QINGDAO, CHINA
22 September 2007
Yes, I am a bad blogger, why do you ask? Actually, I’ve been really busy, with school work and GETTING TO CHINA! So, here’s what has been going on since I last decided to get off my behind and put stuff on the internet.
So, besides classes and such, when we got back on the boat ship, they told us that we should expect really bad seas because we were steaming towards a typhoon. WHOO! Actually, the seas weren’t that bad, but I’m glad I packed everything away, because my “Bob”ble clock rolled right off of the nightstand/dresser. I ate lunch with the captain (because the captain has an open table at lunch which is really cool) and some other girls, we talked about everything from bad roommates to the weather we were avoiding to how fast a knot is. I’ve answered the question so many times that when a kid came up to the table to ask, I automatically answered. And may have cut off the captain. But that’s ok, because he was just as tired of answering the question as someone at our table had already asked. :-) He’s a nice guy. I told him about Ed and he said it was impressive that he landed a 3rd mate job right out of college. Always good to hear a guy who makes a lot of money say things like that (he has a house in southern France and one in the Philippines. And he doesn’t even go home 6-9 months out of the year!). ;) The captain said also that we were avoiding two typhoons. One swung right into the Korean peninsula and wouldn’t bother us and the other was projected to swing northwest and hit Shanghai. Good for us, as we would be avoiding them entirely.
Preport is when everyone for two nights before we hit a port gives us an idea of what we’re in for when we get there. The first night is cultural, and usually the preport students, who are students who travel with us in between countries to see what life is like on a ship and clue us into what their home is like, give us a presentation. If any of the staff have been to the country, they’ll speak about their experiences and give us advice. The second night is all the nitty-gritty stuff, like how we’re going to clear customs, what you shouldn’t eat or drink, don’t do these hand gestures or say stupid things so you don’t get arrested (Don’t say “FREE TIBET!” in China. You get arrested and the consulate usually can’t help you). Stuff like that. We also get a green sheet that has the ship’s important numbers, like the medics, where the hospitals are, where the internet cafes are, how to get from the ship to downtown, how the subway works, how the currency works, all the fun stuff like that.
Well. The logistical preport for China happened to be 19 September. And you know what that means. TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY! My music professor was actually talking about it in class and was going to ask the dean to make an announcement about it. EVEN BETTER. It was like spirit JCL but funnier.
The union splits up into three sections pretty evenily. The assistant dean, Jim, who says the announcements and runs the logistical preports, is standing up there with a mike, and tells us it’s talk like a pirate day. So, two RDs (like RAs) get up with him, and they tell us it’s like middle school gym class.
The first section is supposed to say “We’ve got spirit, Yes do we, We’ve got spirit, HOW ABOUT YE?” We all died laughing, and I honestly didn’t think anyone was going to do it. But we did. And it’s on tape. It got intense. I was in the middle section. The first section says it vaguely enthusiastically. We yell, and the third section yelled louder. So the first section yelled loud. And we stood up on our turn. We must have went through the thing like 5 times. We were all standing up screaming at each other. SO PERFECT! I love it. I really wish I had known what was going to happen, because I have the Jolly Roger on my wall. Darn. That’s ok, we had Talk Like A Pirate Day.
And then the doctor and nurses gave a hilarious presentation on what to do and not to do. It was almost like watching a comedy act but with someone actually trying to say something. Hilarious. We got to buy Pepto-Bismal so that you didn’t get sick from eating food you weren’t used to eating. Did you know Pepto can turn your tongue black? I didn’t.
We got to China just fine, and the communist customs was the fastest we went through. I wasn’t even out of bed yet when we were cleared. We got to Qingdao at 0700, and could leave the boat by 1000. Something doesn’t seem right here…anyway. As I wasn’t expecting to clear so fast, the group I was going to go with left, which is cool, because they said they were going to leave when the boat was going to be cleared. I wandered around the ship because I didn’t want to wander around China by myself, because they told us some scary things at the preport the night before. I found some people, and we walked outside.
I knew it was going to be raining, so I wore my rain jacket, which I stole/borrowed from Piers Park which happened to be red. Great, I’m wearing a red jacket in a communist country. I really didn’t mean to do that. Whoops. Anyway, the gangway was on deck 5 instead of deck 2 because of the tide. This was a bad thing because the staircase was REALLY STEEP! It was very scary. We come out to an industrial port. This is where container ships tie up. We’re a big enough ship that it was probably only place where we could tie up, but man it was nerve-wracking. There was a ship next to us unloading containers, so there were trucks and scary Chinese guys whistling at us. Not cool. It took us 10 minutes to walk out of the industrial part, with avoiding trucks and ginormous puddles. After that, I was done, I didn’t wan to walk anymore. They had told us that if we wanted to try to get on a SaS trip, just wait outside in front of the buses, and see what one was going to have an empty seat. I walked back to the ship where the buses were and got on the Tsingtao Brewery Tour.
Qingdao was founded first as a military site in 1891 by the Chinese. In 1898, it was taken over by the Germans, who built a whole bunch of German buildings and a brewery. Tsingtao (which is pronounced the same as Qingdao, just a different spelling, “Chindao”) beer is the biggest Chinese export, and has the 8th largest output production of breweries in the world. Anheiser-Busch is number 1, by the way.
One of the professors had wanted to visit the brewery to see the effect of German colonization on the Chinese. The museum was actually very interesting except that our Chinese guide really rushed us through. We had a beer tasting, which they do at almost every brewery tour, saw the production, which is cool, and talked to the sales manager for North America which was really cool. Very smart, business-savvy guy, who answered questions really well. They’re trying to get out of the market which says that Tsingtao beer is only for Chinese restaurants. And other cool stuff like that.
Then we went to the bar. It’s the last part of the tour. There’s a souvenir store, where you can buy shot glasses, trinkets, and t-shirts (Tsingtao is the main sponsor for the Beijing 2008 Olympics, so lots of stuff for that). There’s also a bar. We got free beer because we went on the tour. They sat us at long table, and gave us really thin plastic cups and pitchers of beer (really nice pitchers actually, I kind of wish I had bought one). We figured that one pitcher per every 5 people or so gave everyone one little cup and that was fine. And when we all finished the pitchers, they brought over more. Oh boy.
The atmosphere, even though it was only 3:30 in the afternoon, was like a bar at night. There were Chinese people sitting at tables with pitchers, getting hammered. And not quietly like the Japanese, but loudly. Like the SaS students that were there. There were 28 kids who went on the tour, 1 Life-Long Learner, and 2 professors. When we got to the bar, there was at least 30 kids who had found the bar independently because there isn’t much else to do in Qingdao near the ship as we were in the industrial part of the city. Pitchers of beer were 25 yuan. Divide that by 7 to figure out the worth in American dollars. Yeah, the drunk Americans were paying $3 something for a pitcher of beer that wasn’t so bad. Real classy. D’oh.
I sat near the adults when we got the beer, and you guys know I don’t really drink. I don’t even like beer that much. This stuff was a bit better than Budweiser, but not much. The professor who was saying that before Tsingtao was a lot better in the past but because they were trying to globalize, their quality went down. He also said that drinking lots of microbrews really spoils you too.
I bought a glass because it had the Beijing 2008 logo on it, and went back to the ship on the bus. Out of the 30 people we had taken to the brewery, 9 came back. How pitiful is that? Actually, it’s good, because if you come back to the ship smelling of alcohol, as in lots of alcohol, they breathalyses you. And we all signed a paper saying that we can’t refuse to take a test. So everyone that was going to drink too much at the brewery could go get some dinner, hopefully (one of the profs went around saying, eat dinner so you don’t get alcohol poisoning), and not come back to the ship hammered. Because going up a gentle ramp is easy but slippery metal stairs at a steep angle even when you’re sober isn’t fun.
AnyWAY. It actually bothers me how many kids on the ship are total drunks but it really shouldn’t. A lot of kids are on this trip on mummy and daddy’s money and don’t really care about seeing the world. It’s a thing to say a cocktail party to impress your boss instead of being an actual life-changing experience. Thank Christ I met cool people on the ship.
So, while the brewery was kinda cool, I didn’t have the greatest day. I found my friends who I was supposed to walk around with, and most of them were taking the Beijing university trips for the next 5 days (flying to Beijing, seeing the Great Wall, Tienanmen Square, the Forbidden Palace, going to an university and interacting with Chinese university students, some going to Xi’an to see the terracotta soldiers) which was all cool, but 3 of the girls were going to walk around and shop for cheap stuff. Which sounded good to me. Then that night we watched The Little Mermaid on someone’s laptop. So awesome.
The next day, we left semi-early, walked out of the industrial port, and tried to get a taxi. Taxis in China are relatively safe (but you have to get one that is actually a taxi) and AMAZINGLY cheap. Like everything else in China. We finally found one, after telling the guys in the industrial port in the sketchy van, no, I’m sure your van runs great, but we’ll walk, and the guy that spoke really good English that we were all set. We figured out that showing the taxi driver where to go on a map is the only way to tell them where to go. We get to the financial district of Qingdao, which is so much nicer than the part we were in. On the map, Emily pointed to this gigantic red sculpture and the driver was slightly confused as to why we wanted to go there, but there were banks near there that would exchange money and take international debit cards. So we go there and there’s the Big Fing Red Thing. It was huge. We took pictures in front of it. Because we’re weirdos.
We found the Bank of China in the rain and cold wind, remnants from the typhoon, got The People’s Money or yuan. Our next step of the plan was to go to the cheap markets where our friend told us to go, but the first taxi we got that wasn’t full didn’t want to take us there (taxis decided before you get in the taxi whether it’s worth it to them to take you). So we waited on the street for a while, looking at the Olympic countdown timers. Qingdao is actually the sight where the Sailing Regattas will take place because Beijing is inland. So, Maureen will (hopefully) be here next year. I found a postcard that had sailboats on the harbor to send to her to tell her where I was. Yay!
Anyway, we were cold and wet, and started walking to try and get a taxi. And we smelled this amazing smell that came from a restaurant named, International Global Seascape Restaurant. No, seriously, it was. I love funny translations. It looked warm, so in we went. The hostess/waitress didn’t speak English, but the manager did, and he wasn’t sure why we were there, and we wanted to eat lunch. Another guy translated for us a bit better, and they took us to a table. All of the table up front were full, so they took us to the back rooms. They had rooms big enough to seat 10 people that had little signs outside the doors with international flags and Chinese characters. We were put in the Japan room that was slightly smaller, meant to seat 6 and there were four of us. When we asked for menus, the manager (I think he needed to get into English mode, because after that his English was excellent) told us they didn’t have menus, that they had the plates outside, and we tell them what we want from there. So we trooped back to the main entrance hall, picked a couple of dishes (everything was fried, so it had to be cooked, always a good rule), got a bowl of soup too and rice and went back to the room. They gave us good green tea and brought in the bowl of soup. The Chinese have the spinning platform in the middle of a round table because they share all their food. You get a big platter and are supposed to share with everyone.
The soup was tomato and egg drop which sounds really gross but was soooooooooo good. I can’t even describe it. And you know I don’t like tomato. I like tomato sauce and even our tomato soup, but this was basically a broth with pieces of tomato and fried egg. It was amazing. Then came what we ordered and the rice. We got fried pork pieces which came with these tortilla-like things and spicy dipping sauces, fried chicken with a chili-plum dipping sauce, and these wonton cups with scallions and fried beef pieces. Oh my God. Welcome to Chinese Food Heaven. Chinese food at home is meant to be cheap greasy take-out. This was amazing. I can barely describe how good it was. One of the girls we were with is a very picky eater. I mean 10 times worse than me. She’s good about it, she’ll try things and if she doesn’t like them, she doesn’t eat them. She liked everything except the wonton cups. I didn’t like those either, but we almost cleared the table. We honestly couldn’t finish everything. It was so amazing.
We were a little nervous as to how much it was going to be, because it was a really nice restaurant (we got our own private room so our bad American manners didn’t bother anyone!). It came out to 140 yuan. Woah, you’re saying, right. No. Remember, that’s Chinese currency. Divide by 7. That’s right, we had an amazing meal for $20. At home, it would have cost at least $20 per person. $5 per person. We love China. Cheap is amazing.
Then we got a taxi that took us to the most recognized symbol on Qingdao which was near the markets our friend told us about. It’s a pavilion that is on the Tsingtao Beer bottles. D’oh. It was gorgeous, because it stretched out onto the water in the harbor and was gorgeous. My friends took pictures. It was nice.
Then we found a market. Qingdao is known for selling real pearls. For cheap. I bought a whole string of dark pearls for about $7 American. Go me! And earrings, and some bracelets, and I haggled. It was so much fun. The Chinese thought they were cheating the dumb Americans and we were amazed that things were so cheap. Dude, I love China. Even when we heard Britney Spears on the radio. China is still cool.
Ok, Hong Kong is going to be another post because this is ridiculous.
Love to all
<3
Yes, I am a bad blogger, why do you ask? Actually, I’ve been really busy, with school work and GETTING TO CHINA! So, here’s what has been going on since I last decided to get off my behind and put stuff on the internet.
So, besides classes and such, when we got back on the boat ship, they told us that we should expect really bad seas because we were steaming towards a typhoon. WHOO! Actually, the seas weren’t that bad, but I’m glad I packed everything away, because my “Bob”ble clock rolled right off of the nightstand/dresser. I ate lunch with the captain (because the captain has an open table at lunch which is really cool) and some other girls, we talked about everything from bad roommates to the weather we were avoiding to how fast a knot is. I’ve answered the question so many times that when a kid came up to the table to ask, I automatically answered. And may have cut off the captain. But that’s ok, because he was just as tired of answering the question as someone at our table had already asked. :-) He’s a nice guy. I told him about Ed and he said it was impressive that he landed a 3rd mate job right out of college. Always good to hear a guy who makes a lot of money say things like that (he has a house in southern France and one in the Philippines. And he doesn’t even go home 6-9 months out of the year!). ;) The captain said also that we were avoiding two typhoons. One swung right into the Korean peninsula and wouldn’t bother us and the other was projected to swing northwest and hit Shanghai. Good for us, as we would be avoiding them entirely.
Preport is when everyone for two nights before we hit a port gives us an idea of what we’re in for when we get there. The first night is cultural, and usually the preport students, who are students who travel with us in between countries to see what life is like on a ship and clue us into what their home is like, give us a presentation. If any of the staff have been to the country, they’ll speak about their experiences and give us advice. The second night is all the nitty-gritty stuff, like how we’re going to clear customs, what you shouldn’t eat or drink, don’t do these hand gestures or say stupid things so you don’t get arrested (Don’t say “FREE TIBET!” in China. You get arrested and the consulate usually can’t help you). Stuff like that. We also get a green sheet that has the ship’s important numbers, like the medics, where the hospitals are, where the internet cafes are, how to get from the ship to downtown, how the subway works, how the currency works, all the fun stuff like that.
Well. The logistical preport for China happened to be 19 September. And you know what that means. TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY! My music professor was actually talking about it in class and was going to ask the dean to make an announcement about it. EVEN BETTER. It was like spirit JCL but funnier.
The union splits up into three sections pretty evenily. The assistant dean, Jim, who says the announcements and runs the logistical preports, is standing up there with a mike, and tells us it’s talk like a pirate day. So, two RDs (like RAs) get up with him, and they tell us it’s like middle school gym class.
The first section is supposed to say “We’ve got spirit, Yes do we, We’ve got spirit, HOW ABOUT YE?” We all died laughing, and I honestly didn’t think anyone was going to do it. But we did. And it’s on tape. It got intense. I was in the middle section. The first section says it vaguely enthusiastically. We yell, and the third section yelled louder. So the first section yelled loud. And we stood up on our turn. We must have went through the thing like 5 times. We were all standing up screaming at each other. SO PERFECT! I love it. I really wish I had known what was going to happen, because I have the Jolly Roger on my wall. Darn. That’s ok, we had Talk Like A Pirate Day.
And then the doctor and nurses gave a hilarious presentation on what to do and not to do. It was almost like watching a comedy act but with someone actually trying to say something. Hilarious. We got to buy Pepto-Bismal so that you didn’t get sick from eating food you weren’t used to eating. Did you know Pepto can turn your tongue black? I didn’t.
We got to China just fine, and the communist customs was the fastest we went through. I wasn’t even out of bed yet when we were cleared. We got to Qingdao at 0700, and could leave the boat by 1000. Something doesn’t seem right here…anyway. As I wasn’t expecting to clear so fast, the group I was going to go with left, which is cool, because they said they were going to leave when the boat was going to be cleared. I wandered around the ship because I didn’t want to wander around China by myself, because they told us some scary things at the preport the night before. I found some people, and we walked outside.
I knew it was going to be raining, so I wore my rain jacket, which I stole/borrowed from Piers Park which happened to be red. Great, I’m wearing a red jacket in a communist country. I really didn’t mean to do that. Whoops. Anyway, the gangway was on deck 5 instead of deck 2 because of the tide. This was a bad thing because the staircase was REALLY STEEP! It was very scary. We come out to an industrial port. This is where container ships tie up. We’re a big enough ship that it was probably only place where we could tie up, but man it was nerve-wracking. There was a ship next to us unloading containers, so there were trucks and scary Chinese guys whistling at us. Not cool. It took us 10 minutes to walk out of the industrial part, with avoiding trucks and ginormous puddles. After that, I was done, I didn’t wan to walk anymore. They had told us that if we wanted to try to get on a SaS trip, just wait outside in front of the buses, and see what one was going to have an empty seat. I walked back to the ship where the buses were and got on the Tsingtao Brewery Tour.
Qingdao was founded first as a military site in 1891 by the Chinese. In 1898, it was taken over by the Germans, who built a whole bunch of German buildings and a brewery. Tsingtao (which is pronounced the same as Qingdao, just a different spelling, “Chindao”) beer is the biggest Chinese export, and has the 8th largest output production of breweries in the world. Anheiser-Busch is number 1, by the way.
One of the professors had wanted to visit the brewery to see the effect of German colonization on the Chinese. The museum was actually very interesting except that our Chinese guide really rushed us through. We had a beer tasting, which they do at almost every brewery tour, saw the production, which is cool, and talked to the sales manager for North America which was really cool. Very smart, business-savvy guy, who answered questions really well. They’re trying to get out of the market which says that Tsingtao beer is only for Chinese restaurants. And other cool stuff like that.
Then we went to the bar. It’s the last part of the tour. There’s a souvenir store, where you can buy shot glasses, trinkets, and t-shirts (Tsingtao is the main sponsor for the Beijing 2008 Olympics, so lots of stuff for that). There’s also a bar. We got free beer because we went on the tour. They sat us at long table, and gave us really thin plastic cups and pitchers of beer (really nice pitchers actually, I kind of wish I had bought one). We figured that one pitcher per every 5 people or so gave everyone one little cup and that was fine. And when we all finished the pitchers, they brought over more. Oh boy.
The atmosphere, even though it was only 3:30 in the afternoon, was like a bar at night. There were Chinese people sitting at tables with pitchers, getting hammered. And not quietly like the Japanese, but loudly. Like the SaS students that were there. There were 28 kids who went on the tour, 1 Life-Long Learner, and 2 professors. When we got to the bar, there was at least 30 kids who had found the bar independently because there isn’t much else to do in Qingdao near the ship as we were in the industrial part of the city. Pitchers of beer were 25 yuan. Divide that by 7 to figure out the worth in American dollars. Yeah, the drunk Americans were paying $3 something for a pitcher of beer that wasn’t so bad. Real classy. D’oh.
I sat near the adults when we got the beer, and you guys know I don’t really drink. I don’t even like beer that much. This stuff was a bit better than Budweiser, but not much. The professor who was saying that before Tsingtao was a lot better in the past but because they were trying to globalize, their quality went down. He also said that drinking lots of microbrews really spoils you too.
I bought a glass because it had the Beijing 2008 logo on it, and went back to the ship on the bus. Out of the 30 people we had taken to the brewery, 9 came back. How pitiful is that? Actually, it’s good, because if you come back to the ship smelling of alcohol, as in lots of alcohol, they breathalyses you. And we all signed a paper saying that we can’t refuse to take a test. So everyone that was going to drink too much at the brewery could go get some dinner, hopefully (one of the profs went around saying, eat dinner so you don’t get alcohol poisoning), and not come back to the ship hammered. Because going up a gentle ramp is easy but slippery metal stairs at a steep angle even when you’re sober isn’t fun.
AnyWAY. It actually bothers me how many kids on the ship are total drunks but it really shouldn’t. A lot of kids are on this trip on mummy and daddy’s money and don’t really care about seeing the world. It’s a thing to say a cocktail party to impress your boss instead of being an actual life-changing experience. Thank Christ I met cool people on the ship.
So, while the brewery was kinda cool, I didn’t have the greatest day. I found my friends who I was supposed to walk around with, and most of them were taking the Beijing university trips for the next 5 days (flying to Beijing, seeing the Great Wall, Tienanmen Square, the Forbidden Palace, going to an university and interacting with Chinese university students, some going to Xi’an to see the terracotta soldiers) which was all cool, but 3 of the girls were going to walk around and shop for cheap stuff. Which sounded good to me. Then that night we watched The Little Mermaid on someone’s laptop. So awesome.
The next day, we left semi-early, walked out of the industrial port, and tried to get a taxi. Taxis in China are relatively safe (but you have to get one that is actually a taxi) and AMAZINGLY cheap. Like everything else in China. We finally found one, after telling the guys in the industrial port in the sketchy van, no, I’m sure your van runs great, but we’ll walk, and the guy that spoke really good English that we were all set. We figured out that showing the taxi driver where to go on a map is the only way to tell them where to go. We get to the financial district of Qingdao, which is so much nicer than the part we were in. On the map, Emily pointed to this gigantic red sculpture and the driver was slightly confused as to why we wanted to go there, but there were banks near there that would exchange money and take international debit cards. So we go there and there’s the Big Fing Red Thing. It was huge. We took pictures in front of it. Because we’re weirdos.
We found the Bank of China in the rain and cold wind, remnants from the typhoon, got The People’s Money or yuan. Our next step of the plan was to go to the cheap markets where our friend told us to go, but the first taxi we got that wasn’t full didn’t want to take us there (taxis decided before you get in the taxi whether it’s worth it to them to take you). So we waited on the street for a while, looking at the Olympic countdown timers. Qingdao is actually the sight where the Sailing Regattas will take place because Beijing is inland. So, Maureen will (hopefully) be here next year. I found a postcard that had sailboats on the harbor to send to her to tell her where I was. Yay!
Anyway, we were cold and wet, and started walking to try and get a taxi. And we smelled this amazing smell that came from a restaurant named, International Global Seascape Restaurant. No, seriously, it was. I love funny translations. It looked warm, so in we went. The hostess/waitress didn’t speak English, but the manager did, and he wasn’t sure why we were there, and we wanted to eat lunch. Another guy translated for us a bit better, and they took us to a table. All of the table up front were full, so they took us to the back rooms. They had rooms big enough to seat 10 people that had little signs outside the doors with international flags and Chinese characters. We were put in the Japan room that was slightly smaller, meant to seat 6 and there were four of us. When we asked for menus, the manager (I think he needed to get into English mode, because after that his English was excellent) told us they didn’t have menus, that they had the plates outside, and we tell them what we want from there. So we trooped back to the main entrance hall, picked a couple of dishes (everything was fried, so it had to be cooked, always a good rule), got a bowl of soup too and rice and went back to the room. They gave us good green tea and brought in the bowl of soup. The Chinese have the spinning platform in the middle of a round table because they share all their food. You get a big platter and are supposed to share with everyone.
The soup was tomato and egg drop which sounds really gross but was soooooooooo good. I can’t even describe it. And you know I don’t like tomato. I like tomato sauce and even our tomato soup, but this was basically a broth with pieces of tomato and fried egg. It was amazing. Then came what we ordered and the rice. We got fried pork pieces which came with these tortilla-like things and spicy dipping sauces, fried chicken with a chili-plum dipping sauce, and these wonton cups with scallions and fried beef pieces. Oh my God. Welcome to Chinese Food Heaven. Chinese food at home is meant to be cheap greasy take-out. This was amazing. I can barely describe how good it was. One of the girls we were with is a very picky eater. I mean 10 times worse than me. She’s good about it, she’ll try things and if she doesn’t like them, she doesn’t eat them. She liked everything except the wonton cups. I didn’t like those either, but we almost cleared the table. We honestly couldn’t finish everything. It was so amazing.
We were a little nervous as to how much it was going to be, because it was a really nice restaurant (we got our own private room so our bad American manners didn’t bother anyone!). It came out to 140 yuan. Woah, you’re saying, right. No. Remember, that’s Chinese currency. Divide by 7. That’s right, we had an amazing meal for $20. At home, it would have cost at least $20 per person. $5 per person. We love China. Cheap is amazing.
Then we got a taxi that took us to the most recognized symbol on Qingdao which was near the markets our friend told us about. It’s a pavilion that is on the Tsingtao Beer bottles. D’oh. It was gorgeous, because it stretched out onto the water in the harbor and was gorgeous. My friends took pictures. It was nice.
Then we found a market. Qingdao is known for selling real pearls. For cheap. I bought a whole string of dark pearls for about $7 American. Go me! And earrings, and some bracelets, and I haggled. It was so much fun. The Chinese thought they were cheating the dumb Americans and we were amazed that things were so cheap. Dude, I love China. Even when we heard Britney Spears on the radio. China is still cool.
Ok, Hong Kong is going to be another post because this is ridiculous.
Love to all
<3