Qingdao: Famous For More Than Beer

Beach where we spent a few hours sitting out on the rocks.

The protestant church, much better looking on the outside.

Tanya looking out from the top of a castle out on to the sea.

This is me getting ready to try shellfish for the first time...

I assume most of you are familiar with Tsingtao beer, famously brewed and bottled in Qingdao, China. Well that is not all that Qingdao is famous for. The town and surrounding beaches are something like Cape Cod meets Florida. It is the place where Chinese go vacationing in the summer months and after spending a few days there I can certainly understand why. (The city has also been chosen to host the 2008 Olympic Sailing events, a fact noted on numerous billboards and pamphlets.)

Originally all five travelers were going to head to Qingdao. But there was something of a mix up at the train station and the three people taking the train were unable to find tickets out to Qingdao and decided to see the hanging gardens of Hangzhou instead. So Tanya and I ventured on alone, not knowing what to expect.

I was surprised at how large Qingdao and it's surrounding suburbs are. But we found our hotel and the nearby beaches very charming. The people were very nice, and wherever we went they were pleasantly surprised that we did speak some Chinese. We even found a really fun back alley food market where we were able to sample all kinds of local specialties at food vendor stalls. It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

For those who are unaware, for a brief period of time the city of Qingdao was conceded to the Germans after two missionaries were killed during the Boxer Rebellion. They built the city up and established the famous brewery. For this reason Qingdao resembles an old Bavarian village attached to a modern Asian city. It is an interesting contrast and made exploring lots of fun.

We did not see many other foreigners. It felt a bit lonely sometimes, but it was nice just to hang out on the beach and stroll around the town. It felt a little more like an actual vacation, very relaxing...

Well, I suppose that basically sums up spring break. Today's weather is just gorgeous so I think I will stop here and go out walking for a little bit in the spring air.

Home Again, Home Again

The Bund at night from a small cruise ship.

Martina, a Danish student, and I infront of the Pudong skyline.

A busy intersection near our hotel, more motorcycles than cars in Shanghai due to the narrow and winding streets.

Nanjing Road, ten points to the first person who can pick out the McDonald's sign.

I will begin my post by saying that my spring break was one of the most interesting and empowering experiences I have had yet. It was my first time really arranging all of my own travel, from what I packed all the way up to making my own plane reservations in Chinese. Of course it didn't hurt to have four good friends along for the ride. All that said, I will try to give a brief rundown of our time in Shanghai. Tomorrow I will post on our experiences in Qingdao.

Five of us decided to go on holiday together, but Tanya and I did NOT want to take the 15 hour train ride. Tai ma fan (too much trouble). So we booked some pretty good discount tickets and flew into Shanghai early last Saturday morning. It went well and we managed to get a taxi driver who knew exactly where our hotel was, so it was quite nice. Our hotel was beautiful however upon arrival we found out that they no longer have a hostel section, so we had to pay a little more for the first night while we searched for another hostel where we could stay. We met up with our fellow travelers who looked a little rough after their long train ride.

First few days were basic tourist fare, walking around the Bund, night cruise along the riverfront, People's square, Nanjing Lu, museums of all sorts...you get the idea. Once we got into a hostel we met some pretty interesting people. Monday we went to the Shanghai museum with our roommates, a Brazilian girl and her Slovakian friend. We were quite a group. On Tuesday we met up with a 19 year old Danish girl who was traveling alone in China. The amazing thing about all the people we met while staying in hostels is that NONE of them spoke a word of Chinese, and they were having something of a difficult time getting around. But they could all speak excellent English...interesting.

The next few days we spent most of our time walking and just trying to get a feel for different parts of the city. We made it over to Old Town and the French Concession. It was a lot of fun to be harassed by people selling fake Rolex's wherever we went. Even more fun were the vast amount of tour groups comprised of retired Chinese. I definitely got body checked by a sixty-five year old woman. It was awesome. We also did our best to figure out public transportation, which was an entirely different adventure. At the end of four and a half days I felt like we saw a good bit of Shanghai.

It was an interesting place to see. I won't say that I didn't like it because actually I found it to be a beautiful world-class city. However, it lacks the character and community oriented nature of a city like Beijing. It is a purely Western conception of Asia, and it can feel very cold and consumer oriented. This is not to say that the people were not nice, they were actually very impressed that we spoke Chinese and were extremely helpful. I don't know if they would have been as kind and patient if we had not tried to use Chinese, other foreigners lead us to believe that this was the case.

I am looking forward to when the family comes to see Shanghai. This trip gave me a chance to really plan what we are going to do. But it is already so crowded, I can only imagine the amount of tourists that will be there come June. The upshot of all this is that Shanghai was amazing in it's own right and it was nice to make friends there, Chinese and Westerners alike.

Anyang: The Saga Continues

Wo gen Fu Li Na, hen hao war!

If you are wondering if that is a human skull in there...yes, yes it is.

Yum.

Drummers at a Toaist temple we visited.

Sorry. Busy week, I will probably not be posting too much more this next week because I am off on a tour of Shanghai and Qingdao. Hooray, a break from the chilly spring winds! On another side note, Easter here in Beijing was wonderful and definitely the nicest weather we have seen yet. The Southern Cathedral was packed with Chinese and Westerners alike. But back to Anyang...

Lots of people complained about the food in the countryside (chicken soup anyone?). But I must say that I thought it was very delicious, this may have been because I had just climbed up a mountain on an empty stomach. But Anyang has this sweet rice that is like heaven, I would liken it to eating fruit rolled in brown sugar.

Second day was more relaxed than the first. No mountain climbing or frighteningly unsafe suspension bridges. But Anyang is the cradle of Chinese writing so we did visit a museum that featured some of the very first known evidence of Chinese character writing. It was interesting but I am sure there is only so much I can appreciate about it as someone who's can't even read enough characters to understand a standard newspaper article.

We also visited some Shang dynasty tombs. I thought it was pretty fun, but others were definitely creeped out by the garish skeletons proudly displayed throughout the museum. Regardless, we wrapped up Sunday on a good note. We packed into the bus around 4pm and began our trip back to Beijing.

I have never really thought I was going to die, but I thought we were certainly done for a few times on the trip home. For about an entire hour we were tail-gating a propane tanker with a giant flammable sign on the back. And when I say tailgate, I do mean that we were literally about five feet from the other vehicle. I could see all of us just burning to crisps. Also got to see a few Chinese truck stops, and you thought the bathrooms at American truck stops were questionable...

All in all it was quite an eye opening trip.

Weekend Trip to Anyang (Part I)

At the entrance to the Three Peaches Gorge, very beautiful.

My roommate is basically amazing.

Me looking terrified on the wobbly suspension bridge.

A little girl we met along the path.

Sorry for the extended hiatus. Life here has been getting busier by the day. But I am proud to report that my trip into the countryside this past weekend was a great success. It reminded me that living in a city as cosmopolitan as Beijing is really a very small serving of China. Traveling into central China helped me to remember that this is still very much a developing nation.

Going through the train station in Beijing was in itself, quite the experience. It was so crowded, I honestly couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t go three steps in any direction without being jostled by someone toting an over sized suitcase. When I shared my feelings of awe at the large crowds with my roommate she started laughing and told me that there were actually relatively few people compared to most days. This makes me never want to see what a crowded Chinese train station looks like.

The train ride was pleasant enough. Five hours really wasn’t that bad and luckily I was sitting next to good friends. However, if I had just one complaint to make about China it is that people smoke all the time and everywhere. Let’s just leave it at that. I got pretty far into Salman Rushdies’ Satanic Verses. If you are looking for something to read and are not faint of heart I would definitely suggest it, fascinating piece of literature.

We finally arrived in Anyang after dark. To hear the Chinese talk about Anyang you might think it was just a wide spot in the road. Yet somehow a city two times the size of Denver just can’t strike me that way. Apparently around here 5 million people equal an average sized city. Regardless of size, it did provide a nice base for the weekend’s festivities.

Our first day in Henan Province, we went hiking. It was fun, but let's just say the Chinese have a very different idea of safety (see scary suspension bridge of death, pictured above). It was quite a day, full of great hiking conversations in both English and Chinese, and some great emotional highs. The natural beauty and villagers with odd dialectical accents only added to the awesomeness. I think I will stop there for today. To be continued…