INTRODUCTION

Following the 16th International Conference on Plastination (ICP) in Beijing (July 25-27, 2012), many of the delegates of the conference took part in a post-conference tour in Dalian. The participants, from 10 different countries all over the world, enjoyed themselves immensely and the Dalian tour left them with many fond memories.

On the first day of the tour (July 28, 2012) the members visited Jinshitan Mysterious Life Museum in Dalian. Jinshitan.  Mysterious Life Museum is the largest museum in the world which exhibits plastinated specimens. It opened for the first time on April 30th, 2012. There are three Exhibition Halls: Marine Sprint, Vertebrate Kingdom and Human Body, and more than two thousand exhibits including marine animals, vertebrate animals and the human body which are on display in the museum. Inside the museum, visitors could not only see the smallest rorqual (minke whale), the largest fish (whale shark) and many rarely seen marine animals (such as a pregnant finless porpoise and pregnant hammerhead shark), but they could also see many land vertebrates, such as the lovely camel, running horse, strongly giraffe, and the naughty macaque. Lots of normal and pathological human body specimens were also on display. All of the members of ISP were astounded at the amazing displays of plastinated specimens at the museum.

The second day was a rainy day, but all of the members were delighted when they visited Dalian Hoffen Bio-Technique Co., Ltd., the largest plastinated laboratory in China. During the visit, all of the visitors witnessed the delicate plastinated specimens, advanced polymers and equipment for plastination. All of these impressed them deeply. The P45 technique was shown on site (P45 technique—see J. Inter. Soc. Plastination, 22:78-81, 2002). The visitors were very satisfied with the low-priced equipment and easy-to-handle process.

After a traditional Chinese lunch, the members visited Dalian Medical University. Dalian Medical University is a multi-disciplinary medical university which also offers programs in other fields like arts, science, management, and law. The vice president of the university, Prof. Zhao Jie, welcomed  all the visitors warmly. He believes that the university will consistently support the research and development of plastination techniques and hope more applications of the plastination technique will be applied to the education and scientific research of the medical university.

The two day tour went very fast yet all of the members had an unforgettable visit to Dalian. It was really a fantastic travel experience.