympic teams of China and New Zealand (Final score 1-1). One of the reasons it hasn’t been used for football is that QHD has no big league football team, despite the fact that there is a Chinese Football Academy nearby the stadium.
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The Olympic stadium was also the starting point the first time I took part in QHD’s “International Walking Festival” – as far as I could tell, it was only really “International” because I was there, all the other participants being Chinese. The walk (25km) ended at the Olympic Park in Beidaihe. It was about 32 degrees Centigrade that day, humid (as you can probably guess from the photos), with no shade along the route.
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Yanshan University
There is a large new campus on one of the completely new streets in a completely new part of town, which I did visit once to give a lecture, but the old main campus is the one I know better. It has a huge and very good canteen, is nicely landscaped, and is also noticeably upmarket.
Across the road is (was? The area looked as if it was due for development) a street-food market, very popular with students in the evening.
Yanshan University, known locally as Yan-da (short for Yanshan Daxue) is on the edge of Haigang District, further on is Beidaihe District. Yan-da is the terminus for many buses and the end of the Haigang travel zone – an increased fare is payable for those buses which continue into Beidahe. A peculiarity of this zonal arrangement is that taxis are licensed only for one district or another, so should you want to continue travelling, you actually have to change taxis! Officially, that is.
Personal homesite 