Comments on: A Night in Changdao

By: Judit

Judit — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:51:13 +0000

Sorry, I forgot to say that we were visitors from Hungary. Not if this would matter, just out of curiosity :o)

By: Judit

Judit — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:48:44 +0000

Hi there,

We are just back from China. I relatively frequently travel to Yantai, Shandong (once a year) and this year I had the opportunity to visit Changdao (Long Islands). There were four of us with my colleagues and our Chinese host decided not to let us go alone to Changdao, no matter how confident I felt about touring on our own. Now I understand why. We spent 3 days, 2 nights on the island. Not in a hotel, but with one of the fishing village families (arranged by the Chinese fellow in Yantai City). They knew beforehand about us and registered us with the police immediately upon our arrival. No sweat. We had a great time and the old Chinese couple was very nice to us. I asked them if they ever heard about other foreigners staying in the village. They said yes, they heard about two Koreans who came to stay in the village, but apparently (?) we were the first Westerners to do so. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but gives me the impression that Changdao is still fairly unknown to Western tourists. I’m not sure I would like this to be changed as we had the pleasure to spend three wonderful days on a truly virgin ground with a fisherman and his wife unaffected by Western people :o)
It was good to read your blog before going there. Thanks a lot!!!

By: Muninn

Muninn — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:53:48 +0000

It makes sense doesn’t it? Ya, you are probably right, but I doubt it gets registered right away, they probably turn all those slips in at the end of the week or something. In which case this guy on the street wouldn’t have been able to confirm much by calling the police!

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:05:37 +0000

I thought that hotels in China automatically register any foreign guest with the police. When I’ve been to register with the police for the various apartments I’ve lived in, it would have been impossible without a Chinese speaker to help me out. The police stations didn’t have anyone who could have handled the registration in English. I assume that the automatic registration by hotels avoids foreigners having to trouble the police with their poor/non-existent English, while providing a higher percentage of registrations than leaving the task to the foreigners alone would.

So you probably were registered, but hadn’t realised it.