Penglai

Wow, this is taking me a lot longer to do but I guess it's good in a way to space out my stories. So, we woke up and Gen helped us get on an early bus to Penglai. The bus was about 6 hours but not too bad of a trip because we got 3 seats together in the back so we had some room to put our stuff. Once we got to the small town we got off the bus in a daze. We waited around for someone to come up and offer us a ride like usually happens. But it wasn't happening so we walked over to a line of cabs and that started up the frenzy. The taxi drivers started showing us maps of tourist spots and saying that they would take us there. We tried to convey that we wanted to find an inexpensive place to stay. One driver seemed adamant that he could do the job so we let him take us. We passed some very nice looking hotels that appeared to have vineyards and I got the feeling that this wasn't going to be what we wanted. We turned down a side street and into a driveway. The hotel was empty, aside from the flies surround the black mold on the ceiling. We said no way to the over-priced and strange hotel. He wanted to take us somewhere else but I thought that we should just go back to the bus station to start over. So back we went and we ended up just walking towards the ocean and got ushered into a hotel by some women following us down the street. Most of the places near the ocean had a restaurant downstairs and some rooms upstairs and the one we stumbled into was run by all women. It took us a while to get the communication down and bargain for a room but we figured it out. That night we walked around down by the beach and tried to figure out what we should do for the next few days.

The next day we decided to go to the Penglai Pavilion because, well, we heard that that is what you do in Penglai. We paid more money than I thought I really wanted to to get into a complex of temples and sites up on a cliff over the ocean. It was really beautiful and kind of like a tourist amusement park of varying temples without any rides. Well there was a cable car but we walked instead. We saw a lot but didn't really know what anything was and just took a lot of pictures. Then after a while the questioning feeling kind of sunk in of whether or not this was an authentic site, or just how authentic it was. I get tired of being a tourist pretty fast so I was not exactly a patient and polite person for my poor friends to deal with but we managed. We did also get to see a Chinese music video being filmed along the walls of the cliff which was pretty hilarious. After deciding we had had enough and establishing that we were tired the mountain somehow became a maze designed to trap Americans. It was too funny to be scary so we just wandered aimlessly, finding many dead ends and pushing through shrubbery designed to keep people on the paths in order to get the hell out of there. That night we decided to brave some local seafood since we were on the ocean. We ordered the specialty which looked like huge stretched out shrimp, kind of a cross between a shrimp and a fish. That is also what they tasted like but we cut up our hands pretty good trying to peel off the prickly shells. We were excited to get to the island that we had heard of off the coast so we decided to get up early and go there the next morning. However, first we stumbled on a jewelry store specializing in pearls. So of course we all bought pearls and watched the lovely lady who gave us all a discount string our necklaces right in front of us. And then we left for Chang Dao.

(Again, sorry that this is taking me so long to post. I'm not good at journals but thought I would give the blogging a try... I'm not giving up yet though! Getting myself behind in all these posts has given me a new project to work on. Tune back in for more updates soon I promise!)

Jinan

We got into Jinan with our Chinese friend Gen and he called his parents to check in with them. His dad said that he would try to help us find a hotel room for the night and we were going to walk to his mom's fabric shop because it was so close to the bus station. His dad ended up saying that he was pretty sure there were no hotels to be had in Jinan... It didn't really make sense because no one else was on break for the autumn festival or National Day yet, but Gen's parents were insistent that we should just stay with them. I felt really bad because that seemed pretty ridiculous and unfair to Gen's family to host 4 extra people. But it seems like Chinese people are often excessively hospitable. We walked over to Gen's mother's shop and she offered to make us sheets for free which was again, overly generous. I didn't need any sheets but I looked at a lot of her really nice fabrics. Two of the other girls did take her up on the offer but were rebuked for every choice in fabric that they made. Apparently young people in China should choose cartoons and crazy bright patterns for sheets because solid colors and flowers are for boring old ladies. In the end they made some sort of compromise and agreed to pick up the sheets at the tail end of our travels.

We left our things at the shop so that we could walk around Jinan. Gen took us to a shopping area and we wandered in and out of stores and just walked around. Then we went to the center of Jinan which is a large square with some shops and a lot open grassy areas, sculptures and fountains. I would have liked to spend more time in Jinan actually being able to see the city but I think it will be better to do that on my own some weekend. We also stopped off at Wal-Mart because Jinan is a big city in China and has one. Still, even in China (especially in China?), I couldn't bring myself to go in. During our outings Gen got a call from his parents saying that they were going to stay at a hotel so that we could have their apartment to ourselves. I felt horrible. But there was no way to talk anyone out of it. It again didn't quite add up because we had been told there were no hotel rooms available. I understood what was happening but it just felt so frustrating and unfair to his parents.

So, we went to Gen's parents' apartment to spend the night. One person we were traveling with started to get sick. He had a fever and the China paranoia set in. Gen stayed home to take care of him and the rest of us went out to walk around to have dinner. We walked up and down a market and got a little bit ripped off at a Muslim noodle place but proceeded onward anyway. We bought a bunch of fruit to ward off any germs from our friend and started sampling some pastries on the street. Most were ok, but not really that good. There was one that looked like a puffy taco and tasted like sweet dough with some kind of chicken jelly and wispy salty bits on top. It was not delicious but pretty hilarious. We thought we found a restaurant that had waffles and hamburgers but as soon as we looked at the prices on the menu we new we were over our heads. We politely got up and ran across the street to a tea shop. We got suckered into staying there and having a tasting for which we felt obligated to buy something so we bought some small packets of one of their pricier oolong teas. After that we headed back to Gen's house.

Once there we got to talking about how glad we were we made it out of Qufu and how we felt so free like we could go anywhere. Then we made the connection that Jinan is essentially a hub to get to other places in China. We almost gave Gen an ulcer, but we made him help us look up trains and planes to Kunming which is in southwestern China. Some of us had originally wanted to try and go there but then with all of the fretting about the swine flu and possibly not having a break at all we thought it would be best to not make big plans and just be able to go somewhere close, like Jinan, if we got a break. I have no idea how, but we did find some decently priced flights to Kunming, but I was the only one who had my passport which is needed for a foreigner to fly in China so it was a no go.

Instead we got up early, picked up our belongings from the fabric shop, left our sick friend with Gen to be taken care of, and got on a bus to the coastal town of Penglai.

Leaving Qufu

To start, the reason that it has taken me so long to post is not only being on autumn break but also have this site, my photos, and others (facebook) blocked once I returned. But I bit the bullet and bought a VPN service so I should be good from now on. There is a lot to tell about the past few weeks so I'm going to break it down city by city.

So two weeks ago on Saturday, I went to Qufu's youth hostel with two other teachers and we met some English speaking friends who were studying kung fu in Qufu. It was really nice to have coffee and hang out with people who spoke English. We all went out to dinner as a group and then went back to the hostel to have a few drinks. That day we had heard that someone in the physics department had swine flu and everyone on campus was wearing masks. The clinic was also selling masks for a short period of time but then it was roped off. Our new friends in town had even heard about the "outbreak". Then our one Chinese friend called and said that instead of teaching on Monday and Tuesday the school was dismissing everyone to leave for break early. We called our bosses and they confirmed it so naturally we decided to leave the next morning at 7.

As we left the next morning it really seemed like everyone was itching to leave, anxious with their small suitcases and cloth masks. We left campus to go to the other side of town to meet the other teachers. Once all together we got a cab to the "illegal" bus station. The bus station in town was shut down because of National Day/swine flu and the other one was far away. This "illegal" one is on the edge of a rotary and regular buses stop there with some empty seats and you bargain for a seat. Luckily our Chinese friend was with us so we easily hopped on a cheaper bus to go to Jinan, the province capital.

On our other bus rides it became clear that this "illegal" bus riding was pretty common. You don't even have to buy a seat, you can just pay to sit in the aisle on a little stool. I can now say that after 10 straight days of traveling in China on bus I fully understand any questions I ever had about Fung Wah.

Just as we were talking about how it really felt like we were really fleeing Qufu even though we weren't scared of the swine flu, one of our bosses called. She wanted to know if we had left yet and if we could come back. We were gone and could not come back. At the last minute they thought it would be a better idea for the foreign teachers to stay in Qufu to potentially be quarantined. They also said that there was a chance that we would still need to be quarantined when we did come back. We had been back and forth so many times about having a break or not having a break, being able to travel or not or only certain places that we were adamant on traveling and not going back. It seemed to be ok because we were staying the province and not really going too too far or to anywhere outlandish.