Dalian

Ten roads spread from this round plaza, ringed by banks and a hotel built under the Japanese lease. Many still do business as banks, and evenings bring crowds onto the square to dance.

Reclaimed from the sea in 1999 for the city's centenary, with a sculpture of an open book at the seaward end. Bronze plates set with the footprints of a thousand people pave the way to it, and you follow them down to the water.

A road winding for more than thirty kilometres along the cliffs south of the city, with so many climbs that buses in stages beat a bike. Halfway along, Laohutan, the tiger shoal, is an ocean park keeping polar animals, with a tiger carving on the shore.

Russia began building it in 1902 and Japan enlarged it in 1907. Ahn Jung-geun was executed here in 1910, and the room he was held in and the place he died are kept as exhibits. Foreign visitors show a passport to get a ticket.

The hill where the most men died in 1904 in the Russo-Japanese fight for Port Arthur. On top stands a bullet-shaped monument the Japanese cast from spent shell cases, and from there the harbour lies in full view, which explains why the hill was fought over.

Where the Russian lease grouped its offices, a street of pointed roofs and yellow walls. Most of it now is souvenir shops selling dolls and chocolate, and you walk there from Dalian Station by the bridge over the tracks.

A geological park on the coast northeast of the city, where the shoreline strata bend like waves and long crustal movement is plain to see. A coastal path threads the rocks, and at low tide you can climb down beneath them.

The tramway opened in 1909 and still runs through town. On route 201, cars built in the 1930s with wooden floors still mix with the newer ones, and with luck you board one. Fares are cheap, so ride it as a tour of town.

A bay held between two headlands, its water calm, with a few islets offshore. On July and August weekends holidaymakers fill the sand, and the water runs cool even in August, enough to chill anyone who stays in long.

A suspension bridge spanning the bay off Xinghai Square, opened in 2015. It carries cars only and cannot be crossed on foot, so watch it from the square's shore once the lights come on after sunset.

A marine park wrapped round a bay on the south coast, its headline being the polar hall with polar bears and belugas. A big pack of tiger statues fills the entrance square, and a cable car over the bay looks down on the sea cliffs.

Opened in 1917 under Japanese rule, so the red-brick Western-style hall deserves a look of its own. Mummies and Buddhist pieces carried off from Xinjiang by a Japanese expedition remain here, and it pairs with Lushun Prison on the same trip.

Two-storey timber houses from the Japanese period line this hillside road, now used as teahouses and small restaurants. In May the acacias along it bloom and their scent fills the lanes; Zhongshan Square is within walking distance.

A new quarter dug with canals on the old harbour ground of Donggang and lined with European-style buildings. Gondola-shaped boats ply the water, and at dusk, when the facades light up, people come to photograph their reflections.