Qingdao is my new favorite city

OK.

I have been reeeeeally bad about writing in this. Reason: my boss has be doing a completely pointless task: looking up the contact info for 2,000 companies so that he can make some other poor minion cold call all of them - possibly the most retarded idea on the planet. Anyway, I have been doing that for the past week and a half nonstop.

Short summary of last week:

Did lots of work, and drank lots of contaminated milk (something I leaned this week). Apparently there are 60 people in the hospital from drinking bad milk from a chinese dairy that had mercury or something in their milk... lucky for the government only foreigners drink milk, so at least they killed off people they were already trying to get rid of. Sidenote: behing me Adam is listening to the titanic theme song and whistling along. he now tries to justify it by saying it is the piano version, not the one with that "woman-with-the-big-nose". Now he is humming very badly.

ok now on to the part that is actually interesting, because really, lets face it, I do a lot of the same things over and over again in the Jing.

QINGDAO BEER FEST!!!!!!

Firday:

Frantically pack / try and get my life together enough to leave the office early to go to the airport for a 6:30 flight (the train ride is 5 hours so since I only have two days flying looked like a better option). Keep frantically rushing around. Rush Rush Rush. Finally, at 3:30, I finished everything I had to do and started to turn my thoughts to the wonderful weekend ahead of me, when I noticed a flashing button on my screen. New Message. Fuck. From a boss. Even more fuck.

Hey Liz you there?

Yeah X, whats up?

I have a quick task for you to do for me.

Ok, what is it? (it better fucking be quick..I'm leaving in 30)

Can you make the screencast into a presentation for a client by Sunday?

WTF.

Yes of course X, let me just pack my computer into my bag and take it on my nice vacation with me so that I can work all weekend so that you can go to the New Jersey shore.

So I set off to the airport with a considerably heavier bag than I was planning on. Also, because of my attempt to get some of it done in the office I left way to late and had to take a cab all the way to the airport: 150 kuai, thats like 10 toaster ovens or enough top ramen for 2 months.

Next step: get cab from airport to hostel

Got into Qingdao only to find that no one had ever heard of my hostel, or the street that it was on, and that the number I had taken from the hostel's website didn't work. So I sat trying to have a really bad convo in chinese with the policeman to explain to him that it was a place where young international people went while the cab driver looked on, vocally expressing his disgust with this stupid foreigner. Finally the policeman realized where I was going and told the cabbie. This theme of no one having ever heard of the hostel reoccurred all weekend.

Get to the hostel, do about an hour of work, get a call from Jeff to tell me the other two can't come, so its just me and him - completely not what I wanted for the weekend. We tried to go out but I just really wasn't in the mood cause I was so pissed it was just me and him for the weekend. Only bonus of the night: eating Chuar at a street stand after the clubbing idea fell through.

Chuar stands are just a rickety old grill and a few tables set on a street corner and are usually packed with chinese people eating, playing cards and drinking. All of the different foods are on skewers and you can point to the ones that you want them to cook for you. After grilling them they finish it off with a salty/spicy powder that makes it almost impossible to taste the thing you are eating. I had green beans and roasted garlic. It was awesome.

Man cooking Chuar on the streetcorner

Saturday

Woke up, realized that the electricity is turned off, because it is china and the city cant produce enough electricity for everyone so they randomly shut shit off from time to time. Had some grub then took a good look at the city, which was exponentially more beautiful than Jing. Qingdao used to be a german colony, so the european / german architecture is still very clearly visible in the city. It also has the tree lined streets of a european city, and hills, something that is sorely lacking in Jing. Our hostel was at the top of a hill in an old observatory, so we had an amazing view out over the city and got the full benefit of the breeze coming in from the ocean. I cant even begin to express how amazing it was to see the water after two months of landlocked-ness.

After breakfast we made friends with a big fat german dude, and two colombians who seemed cool, and went to the Beerfest with Jeff and big fat german dude at 2ish. I was very confused at how empty it was since I was expecting Oktoberfest style crowds, i.e, not being able to move as early as 9 in the morning). Turns out chinese don't show up till 6 or 7.

Its at the fairgrounds so there are an abundance of rides and flashing lights and people yelling. I don't recommend it for epileptics. There was also more food than I have ever seen in one place at one time, and of every variety you could possibly want - squid, prawns, bread, cotton candy, and lots and lots of Chuar. Met up with the Colombians, and drank some more... I was getting a bit sauced at this point so I had a long discussion with them about Colombia and latin america and how awesome it is and how everyone should go to Colombia...which now I am really excited to do at some point.

Met up with more new people - Ashley and Charlene, friends of Martin, one of the Colombians. Jeff was at this point completely blacked out, so I left him with the others and went with Ash and Charlene to go meet the rest of their friends. On the way we ran into a security guard with a segway and convinced him to let us ride it around in circles for a while.

Once we met up with their friends crazyness ensued and the night went into full swing. One of the guys in the group got up on stage and started belting out chinese songs to the delight of the 99% chinese crowd, and us girls went up too and completely got in the way of the chinese dancers . We also inadvertently advertised for a cigarette company by dancing in front of their booth for a while. This became really wrong when we realized that the little packets we were throwing into the crowd were free cigarettes. Finally managed to get everyone out of the gates and into cabs when it closed at 1o. Went to a delish seafood restaurant and were joined by Steffen, who somewhere along the way had the good fortune to come across a giant inflatable beer can - This became another addition to our company.

I think Qingdao Beer Festival is the best place to experience chinese hospitality. As you can see from the pics below, we made friends with many middle aged, shirtless chinese men over the course of the day. My favorite were the guys at the restaurant who sat me down at their table and proceeded to make me gambei my way through all of their beer. Gambei means cheers, but it literally translates to "drink to the last drop", so it means you have to drain your beer.

My protest that I couldn't chug beer fell of deaf ears and every time I took gulp of beer the guy next to me immediatly refilled my glass to the top, sometimes before it had hardly left my mouth.. They also made me eat Abalone.. which I did so as not to be rude. It was chewy and tasted like ocean. I saved the shells because at the time I thought they looked really pretty... I just took them out of my bag and they smell like rotting fish, as do the rest of my clothes.

More pics from the night:

The Yoda adorning the very messed up ears was a gift from MacDonalds, and the other pic is of Charlene mid-fall on top of Mortiz

Sunday:

None of the cab drivers knew my hostel, so after leaving the club I just went and stayed with the rest of the girls at their hostel since they had free beds. We all decided to go to the beach the next morning, so this made it completely necessary for me to find my way back to the hostel to get my suit. After asking 10 cabs I gave up completely. I could kind of tell where I was in relation to my hostel so I just started walking in the direction I thought it would be in.

On the way I went through one of the most chaotic street markets I've ever been to, that extended for probably 3/4 of a mile up a hill on narrow rabbit warren streets. The streets were so narrow that the umbrellas from the sellers on wither side met in the middle and made the whole thing feel like you were walking through a tunnel of food, smoke, cooking, and chinese people. Every five feet there were people cooking various concoctions - I had more Chuar, and some fried bread with banana in the middle. Qingdao is known for its seafood, so there were huge open vats of clams crabs, fish and prawns, all still alive and moving around. The grossest things were the big trays of brown maggots, which people fry and eat, that were feebly rolling from side to side.

The little things in the bowls are live scorpions. Turtle and scorpion stew, yum yum.

After about 30 mins of wandering through winding neighborhoods where everyone stared at me as though they had never seen a foreigner, I made it back to my hostel, changed and set out for the beach with everyone.

The beach was so much better than I was expecting, having heard horror stories about polluted chinese beaches. It was beautiful, but unfortunately my camera was out of batteries at that point. The beach was in a bay slightly north of the city so you could just see the skyline in the distance. There were traditional chinese fishing junks pulled up on the beaches and bobbing in the water, which although not clear, at least didn't look all that polluted. The breach was pretty crowded with old chinese men in speedos (not a pretty sight), but there was still room to breathe. The water was the perfect temperature and the bottom was sandy and shallow. Just tasting salt water made me feel like I was home again.

After a few hours of sleeping and swimming it was time to go back to the hostel and unfortunately pack to go home. I for one was not ready to leave this sunny, unpolluted, wonderful city and go back to monolithic rainy Jing... but at least I'm going to Nam in four days.

Sorry this is such a long post. In the future I'll try and post more regularly when I travel.

Caio