Qingdao

So it has been a pretty long time since my last blog post so I have quite a few stories. However, I’m really lazy so I’m only going to tell you all some of the stories. That way, when I return home, I’ll be able to tell you all stories that you haven’t heard before. Exciting. I know.

So last weekend I went to Qingdao (sometimes spelled Tsing Tao). Many of you may be thinking “Why did Daniel go to some obscure Chinese city when he has yet to go to Shanghai or Hong Kong? Aren’t Shanghai and Hong Kong more famous, interesting, and important? They are. But while famous, interesting, and important is cool, Qingdao is just plain anomalous (thank you thesaurus). Qingdao is known for its white sand beaches, German heritage (it used to be owned by Germany), sailing, and one more thing…

Pictured: The reason I went to Qingdao.

Tsing Tao beer is the most popular and famous beer in China and it is brewed in Qingdao. As long as I have been here, people have been telling me that the beer factory in Qingdao is a blast to tour through. Rumor also had it that at the end of the tour, they would give you a ton of free beer. So while my roommate went to Manila for the weekend for an Australian Rules Football tournament, I packed my backpack and went to Qingdao with two other Americans on my program. America was goin’ to Qingdao.

The train ride was about the same as it was to Taishan (about 6 hours), but this ride was more enjoyable because there was a resort town at the other end of the train instead of a Mountain that I was going to climb and be exhausted from. Thank goodness. Fast forward six hours- we get our hostel (somewhat gross, but very cheap) and get directions to the beer factory. After a 45-minute bus ride filled with anticipation of a factory tour, we arrive at the factory.


Crap. I took a train 6 hours to get to Qingdao so I can tour the factory that is now closed. Now what? I’m not really a fan of beaches, and I don’t know what else there is to do in this town? We end up buying some beer and plop down on the beach for about 4 hours. While on the beach, we partook in the eating of meat-on-a-stick.

Daniel’s List of things he ate on a stick on the beach: Lamb, Squid, Chicken Heart, Chicken Head, and Bread.

Daniel’s List of things he ate on a stick on the beach that tasted disgusting: Chicken Head (the bones were what killed it for me)

Later that night we went to dinner at a restaurant that was really close to our hostel. Naturally after eating a chicken head I didn’t exactly have a big appetite, so I just got some fried rice. The two other Americans with me both got small dishes (we also all got a beer because we were in Qingdao and thought it was against the law to not drink Tsing Tao beer in Qingdao). When we got the bill it was 202 RMB. That’s about 150 RMB more than it should have been. My friend and I started yelling at the guy in Chinese because we knew we were getting ripped off and we only got him to slash off 30 RMB from our bill. We leave and go to our hostel and complain about the restaurant. The clerk at the front desk goes over to the restaurant and gets us 15 RMB more back. Gotta love being a foreigner and getting ripped off every chance Chinese people get.

We then ask the lady at the front desk if there is anything to do in this town other than go to the glorious beer factory that is closed. She tells us that we can take a tour of Qingdao that will also take us to Laoshan (another mountain, just what I wanted). They told us that the 100 RMB for the tour would cover the cost of entry to the mountain. They lied. For starters the entire tour was in Chinese so I only understood maybe 25-50% of what they were saying. Plus, everyone in the car with us felt compelled to judge the foreigners. Awesome. They told me that I look like Michael Phelps.

List of similarities between Michael Phelps and me: We’re both white.

All white people look alike. I guess. Clearly I wasn’t on a tour with racists. Just people who rarely see foreigners.

On this tour we went to the harbor, a pearl market where I got yelled at for playing around with a 22,000 RMB rock (it was a stupid rock, who would pay that much for it), Laoshan (see my photo album for those pictures), a tea plantation (supposedly the best plantation in all of Qingdao; quite the claim to fame), and an Olympic building/tower. The people at the hotel also lied; we had to pay for everything everywhere we went. Everything I paid for in Qingdao came with the foreigner discount. +20%.

Post-tour we needed to take a break from all things Chinese and decided to get another beer. The people on the tour with us told us a place to get really cheap beer. It ended up being cheap because it was beer in a bag. I paid for my bag o’ beer and walked down the street to the beach where I proceeded to cut a whole in the bottom of the bag and drink straight from the bag. Classy. I know. The following 6-7 hours were spent wondering aimlessly around Qingdao meeting random Chinese people, breaking into public parks and private hotels, eating dog, and having political discussions with drunken Chinese restaurant owners. You know, usual stuff like that. All in all it wasn’t all that exciting of a weekend because who doesn’t drink beer out of a bag after going on a tour where you only understood a little bit of what was being said and then go run around town eating dog and talking to Chinese people? I think that’s pretty common.

After that thrilling weekend, it was time to get back to Beijing. After having second-class seats on the way to Qingdao, which were still VERY nice, we were only able to get first-class seats on the way back because second-class was sold out. It was rough. I only had about twice the legroom that I had before, and it was way too quiet and calm in the first-class car. There were even thick opaque doors so that we couldn’t see yet alone hear all that riffraff in second-class (my computer doesn’t think the word ‘riffraff’ is spelled wrong).

So that was pretty much my entire weekend in Qingdao. I’ll put pictures up soon. I also fixed my blog so you can all leave comments again; I don’t know why it wasn’t working before but I fixed it. I’ll see you all in a few weeks!