Dandong (simplified Chinese: 丹东; traditional Chinese: 丹東; pinyin: Dāndōng; lit. "Red East"), formerly known as Andong, is a coastal prefecture-level city in southeastern Liaoning province, in the northeastern region of People's Republic of China.
It is the largest Chinese border city, facing Sinuiju, North Korea, across the Yalu River, which demarcates the Sino-North Korean border. To the southwest of the city, the river flows into Korea Bay. Dandong has therefore had a dynamic history because of its strategic location for the northeast's rich natural resources and because of its convenient access to the ocean. It is designated as a major export production centre for the province, and is a port city connected by rail with Shenyang and Sinuiju. A significant amount of trade with North Korea flows through the city.The size of the administrative city (prefecture) is 14,981.4 square kilometres (5,784.4 sq mi). As of the 2020 census, its population was 2,188,436 inhabitants and the built-up area made of 3 urban districts is 830 square kilometres (320 sq mi) (815,576 inhabitants) and Sinuju, the North Korean neighboring city (359,341 inhabitants), was home to 1,175,199 inhabitants in 2020.
The town, because of the location, has a lot of Korean restaurants with most congregating on the street facing the river. Give the shiguo Banfan, stonepot rice, also known as bibimbap in Korean, a try as well as the huoguo, hot pot. There are also a few North Korean restaurants in town, owned by the North Korean government and with North Korean waitresses, which are recognisable by the Chinese and North Korean flags over the entrances. There are also restaurants run by ethnic Koreans, not part of the North Korean government, that serve Korean food. A good dish to try would be ginseng chicken, which consists of a whole chicken immersed in a ginseng broth, served piping hot.
True Love Club is a 2-minute walk away from the station. Westerners are not frequent, so they are likely to be called on stage to participate in beer races with the DJ and be interviewed in Chinese, no knowledge of the language required. This is usually very comical for the Chinese club patrons, but foreign revelers who speak little Chinese should take care. The on-stage interview portion can be very mean-spirited - on one recent visit, an English man was made to badly repeat phrases in Chinese such as "I am very poor and have no money." Of course he had no idea what he was saying and the crowd found this to be very funny.
Be sure to try the local Daxiangjiao soft drink, a clear, banana flavored soft drink typically sold in green glass bottles.
Most shops offer products at low cost and North Korean cigarettes can be purchased at many places, especially along the Yalu river.
Along with products from North Korea, many South Korean goods are sold too. If you're specifically looking for something to take home from the North, check the packaging – North Korean products use simple and/or poor packaging designs, and perhaps most strikingly, do not feature internet addresses in the smallprint, which products from the South almost always do.
Dandong is a great place to get your hands on North Korean currency, the won (which supposedly is not allowed to be taken out of the country). Street vendors sell sets of bills in different denominations, which may or may not include some additional coins; prices start at ¥25 per set.
Visitors usually come to Dandong for its close vicinity to the North Korean border.
Situated at the confluence of the Yalu River and the Yellow Sea in the southeast of Liaoning Peninsula, facing the North Korean town of Sinuiju across the Yalu River, small Dandong enjoys its reputation as the largest border city in China.
The geographic setting and the rich natural resources of Dandong account for its recent development into a city characterised by the light industry, silk industry (every late May, Dandong is the venue for the Oriental Silk Festival), and also Xiu Jade is famous for sea products and special products, such as Ginseng, hawthorn and chestnut.
The quiet riverside city is most famous for the pockmarked Yalu River Bridge spanning distressingly over the river. The bridge survived the bombing during the Korean War, a time when the city still had its old name Andong. Now it is open to the public to commemorate "the defeat of the American Aggression" and is the first choice for a glimpse of North Korea.
