Dandong is small enough to feel human in scale, and the tree-lined main streets are uncrowded, clean and prosperous, making it a worthwhile weekend trip out of Beijing or a stopover while touring the sooty northeast. The most intriguing diversion is the presence of North Korea just over the water, and vendors by the bridges sell North Korean stamps, with slogans in Korean like "Become human gun bombs!" North Korean TV, which you can pick up on hotel sets, consists of a string of programmes dedicated to reporting the superhuman achievements of the country's leaders, especially its president-for-life, Kim Il Sum, dead since 1994.

It used to be that the nearest you could get to the Hermit Kingdom without a visa was halfway across the river on the Old Yalu Bridge (¥10) in the south of town, next to the new bridge. The Koreans have dismantled their half but the Chinese have left theirs as a memorial, replete with photos of its original construction by the Japanese in 1911, when the town was called Andong. The bridge ends at a tangled mass of metal resulting from the American bombing in 1950. Several viewing platforms, with picnic tables, are on-site, along with Chinese entrepreneurs who charge ¥1 for a few minutes' staring at Sinuiju through a telescope. You can also take a boat trip across the river; boats (¥5 for a large one that leaves when full, ¥10 per person for a zippy two-seater) set out from all along Dandong's new promenade by the bridge from 9.30am onwards. The boats take you into North Korean waters to within a metre of shore, where you can do your part for international relations by waving at the teenage soldiers shouldering automatic rifles. Photography is allowed, but most tourists keep their camera lenses closed for shame of the sad plight of Sinuiju's shore. There isn't much to see, save for some rusting ships and listless civilians pointing at their stomachs.

The Dandong side of the river looks like a boomtown in comparison. The riverside by the bridges is the most scenic area, full of strolling tourists, particularly in the early evening. Nearby is Yalu River Park where you can drive bumper cars and pay ¥1 to sit on a patch of downy green grass. Think carefully before heading next door to the smaller, and unique, Guo Men Gong Yuan Hunting Park , beside the new Yalu River Bridge. One yuan allows you into the area, while ¥10 more buys you four arrows with which you can shoot at live bunnies, ducks and chickens. You take home what you kill. At the western end of the riverside promenade, Culture Square is the well-lit and more cheerful local hang-out in the evening, with kids riding around in buggies and young guys playing hacky sack and kick badminton.

Dandong is a city of contradictions due to its tourist trade as the keyhole of North Korea, and nowhere are these contradictions more evident than at the huge, macabre Museum to Commemorate Aiding Korea Against US Aggression (daily: summer 8.00am-4pm; winter 8.30am-3.30pm; ¥18; tel 0415/2150510) in a compound in the northwest of the city, close to the Resist-America, Aid Korea Memorial , an inscribed square column. The ¥2 entrance fee allows you access to the grounds of the monument. You can get here on buses #1, #3, #4 or #5 from the station; get off by the sports stadium and walk north for five minutes. This gleaming museum, built in 1993, has nine exhibition halls on the Korean War , full of maps, plans, dioramas, machine guns, hand grenades, gory photographs and sculptures of lantern-jawed Chinese and Korean soldiers. The museum feels like a relic of the Cold War; the opening hall has the catchy ditty "Defeat Wolf-Hearted America" spelled out on marble. Hall five is a trench simulation, while in hall eight, an impressive revolving panorama shows Korean and Chinese soldiers hammering American aggressors. Next door is a display of North Korean folk art, including dolls and distinctive children's shoes. The final hall is a memorial to individual Chinese soldiers, sanctified national heroes, whose photographs are printed next to descriptions of their deeds. Everything is labelled in Chinese; the only English in evidence is on Chinese propaganda which was dropped behind the American lines, in which worried wives wonder what their husbands are fighting for, and on the United Nations official declaration of war, in the first hall, which is the only written record in the entire museum of the trifling historical detail that the North Koreans kicked off the war by invading the South. A couple of MiGs and some Red Army tanks sit in a compound to the side of the museum. At the entrance to the compound, next to President Jiang Ze Min's large plaque of calligraphy swearing eternal North Korean-Sino friendship, ice-cold Coca-Colas are for sale. A gleaming structure on Huaiyuan Shan , behind the museum, marks a graveyard containing the remains of more than 10,000 Chinese soldiers.