Couchsurfing in Jinshitan

I have been wanting to try out couch surfing for a while so I thought there’s no better time to give it a try than while I’m in China! After signing up, I thought it might be cool to try to couch surf with a family in the suburbs of Dalian to see what it’s like to live in a Dalianese family. I did some searching and a found a 26 year old guy named Tiger who lived about an hour away from the city center with his mother and had a whole bedroom available. Tiger told me that his written English was pretty good but that his speaking and listening was not as good so I knew that there would be a little bit of a language barrier. Tiger said it would be okay though because we could have a kind of ‘heart-to-heart communication’. This must be a direct translation from an expression in Chinese because I have heard many Chinese English speakers say this!

Bell and I arrived in Tiger’s neck of the woods Friday afternoon and he was already waiting for us at the station even though we arrived early. My first impression of him was that he was extremely tall - maybe like 6’2”. I have never seen such tall Asian people in my life, I’m so short here! He led us to the bus and paid our fare. This set a precedent for the rest of the weekend- Bell and I were not allowed to pay for anything except for our entrance into the mountain we climbed.

The little town that Tiger lived in was nothing special, just some small shops and apartment buildings. I’ve found that this is the case for a lot of places in China…the people are really what make these places special!

Upon entering Tiger’s apartment, I was immediately hit by the smell of delicious food. Tiger’s mom came out to greet us and she was the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet. She didn’t speak any English and I didn’t really speak any Chinese at the time so our conversation was mainly through positive body language, haha. They sent Bell and I into the living room while they finished cooking dinner. We offered to help but of course they wouldn’t let us. Tiger’s mom brought us a bowl of miniature strawberries while we were waiting. After they were done cooking Tiger called us back into the kitchen and I was couldn’t believe the amount of food that was on their small kitchen table (I think tables are always way too small for my liking in China…I never have any room to breathe at them!). They had made Chinese chicken wings, shrimp, rice, octopus, spring rolls, fish, bread, string beans with beef, cucumbers with ham, egg and tomato dish (very typical in Dalian). After we sat down Tiger’s mom left the kitchen and I was like where is she going! Of all people, I thought the main cook should eat with us! Tiger told me that his mom had already eaten. I felt so terrible that she was not eating all of this good food she had made for us, I hope she ate some of it while she was cooking. I asked Tiger if they usually ate that much for dinner and he said yes, but I think he either didn’t understand my question or was just saying that.

So while we were stuffing ourselves we got to know Tiger a little better. We learned that he is an English teacher in his town and that he taught 10 to 13 year olds. I was very surprised to learn that he was an English teacher. His English was passable but definitely not up to par with the level that I think an English teacher should be at…some of my students have better English than he does. This is probably a good example of why many students must take extra English classes with native speakers to actually become fluent in English.

We also learned that the reason he was living with his mother in Dalian was because his father had died of cancer a few years back and he was now taking care of his mother. Before his father died he worked in Beijing at what sounded like a pretty good job and had a girlfriend there so it seems like he gave up a lot to go home.

After dinner we all shared some pictures with each other and Tiger showed us a Michael Jackson video that he really liked. They LOVE Michael Jackson in China! Tiger couldn’t express how he felt about him in English so he typed something in Chinese and put it into an English translator so we would understand. It said “Michael Jackson’s death is the world’s loss.” I was like wow! Look at the picture, Tiger is doing the Michael Jackson "This Is It" pose. He said his favorite movie was ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and that he liked many American movies because Chinese movies lacked imagination. I was sort of sad for Tiger though because I don’t think many people his age live in his area of Dalian and his weekends mainly consist of watching things like Michael Jackson videos. I think he joined Couchsurfing so that he could meet some new people and have some more things to do. He said that he was only interested in hosting people, not surfing! I feel like it’s usually the other way around.

We took a bunch of pictures with Tiger and his mom and then we went to bed. Tiger’s mom had to wake up very early in the morning because she is a janitor in their building.


The next day we had a small breakfast (Tiger said that he didn’t know how to make breakfast and his mom was working hahah) and then left to go meet Tiger’s sister, aka first cousin, to take a walk on the beach. In China, they call their cousins their brothers and sisters since most young people don’t have any siblings. They understand the difference between cousin and brother/sister so I’m not sure why they don’t change the translation in English but I’ve gotten used to it and don’t question it anymore. Tiger’s sister was very sweet and spoke even less English than Tiger (even though she was also an English teacher lol) but we still hit it off very quickly. The beach there was nice and I can imagine that it is swarming with tourists when it gets warmer. There was even a bride and groom doing their wedding pictures there so we took some pictures with them! Then we went to a small park where you could pay a little bit of money to feed these white pigeons that would fly on you when you had the food. As you can see from the picture, I was not very excited about this. Tiger was like master of the birds though! At one point the pigeons flew away and the lady selling the bird food blew a whistle really loudly and all the pigeons halted mid-air and turned around and came back. It was pretty cool how well she had those birds trained!














After that we went back to the house and Tiger’s mom had prepared another huge meal for us for lunch. We stuffed ourselves again and then had to say good bye to her because we would not be returning to the apartment after our hike.



Tiger’s sister arranged for her friend to drive us to a nearby mountain for our hike. It turns out that Bell and I had already been to this mountain but we had walked up a different side of it before so it was fine. Bell and Tiger’s sister got tired so Tiger and I finished the climb with out them and when we got to the top Tiger said “we made history.” Hahah it was so funny to me. After climbing back down Tiger’s sister bought us all ice cream (even though I was trying to pay for it) and we had to end our wonderful day together.












All in all my first couch surfing experience was phenomenal and my guess is that this was a very unique experience- I doubt most hosts are so hospitable and accommodating. Even just last week I hosted my first couchsurfer and I was so busy that she ended up cooking dinner for me!!! Well, couch surfing is fun, especially with Chinese people!