Qingdao

I just got back from my little trip to Qingdao. There is a huge beer festival there in late August/early September every year and some of the other teachers really wanted to go. I had gotten my teaching schedule and learned that I would be teaching sophomore Oral English (for English majors) on Mondays and Tuesdays, Listening for post-graduate non-English majors on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Listening and Speaking for non-English major PhDs on Fridays. I taught my sophomores on Monday and Tuesday and I'll be writing a separate entry on my first days of teaching but the main point is is that the students are great. However post-grad and PhDs don't start until this week so I had Wednesday-Sunday off! So when my friends asked me Tuesday night if I wanted to leave for Qingdao in the morning I said of course!

We took a cab from Qufu to the nearest train station which is about 20 minutes away in Yanzhou. There was talk of building a train station right in Qufu but then people protested because they were concerned it would disturb Confucius' tomb. So we made it to that train station and miraculously got soft seats (as opposed to hard ones) with a student discount! We were pretty pleased with ourselves but we had time to kill before our train so we walked around and bought some snacks for our 8 hour train ride. We knew it was 2 hours to Jinan, the capital of the province I'm in and then we proceeded to ask at pretty much every stop if we were in Qingdao yet. The train was surprisingly comfortable and cleared out after Jinan so my two friends and I had a little cabin with two soft benches (they can serve as beds but you wouldn't want them to) with bunk benches above us. The train ride there really ended up being fun but we were so excited to finally arrive.

Qingdao is much bigger than Qufu and really looks like a developed city. It has a lot of German influence which you can see in some of the architecture. We had a hostel in mind but then made a deal with someone offering stays at a hotel near the train station. We got a room to ourselves with three twin beds, it wasn't anything fancy but was really perfect for what we wanted. That night we took a cab to the beer festival by pointing to the word for beer in a phrasebook. It was a long street of restaurants with outdoor seating tents but there weren't too many people. We walked around a bit and chose a restaurant based on business man sitting there who offered us beer as we walked by. We found a lager to have which might be the only one available in China as all of the beer is pilsner. It was nice and we munched on some dumplings as street musicians ambled by. Our business man friend soon came over and we drank some more beer with him and tried to horribly to communicate anything but it was still fun.

The next day we wanted to go to the beach since Qingdao is right on the Yellow Sea. We took a cab there to find a beautiful beach covered in... brides. There were brides everywhere taking pictures. Most had jeans and sneakers on under their dresses which were getting very dirty on the bottom. Still we walked out on the rocks and watched the scene of brides getting glamour shots and average joes picking mussels to sell on the street. We walked around a good amount and then tried to make our way back to where the beer festival was but we were told it was over and even though we still wanted to go back to that area, we could not get a taxi to get us there. Instead we took a three-wheeled taxi to a jazz bar. While we waited for it to open we went to a diner-like restaurant with some really eclectic decorations and accidentally ordered cold meat jello with bones in it. We tasted it but didn't eat it. We went to the jazz bar but it didn't really pick up-- we were the only ones there for over an hour, but still it was a nice place but we decided we were done for the night. Not a huge night scene here so far.

We took an early morning train back to Qufu and after some confusion as to which cabin we should sit in, a train attendant logically placed us in the one with the other white people. Our new friends are Chris and Brian and are from Australia. Chris has been teaching in China for 4 years so it was really great to talk with him. Another plus was that they had found cheese in Qingdao and were eager to share it. I was surprised (ok only kind of surprised) at how much I all ready missed cheese! They were also going to Qufu to do the Confucius tour and helped us get on a quick and cheap bus back to Qufu instead of taking a taxi. He works in Don Ying which is where some other Skidmore teachers are working so it was really an awesome contact to make.

But, yes, I've made it back to Qufu, figured out how to do laundry, have a hot shower and am just in time to head out to my first night of KTV or karaoke in America to celebrate my only (so far) Chinese friend's birthday. It should be fun and I'll update about that and this coming week of teaching soon.