Qingdao

Qingdao: the basics. Qingdao is located on the coast of China, on the Yellow Sea. Basically across from South Korea. It was influenced heavily by Germans and has quite a bit of European architecture. It is known for its seafood, and its beer.

Places we visited day by day.... Here is the day by day break-down just to get you acclimated to the events I'll be talking about more later. 
- Monday: Teach school and head to Hangzhou on the train
- Tuesday: Get on the bus for Qingdao!
- Wednesday: Arrive in Qingdao about 8am, drop stuff at the hostel and go exploring, hit up the beach. Swim in the Yellow Sea! 
- Thursday: Beer Street, tour the Tsingtao brewery, walk a beachside path, climb out on some rocks, basically just see the city. We ate dinner at crazy BBQ lady's restaurant. 
- Friday: Visited the German Prison, boat ride and more walking. We walked a different beach side path and found a park where I bought and flew a kite! Then we hiked up to this colorful tv tower.  
- Saturday: We went to the Christian church near our hostel and then packed up, had lunch and parted ways. 

The people.... We had 9 in our group. Seth, Jordan, Laura, Jason and I from Shaoxing, and Jen from Shanghai. We all traveled together from Hangzhou. Dan, Becca, and Leona came from WuHan. Leona was our unofficial guide (being Chinese helps) and Dan helped navigate the map. It was good to see everyone, and make new friendships. We thought perhaps 9 was too big a number to travel all together around Qingdao, but it worked out real well. The only time we ever had trouble was a few nights for dinner it took us a few tries to find a place that would hold us all for dinner. (restaurants in china are notably small). 

The Hostel.... was awesome! We didn't spend a whole lot of time there, but it was very nice. I have never been to a hostel before this trip. The Kaiyue Youth Hostel used to be a Baptist church or something and it has the Old Church Lounge. We had a 3 person room, a family room, and three beds in the mixed dorm. Since our friends from WuHan were there the afternoon before we arrived, they stayed in the mixed dorm. The three girls from Zhejiang (thats our province- includes Shaoxing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai) had one room and the 3 boys had the other. The lounge was real nice. It had a pool table and lots of seating. They gave us beer tickets for each night. It was good for one free beer between 7 and 9 pm. We always made it back to the hostel by 9 ;) and then usually went out for more beer in a bag. 

Travel experience.... Okay, I gotta tell you about how we got to Qingdao. Sleeper bus. Ponder that for a moment. We left Tuesday at 2:30ish... and arrived in Qingdao about 8am the following morning. We left Qingdao about 4ish on Saturday afternoon and arrived in Hangzhou about 6:45 or 7 Sunday morning. Now, the sleeper bus. It is a coach bus size, but instead of seats, there are beds. It sleeps 32 people. Mind you, these beds are meant for stereotypical chinese people. So, on the way there I slept on my side, knees curled, and back bent to fit in this bed. It was not comfy. On the way back the beds were a little longer and I could almost stretch all the way out. It still was not super comfy because we were on a bus and China is not known for their paving abilities. But it was better. During training for China we were told that a sleeper bus is something to experience, but generally avoided. I have experienced it, and will avoid from now on. 

Beer.... Qingdao is noted for its beer. Which is Tsingtao beer, most famous beer in China. I heard you can get it in America. Anyway, the beer itself, while good, it not the most interesting part of the Tsingtao beer in Qingdao. It's how they serve it. In China, you can walk around anywhere with your beer. They don't have 'no alcohol in public' laws or regulations. Well, in Qingdao, the way you walk around with your beer is in a bag. No, not a can or a bottle inside a bag. I mean a plastic bag filled with tap beer and a straw. There were a couple different sizes... On beer street, they filled a pitcher up with beer and they poured that into a bag for 10 kuai. (which is $1.60 or so). Now, it seems like everything should be in a bag. The Americans loved beer in a bag, and could not understand how the Chinese beat us to this ingenious idea. 

Food I ate.... We ate all over qingdao. One place, just a block from the hostel, had jioutsa. Which is basically potstickers. We had lunch there on the first day and so e of the jioutsa had donkey meat and some of it had tiger shrimp. You read that right....donkey. It was actually pretty good. I should make you aware that meat in China is, at best, iffy; and at its worst can turn your whole digestive system to liquid, you catch my drift. So, donkey wasn't bad. Being a Midwest lass I haven't been exposed to much seafood. China will change that. It started with the tiger shrimp, which was okay if not a bit fishy tasting. We also had clams at multiple meals. Some spicy some not. And it's basically a plate of opened clam shells and you either use chopsticks or just suck the meat off. I actually enjoyed them. I didn't eat a ton because it was still a little bit fishy and I have this mental aversion to seafood. I know it's weird. Finally, my seafood initiation included streetfood one night of fried, seasoned squid on a stick. I didn't get a whole one but had a bite. Now, to get this picture right you have to understand this is the whole squid. Tentacles and all, skewered and fried on a griddle. I had a bite from the middle, didn't feel up to a tentacle.     Another new item was fried lotus. It's a starch I think.... It doesn't have much taste but the seasonings were good. Had some tofu noodles with pork and green peppers. That was delish!!! The. Walking about we found street food vendors with these fried eggs on sticks. ( everything is on sticks ). They were dove eggs and boy were they good too. But I haven't had eggs, decent eggs, since arrival here in the Far East. I had some fried sweet potato balls that were purple on the inside. Then reading was normal; bit the potato was purple! I was told it was the vanilla that made the coloring...huh. But the most interesting hing I ate, and it was on a dare/peer pressure; was a numbing pepper. These are little hard and moderately bitter but the oddest part is that they set your mouth to tingling and basically numbs the part you chewed the pepper with. It was weird, a little gross, and part of the experience.  

Things to remember.... Or to tell you about...
     The crazy BBQ lady. She was this older chinese woman with a very large beehive hair style that was red. Not natural red, but bright red. She stood out in front of her restaurant and beckoned people in, yelled at her staff, and basically just stood watch. We ate there one night, and it took forever! for our food to arrive. So, we made to leave before the second half of our food came, but she gave us free beer and we stayed a little longer. It was still a wait and we ended up leaving before our last dish came and went to get street food instead.  
     One day we went on a boat ride. It was a speed boat, and boy did the driver go fast. We were probably on the boat for a total of 10 or 15 minutes tops, and we didn't go far, but it was fun, fast, and we got to take some pics of the sights. It was 40 kuai, which seems like alot but its about 6.50 in US dollars. Then, one day we were walking along a beach front path and saw a wedding party taking pictures. We said hello! and congratulations! and some of the groomsmen knew English, so they invited us down to take a picture. Then, the photographer suggested a jumping picture. Three tries and we got it! There were about 8 or 10 in the bridal party, and the 8 of us foreigners. We drew a bit of a crowd. 
     The day we ended up at the park, there were a bunch of kites being flown. We had seen some kites on the beach the other day, and more from a distance in the air. I told Laura that I wanted a kite. I recall being pretty good with kites as a kid... I also spent some time retrieving them from trees too. Well, at this park they were selling kites!! I did some looking, and bartered a guy down from 30 to 20 and to throw in the string too. So, I now own an awesome fish kite!! When I was flying it at the park after I bought it, I got it to the end of its string and was keeping it steady when the guy selling kites behind me came up to me and gave me the thumbs up. He must have thought I was pretty good. =)
   Finally, I made two purchases in Qingdao. My first non-survival needs purchase. I got a little pig made out of shells from a vendor on the beach. And I got a present for Samantha back in America. Oh, and as a side note, we did a TON of walking. And our hostel was on a hill, so we did quite a bit of uphill walking. But we didn't see the sense in taking a bus because we might miss something. My calves and my shoulders are rather sore. 

Well..... Thats Qingdao. And thats what I did for my national holiday. I definitely needed this week to see friends, see China other than Shaoxing, and relax. Now, its back to school on Tuesday... But tonight the Xing-ers are going to night market to do some shopping, and we're gonna watch the packer game late tonight/ early tomorrow. 

Until next time.