However pretty the area was, it was also freezing in this wind; I'd left my gloves in a taxi on my first day in Dalian; the third pair I'd lost in China - Laura and I shared her pair, swapping them every few minutes. We quickly elected to walk back to the bus stop, and travel the route to its other extreme station at Lao Hu Tan Park, or Tiger Park as it is known on tourist maps.

The bus stopped in a suburb walled in by a couple of taller mounts. The buildings had a goldy glow in the sunlight that I wasn't certain I liked; many of them were hotels that were populated with attendants but which were curiously closed, every one of them, for accommodation. I was looking for a men's room and was denied entry by very serious looking bellboys.

Lao Hu was even more of a levelled wasteland than any of the other attractions I'd visited - a ticket to the park proper was ten yuan, and allowed Laura and I to enjoy rides that had not been built yet, as well as piles of broken bricks which stretched along the coast in place of a beach. It was almost an hour's stroll to the nearest public amenities which were not closed; I briefly considered boarding an old warship that has been docked as a museum, but this too was not accepting visitors. Finally we hit the tip of the park, a stunning and enormous statue of tigers looked out into a bay studded with little islands an expensive speedboat ride away.

My colleague Peter at Guan Ya had told me that he hadn't liked Dalian as much as everyone told him he would - he'd taught there a year before coming to Guan Ya and had found it to be less modern than its reputation professed. My own experiences in Dalian seemed to contradict him; the city may not have been LA but it was clean and pretty. However, I could see what might have discouraged him whilst here - Dalian isn't dirty, but it is scruffy around the edges. The people, too, seem to have a character more befitting of remote towns; excepting the fashionably dressed inner city shoppers, the Chinese pointed and laughed at me betraying surprise at seeing a foreigner that even residents of Shenyang had been too polite to disclose.

The reason seemed to be that all of the foreigners in the city seemed to congregate around one small area - Shanghai Lu that runs north from Zhongshan Square. It was the only place where I saw more than one foreign face; Shanghai Lu appears to be the part of town reserved for wealthy shoppers. The buildings were attractive hangovers from Dalian's colonial past; at the top of the road a street has been designated a culture zone, where renovations of old Russian buildings have created a very artificial looking Muscovite lane. In the afternoon I visited, I was unimpressed by the pastel colours and impossibly clean and empty villas - I was rewarded, however, by a diversion down a side alley where the genuine Russian architecture remained in its original state, run down and inhabited by impoverished families making determined existences in stone homes like any other of the poorer areas in China, with the exception that their patchy houses happened to be fabulous multi-levelled European maisons, once the luxurious dwellings of Dalian's opulent invaders.

I had a lot of spare time all of a sudden, after having raced around Dalian for a few days in an attempt to get to know the city well in a weekend. My next destination was Tianjin, and I had heard that a ferry link connected the two cities in an easy sail across the Bohai Gulf, the inner harbour of the Yellow Sea. Laura had checked the timetable for me, and had discovered that the boat was affordable and left every second day, She encouraged me to stay on in Dalian for the rest of the week, as the apartment was available at least until Sunday and without charge. It was an appealing offer, and so I relaxed my pointed exploration and settled for a more leisurely acquaintance with Dalian.

It turned out to be a mistake, as the comfort of my apartment and already adequate knowledge of Dalian provided little reason to make an early start - the bedtimes and awakenings slid later and later; I spent three days almost entirely indoors. This was justified by a good deal of writing, but by Wednesday I was becoming bored with my own indiscipline, and wanted to see a little more than the Tai Shan shops and homely restaurants I'd taken to visiting with Laura during my only excursions outside.

One afternoon I decided to break the habit and make a first attempt at the coast walk. I located my position on a tourist map and plotted a wander to the nearest beach area - Xing Hai Park. The walk itself was most distracting; Dalian's residential areas are simple and clean, draped on a geography of natural hillocks and crests. These parts of Dalian have a genuine seaside village feeling, with the exception of the practical socialist apartment blocks which are as lacking in personality as the blue suits everyone here was forced to wear until around twenty years ago.

Xing Hai is under construction too, of course. Aside from a Chinese totem monument and a quirky brown lighthouse, the area is an almost entirely flattened plain of overturned earth. I tried to get down to the beach, but found that the only public area was a concrete walkway. The sand itself was behind a fence; a fairground with an admission fee. To me, this was poor taste, but I took a stroll along the stone pathway and enjoyed the peace. I searched for an appropriate soundtrack on an MP3 CD I'd brought with me, hoping to be surprised as I had been at Beijing's Tian Tan where the perfect background music had turned out to be a coldly introspective NZ band, The Muttonbirds. Annoyingly, the only music which fit Qing Hai was traditional Chinese Classical instrumental compositions. The kite flyers in the park positioned their paper birds over the dusty skyscrapers against old two-stringed violins.

I'd been aware before I'd set out that it was too late to embark on my coast walk, so I determined an earlier departure from the flat for the next day, planning to take public transport down to Xing Hai and walk from there. Even so, I didn't make it out of the apartment until after one pm, and the foggy but cute tram ride down to Xing Hai had taken an hour by the time I was back at the park.

This time I'd brought a Faye album with me, so I hooked up my headphones and started my ascent around the rising cliffs behind the Xing Hai construction sites. Grubby builders eyed me suspiciously, I couldn't care less as I started catching some of the views over the water. The islands in the Bohai Gulf seemed to arrange themselves around the old fishing boats with conscious grace, the sun on the dry grass at the roadside flaxed the cliffside to the sand. Faye was thick in soaring backing vocal overdubs; I passed the gold and silver beach areas and the Dalian zoo laid on a brushy mountainside.

When the road curved closer to Silver beach, I decided to take a walk on the sand, admiring the angular fishing vessels and relaxing in the salt breeze. I was distracted enough to take a wrong turn when I set out again, which sent me straight inland: by the time I had realised my mistake it was already evening and I again abandoned the plan to take the sea route. This was a shame; I didn't get a chance to make the walk again.

My replanned date of leaving Dalian was quickly approaching, and the day before was a disaster - Laura broke the news to me that I couldn't stay in the flat any longer, meaning I'd have to find alternative accommodation on Saturday night before the ferry left on Sunday. Fortunately, she managed to locate a hostel that would put me up in a dormitory with other Chinese guests for just 25 yuan - extremely lucky, as most hotels will refuse to let such a room to a foreigner - in fact, it's against the law for foreigners to stay in less than fabulous accommodation.

I'd made a lunch appointment in the afternoon with a net friend who was rather more encouraging and attractive than I'd expected - I was surprised to be invited home to meet a pair of enthusiastic parents who swiftly prepared a minor feast and was obliged to drink several large bottles of Dalian's premium beer with her father.  I was chauffeured back to the hotel feeling much too indulgent and was unable to sleep in the hostel, having just made it when two other guests loudly returned to the dorm at midnight, switching on the television in our small four-man room. When they did sleep, it was without hesitation; enormous snores told of deep and blank dreams. They awoke painlessly at around 6am, making a noisy exit.

Laura arrived a few dozy hours later and assisted me with my heavy backpack as we made our several bus connections to the ferry terminal. This was an equally unsuccessful excursion: the ferry service to Tianjin (and anywhere close enough to Tianjin) was closed for the entire month of March for repair. The nice lady who'd advised us of the fares a week beforehand had neglected to make that important addition to the information she provided: NO BOAT.

As a result, I lugged the backpack around the city for a whole afternoon, and was lucky to get a suitable train ticket. After four hours of waiting in McDonald's, I finally set out, frustrated by the weekend's problems but grateful for the extra time spent in an engaging city.