Major Intersection in Ji'an City
Compared to other Chinese cities, the city of Ji’an in Jilin province is tiny. Situated at the far flung reaches of Jilin province, it is right at the border with North Korea. Due to its proximity to North Korea, there are a lot of ethnic Koreans in Jilin and especially in Tonghua where Ji’an is located. It is not surprising to see bi-lingual signs here, for the rest of the country it is usually Chinese and English. Here it is Chinese and Korean. Indeed, once in a while I would hear people speaking in the tongue totoally unlike Chinese. I think I can tell if a dialect is a Chinese dialect and that one definitely wasn’t a Chinese dialect. It was Korean.
Bedlam in the Streets of Ji'an City
Interestingly, despite being a small city, Ji’an is still up an about after the sun sets. The streets were ablaze with street lights, and it was quite comfortable to walk about the city at night. As it is normally with small towns or cities, it feels totally safe walking around there. I noticed that there wasn’t much public transportation here and most people travel by taxis either the human powered one or the private car for hire type much like my tour guide was. I wanted to explore a street market which happened to be beside the Luming Hotel but it was already long closed by the time I got there. It wasn’t very cold yet as I am still able to stand the cold with my not so thick jacket.
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