Dalian sits at the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, wrapped on three sides by the Yellow and Bohai seas — the one big northeast city that thinks like a seaside resort. Russia drew its harbor and laid out its squares around 1900; Japan rebuilt much of it after 1905; China made it the chic port of the northeast. The result is broad sea-facing plazas, early-20th-century banks and churches, trolley lines, clean beaches and a seafood table that the whole region envies. Come between May and October for the coast, or in winter for a version of the northeast without Harbin's brutal cold.
