Qingdao

As I mentioned in my previous post, this past weekend we had Thursday and Friday off due to 清明节 (qingmingjie) which is the Chinese equivalent of Day of the Dead. During this holiday, many families return to their home towns and sweep the graves of their ancestors (the name literally means Tomb Sweeping Holiday). But, the only thing it meant for my friends and me is that we got to go to Qingdao! Wooo!

Qingdao is an adorable little city on the coast of China, almost parallel with South Korea. During the late 1800's and early 1900's, it was seized by the Germans as retribution for the Chinese killing 2 German missionaries. Instead of being the, stiff, boring, grid of a regular Chinese city, Qingdao had a very European feel to it as we walked past lovely architecture on winding streets.

To get to Qingdao, we took the 高铁 (gaotie) or high speed train which ended up only taking about 5 hours. The inside was kind of like a plane, but with more leg room and we actually had some pretty good scenery on the way there.

Upon arrival, we hailed a taxi and headed over to our hotel. We where going to stay in a hostel, but they where all booked up by the time we got around to it.

After dropping off our stuff, we walked along the coast as we tried to find somewhere to eat dinner. Just by happenstance, we managed to stumble upon an underpass that was chock full of small vendors selling all kinds of seafood and the local brew, Tsingtao beer, readily on tap. Instead of wandering even farther, we decided to eat there. I ended up eating some sort of noodle thing that didn't fill me up at all. So I went back and got...squid. On a stick. It was SO GOOD! I also got some sort of fish jerky stuff. The guys (Eddie and John) bought a plate of crawfish that I then had to demonstrate how to eat all while thoroughly enjoying the 10 kuai pitchers of beer. After eating our fill, we moved on and wandered around the city for a bit. We ended up finding another really interesting area called 1902 street. This street was mor elike an alleyway crammed full of vender selling everything from pineapple, to raw octopus tentacles (draped over the tables) to lizard to snake. We didn't try any of it because we where still full from dinner, but it was really cool just to see.

We turned in early that night and woke up early on Friday to go to the local wine museum. Apparently Qingdao now has a flourishing wine scene, enough so that they felt obligated to build the tackiest museum ever. For real. It was really bad.

Complete with this statue of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.

Honestly, I'm not sure what was worse, the museum or the crappy glass of free wine we got at the end.

It felt like daggers going down.

No worries, France, Italy, and California. China is a long way off from being a competitor in the wine arena. Thankfully, the next thing we had planned was the beer brewery. I don't know if anyone reading this has ever tried Tsingtao beer, but if you have, it was made in Qingdao. At the brewery, we got to wander around the museum and learn how the beer is made. It was actually pretty cool!

The magical floating beer tap.

Eddie and John in the "drunk room". It was only a 

slanted floor, but it certainly made one dizzy.

After the beer factory, we stopped by a cool restaurant to get lunch. At this restaurant, they had tanks of seafood where you could point and say "that one" and they'll wisk away that eel or fish or whatever you ordered and in about 10 minutes, bring it out to you, freshly cooked. The boys decided to be adventurous and order these prehistoric things.

Which turned out looking like this:

Once you got past the spines and the hard exoskeleton, the meat inside was pretty tasty, though there wasn't very much of it. Eventually we got tired of making a mess and the guys instead switched to using them as puppets.

Over the next couple of days, we explored Qingdao some more, going to places like the Granite Mansion, the aquarium, the Governor's House, Signal park (the highest point in Qingdao where you can get a 360 degree view of the whole city), the Olympic sailing center, the local Olympic torch and various beaches (though it was way too cold to go swimming).

 The Granite Mansion

 No. 2 beach

 Qingdao skyline with the Olympic rings

Olympic torch

The local Catholic church. They 

wouldn't let us inside for some reason.

View of Qingdao from Signal Park

All in all, the weekend was amazing. Qingdao is a beautiful little town that gives you the feeling of having been transported to Europe. It was a wonderful break from Beijing and a great way to spend our 清明节 weekend.

The group: John, Eddie, me, Kate and Hannah