(this seems like a good post for this icon) My Adventures Of The Past Few Days! June 24th-27th!
ATTENTION. THIS POST WILL BE RIDDLED WITH TYPOES BECAUSE I'M TYPING ON A CHINESE KEYBOARD AND IT DOESN'T SEEM TO HAVE FIGURED ME OUT. so there.
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Awlright, Ladies and Gentlebugs! For long have I intended to make this entry, but I kept doing more and more thiungs, so I figure better late than never, or something like that. Yeah?
ANYWAY. It's Vay Cay Shun for a Pico nowadays, and I have been treating it exactly as such - ie, friggin RELAXING. Mostly, anyway. Grades have been trying their best to be intrusive (bleh) and the buying of tickets is a hairy and expansive thing that only gets hairier and expansiver the closer you get to ticket-date. But blah blah blah. I shall get to these delightful details in the fullness of time, by which I mean: WATCH ME AS A I BLOOG ALL TEN OF THE PAST AWESOME DAYS.
LET'S GO
June 24th
June 24th was my Day Of Exit, and hell, it was a long day, mostlyb because I didn't sleep. Yes, ladies and germs, I did indeed start June 24th on June 23rd - that nght I spetn entirely at my grading. It wasn't as bad as it could've been - this was, after all, the grading of the final project stories - but it was no great river of peaches, either. Let's jsut say I sucked down about 4 cups of strong tea, and by the end of the night, I was seeing floaty things when I closed my eyes.
(No, really, literally. Do you guys know this unforgivably adorable but unbelievably addictive game? Now you do. And now you know the kinds of floats I saw behind my eyelids.
BUT THE NIGHT DAY WAS YET YOUNG!!! I must needed to go in and hand in the grades. I was mostly-almost-entirely done, so I went in by 8.40 and did that, and then zoomed back to my dormlump and cleaned a bit up, put my planties out where they wouldn't parch (ie the hallway, and, after being helped take pics of my finals by Wencui (I wanted a copy, but the origs had to go into the dept), skedaddled.
We skedaddled through busses and busses and finally, through long and arduous finangling, made our way to the hairport, the plane, and to Weihai.
Weihai! Ah, Weihai. We found Marcy (my other friend, teaches in the US) at the hairport and loaded ourselves into a bus to get downtown. Talked the whole way, exchanging goings-on and such-all, til we got downtown. Switched to a cab, which got us to the hotel we were in (not Jin Hai Tan or Jin Hai Wan, but Jin Hai An - yes, all three iterations existed within close proximity to each other, because China), got out, paid our rooms, dropped our stuff, and went to the sea.
The sea! The sea was about 100 feet from our doorway.
For those unfamiliar with Weihai (most people who don't live in China) - it's a city of 2 million that feels like a seaside town of ten thousand. It's a long, sunny strip of city built mostly alongsides a sea-long highway/road - about three to seven blocks in either direction,and then crawls up into the mountains along the sea. Forget your California or Florida, though - Weihai's temperate, and this what I love about it: it's a city of sycamores, mimosas, oaks, locusttrees, mulberries. Wait-a-minute vines and dandelions and morning glories along the paths, all mixed with some beautiful, ubiquitous yellow flower like a black-eyed-susan without the black. Pines like stone pines and junipers cover the higer reaches of mountain where people aren't allowed (YES. KEEP THAT NATURE UNSULLIED), and in the display areas, pansies and pomegranite trees provide showey stuff.
You guys, I love the idea of a temparate ocean area. Add me some mountains, drop in some delicious food, and Weihai instantly becomes one of my most-liked cities in China.
Speaking of that delicious food - but wait. First, the beach.
Marcy had apparently been waiting for four years to have a dip in that water, so that is what she promptly went and did. I only dipped my feet, since we had a dinner date, but I found a whole ton of shells and critters that were interesting. A sea-star was clomped onto a floating bit of seaweed, so I admired him a bit and then put him back in deeper water; shells were all lined up along the the high-tide-line and Wencui and I pickeup a good bunch while Marcy dipped.
Marcy's student-friend memet us alongside the ocean. What did we want to eat? "Anything." (Marcy) "Something good." (also marcy.) "Something local" (me.) Well, fish was local... and she showed us this business-card with a picture of an iron pot with fish in it. Nobody needed convincing after that. We hopped a cab and scooted on over to that place.
And, need it be said, that place was fantastic.
The restaurant was done up in little room-house-things. Tables were separated from each other with partitions made of blue fake brick and dolled out in pointy little rooftops. Each table was thick and pale wood, with heavy big chairs around it and a heavy wooden round cover in the center. Lift that cover, and there's an iron pot scooped into the table. Underneath, a giant gas canister.
We went and chose our dishes (the typical chinese display of "here are the ingrediants already laid in the dish all artfully, look what you'll get, pick from these and we cook 'em up") and then returned to the house-room and chilled, talking. The iron pot got taken away, filled with fish, and then returned to us - but first!
Various starters - just-hatched bean sprouts in oil, scallions and tiny shrimps, tofu strings, and such - and then the greens. These: a plate of a local favoured green, fleshy leaves in a very light vinager sauce; some style of tiny and curly radicchio, in sesame oil and vinager and sugar; some other local green shaped like queen anne's lace, cooked in a stone pot with eggs and bacon and soup; gourd flowers quick-fried with garlic and chicken. The fish-things came then - a plate-ful of little "huaga" - little inch-long clams steamed and vinager-garlicked and delicious, and our fish. That last: the iron pot they'd taken, dropped ladel-fuls of herbed cornmeal to cook on the curved sides, and then fish, all manner thereof, cooked in a brown, vinager-and-salty sauce, with turnips, potatoes, and onions.
Yes, you guys. I do indeed remember a meal I had ten days ago, because it was that good.
We were ridiculously stuffed after that, and rolled back to our hotel and to internet and sleep.
tl;dr:AND THAT WAS ONLY THE FIRST DAY.
June 25th
The nexy day dawned I don't know how - Don't know if it was sunny or what - but it was nice enough out for me to steel my resolve to my good intentions, and so I donned running shoes and running clothes and went out for a run.
I went right alongthe beach, figuring I'd go up the mountain and ruyn along hte coastline. This sounds well enough until you consider: oh, China. By which I mean: I ran until I hit the part of the beach that turned into sort of storage buildings, then had to turn off it and run up the coast-road. The coast-road was nice enough - trees and impatiens and coleus plants to either side - and it led on up the mountian to a turn. I took the turn. The turn led to a Gated Community. It was forbidden to continue along, because of construction, and also because this piece of mountain belonged to the Community (and also> I think, to the workers who tended personal gardens on public land?). So I took the turn back around and returned to the coast road.
Followed that on up, under a line of sycamores and along a roses-lined street, til I hit another turn. That seemed to be the main road, so I ran along that until so I took that along the mountain, dsown a street through another beachtown, and up and over yet another mountain.. To my left, the sea, clear while the water was shallow, but then peppered with fishing boats and the little peppercorn dots of nets in perfect formations. To my right and front, Chinese houses- that meaning buildings with aparments, very few actual free-standing houses - and construction and people doing stuff.
Up and over a third mountain, to another beach. I was getting pretty tired by this time, and decided to turn back, and was rewarded with teh restaurant-sign: ALIVE AND KICKING FROM THE SEA DELICACIES.
By the time I returned to our beach, I had run an hour and a half, and nd it was just beginning to rain. FUCK THE RAIN, I said, and went to change into my bathing suit, and then Marcy and I dipped and paddled while Wencui poked around the beach and the rain decided "fuck this I can't ruin their parade."
We were met again by Marcy's student-friend, and after showers and cleanups, walked along throuhg the HIT-Weihai campus around to the front, where lay: A HOTPOT RESTAURANT.
Hotpot is another Very Chinese Thing, and so for those poor souls of you swho've never experienced it, I'll try to lay it out in full:
You go in, and there's your big table with (in this case) individual little hotplates set into the table. (This varies - sometimes it's just one, sometimes it's a big hoop-and-chimney affair set into the center of the table, etc). You order your various off a menu, and then: waiter/resses come out first with individual pots full of broth, and set 'em to a boil on your hotplates. You wait, and they come out a again with small plates full of washed clean veggibles, and meat cut so thin it curls, and tofu in frozen chunks and gelly chunks, and all manner of sea creatures you wish to cook. You then, once your soiup is boiling, pick things up and dunk 'em in til they're cookedf, and then eat them.
It really is that simple. The only haard part is waiting - soup takes a bit to boil, and meat takes a bit to cook, and so your meal ends up being stretched all out into an affair of almost Sunday Dinner/European Dinner length - you pick some meat up, drop it in your soup, wait, take it out, put it on your plate, put some tofu in to cook, take your meat, dunk it in your sauce-bowl, eat it, rinse, repeat. The only thing I didn't have were the huaga/clams - they are remarkably delicious, but I dind't have the heart to put living ones into a pot of boiling soup, no matter how delicious they might end up being. (I'm no vegetarian, but I don't feel the need to cook critters when I'm already stuffed on readily-prepared meats.)
By the time we finished with hotpot we were even rollier than the day before. We rolled on over to the corner and took a taxi downtown (justified since none of us knew where it was), and tried finding electronic supplies for Marcy. We ended up finding such, and also various other things - a Korean store that sold some deliciously odd drinks (Pine Bud! Red Ginseng and Honey! Banana!), and then a quiet set of thin little between-apartment lines of stoes, shaded over by sycamores, their roofs a tangle of electric lines leading to A/C. I found what is normally exceedingly difficult for me to find in China: jeans! (why everyone like skinny jeans ugh) and then a superbly cool jacket and a green shirt with more ruffles than I have ever worn but which is acceptable on a Pico due to being the exact green she likes. We toddled on down the street and also found some nice cupware and serving plates, and then were picked up by another of Marcy's friends who brought us to dinner.
To hotpot.
Luckily, this ended up being Korean hotpot, A completely different but equally delicious creature. Korean hotpot, at least in this restaurant, worked like this: You've got your wide, huge, shallow iron pot in the center of the table - almost a pan. Around it are arranged all manner of tiny eats - pickled turnip, picked cucumber, kimchi, little pickled fishes - and on it were stacked, in a shape imitative of a campfire, foods. That's really the best way I can describe it. Underneath were ribs - chunks of already-cooked ribs and meat on them; around that were arranged and leaned mushrooms, greens, noodles, salted greens, and all manner of otehr deliciouses. You turned on the heather under the table and let it boil up, and then pushed everythjing down until it was all one big delicious soup of red broth and ribs and greenery-now-turned-into-brownery.
It was a delicious meal, even with our being previously stuffed, and even with our hosts still continuously ordering more food (korean nian gao - chewy rice cylinders in red and sweet sauce - peppers and potatoes - everything) we had an excellent eats of it. We returned to the hotel stuffed. This was a pattern I did not mind.
tl;dr:SO MUCH EATING.
June 26th
Waking up and going directly to the beach is another pattern I very much do not mind. We did that. We paddled and lay about. It was quite nice. Sunburn, of course, began to set in, but who cares in the first stages?
Our hosts of the night before had told us about a market. Shandong Province - the one we were then-currently in - holds markets not in the morning/evening, like most chinese provinces - particular morning markets or night markets in particular places and such-all - but on on scheduled market-days. These Market Days are according to the lunar calendar; in Weihai, the days were 4th, 9th, 14th, 19th, 24th, and 29th of each lunar month. This day was - well, lunar calendar I don't know which (must've been mid-month or so, since the moon was gibbous waxing) - but today was MARKET DAY! so we toddled on over to the market.
The market was a far more elaborate affair than what I've gotten used to in the morning/evening markets in Harbin. Makes sense, as it's more scheduled and more country - out in the country folks save up for market day, whereas in big cities markets are sort of ... always there. I don't take 'em for granted, since I never take markets for granted, but the markets in Harbin can be summed up like this: you've got your two or three blocks of street, all with stands and tents and blankets-with-stuff and backs of pickup trucks and full on truckbeds all loaded with whatever's being sold, all advertised with either your basic LOUD VOICES or with a megaphone set to repeat. If it's a morning market, there'll be stalls selling breakfast foods - dan bao (egg-and-meat-and-bun) or you tiao (oil-dough) or hundun (wonton) etc - I'll describe you a Harbin market sometime later. If it's night market, there'll be seats out in certain stalls where old guys (and it's always guys) can play cards/chinese chess, shoot the shit, drink beer, and eat chuanr.
A Ji shi (shandong-style market) is different. You've got a whole morning devoted to this market - and whatever streets it's designated to be on, it takes right on over. This one in Weihai was a whole lot more profi than the markets I'm used to - everyone had their ten-by-ten of space, real live TABLES holding hte foods and products and stuff. It started at the far end with clothing stalls, but then moved into interspersing clothes with produce, products, and then food - and then a long street branched off to the right was all food all the time, fruit, veg, meat, etc. Meat hung out just kind of relaxed on tables. Vegetables were fresh and bright and green. Everybody seemed to be selling cherries, which I totally don't object to, since cherries are high on my long list of favorite-but-inaccessible fruits. Halfway along the alley, a cluster of people - a man with a doctor-style mirror on his forehead (I've never seen one of those IRL!) was picking in a seated man's ear with tweezers and a long pick, looking concentrating. Asperagus was being sold as though ti was some rare and nigh-inaccessible delicacy that only foreigners bought (which ... well, China, so yes). On the alleys out of hte street, people's motorbikes and bikes and dogs stood around, blocking all outside passage.
Back on the main street, you got back to the mix-of-everything stalls, that went on - and went on- and went on. There must've been blocks of this stuff. We followed the market down to a corner, but up tmountainside, up along another hill, and took a break along a halfway point, drinking some cool drinks and chatting about what we'd seen, tasted, planned, and also about what it was like to age and how you did or didn't. We shared cherries and ice tea and a flatbread made of two bread-bits pressed together with meat-oil brushed between, and chewed on coke-flaovoured mentos, talking about students and age and kids and the sea.
Eventually we came to a main street. The market stopped there, all sudden, in a rush of garden-stalls (jasmine, cyclamen, cacti, orange blossoms, gardenias, and ferns). Followed that main street down to sea-level, where we walked on back to our hotels. dropped our stuff. Went to the sea. Of course.
After that, we cleaned up and met another of Marcy's friends (one that I'd met ever-so-briefly at teh English Language Summer Camp the year before). His English name, transliterated from Chinese, was King Power, and definitely had the kind of mien that comes with giving yourself such a name. He was, however, a good guy overall, and generous, promising to bring us to "the best tourist spot in Weihai."
He delivered. That spot was Liugong Dao.
I'm still not certain what Liu Gong means or stands for, but I can tell you this: Liugong Dao is the mid-sized island visible from Weihai's main city-stretch. It's the only island of consequence - the rest have just trees or fishers (and in one sad case construction) - and it sports parks, a teeny zoo, a military base, and The Museum Dedicated To The Sino Japanese War Of 1894-1895.
And oh, this museum. This museum! This museum does not cover my area of interest in the least bit, but it is most very definitely a great example of the attitude about the war. It is a useful and well-researched place, but it leaves no room for grey, and that's all I'll say.
I had to go to the bathroom in any case.
We finished the museum and trotted up a nice little buddhist tower (but couldn't go all the way up), and then wended our way up the mountain. Liugong, being a teeny little Dao, is two mountains rising from the rather pleasantly-teal sea, and we went up the one with the cable car halfway up. At the very top of the mountain is a giant cannon. Aside of that, it's very nice - pines went all the way up, interspersed with mulberry, chestnut, and some broad-leafed tree with purple flowers that I've seen at home. At the top, I climbed a mulberry tree and filled a bag with some, which we muched on our way down. Near along the bottom of the mountain again, King Power, getting into the spirit of things, (or possibly feeling the need to Provide For The Wimmin, aww ;p ) rushed into the bushes and introduced us to come very tasty wild cherries - tart and tiny, Rainier-cherry-colored, growing on the srts of cherr trees that have those pretty pink in the spring. We sailed off Liugong Island as the tide was going out, and taxied on over to dinner.
Not hotpot, this time. Barbeque.
Chines barbeque is not american barbeque. It is not great big chunks of meat grilled on a charcoal grill, and nothing is smoked-flavoured. No coleslaw. No potato salad. Muffin to do with summer.
We met King Power's wife outside the restaurant and were led into a huge, low room all decked out in counters - but I mean serious counterspace here, people - I mean like fiftey feet of countertop, all laid out in little plates and tiny signs scribbled in red marker. Meats were on Counter One. Veg and Fish on Counter Two. Dumplings on 3, assorted pastries on 4, hot veg/tofu/meat dishes on 5, cold ones on 6, fruits on 7, cakes on 8, and a floating island boasted drinks of all types, as long as you liked beer and baijiu. You filled plates or grabbed already-filled dishes and wended your way back to your table, where a round flat holey piece of steel sits over hot coals , and then you chopstick your food out onto the steel plate and let it cook. A metal chimney centered above your food sucks up the steam so you can't get burnt too badly. Servingfolk come around and give you more hot coals when you need them, lifting the old ones out onto the plastic floor and then leaving them disregarded as they fiddle with more hot coals and people step around them with full plates of food.
Oh, China.
We had a delicious meal here, too, although we were all getting very very round by this point. Luckily Barbeque is anotehr of those meals that's perfect for China-style - you eat a lot in a long long time, and no one expects you to gobble.
We walked on back to our hostel after that, talking with KP and his wife. She likes singing, and has a nice voice; I found a cicada still in its unshelled stage and put it on a tree, and we found, all together, medicine for my sunburn.
Ah, yes,the sunburn. It had progressed, that day, to hot-all-over-my-skin stage. More on that in subsequent deposits of writing.
t;dr: In Which I Prefer A Mulberry To A Museum.
June 27th
This might be the last day I write tonight, because dang, son, these is taking hours and hours to write.
In view of the fact that it would be a long time since I'd get to swim in the ocean again, Marcy and I went out to plash about in the sea this AM. This turned out to be a great idea and a mistake at the same time.
The great idea: wonderful time! Sun! sand! beach! babies! shells! sunbwait a second
Yes. That was my downfall. I ignored the sunbuurn in hopes of having a delightful oceangoing day. It was indeed a delightful oceangoing few hours, .... until I realized I was red and getting redder.
Well, what can I do? I put my showered and put my burn-cream on; we grabbed out stuff together and checked out, and left our baggages in a hall-corner, and then the trio of us headed on downtown to see what was left to see before we had to skedaddle.
And you know what - that's a lot a lot a lot of writing, so I'mna cut off there and go rex. This is, after all, Vay Cay Shun.
I might get more written before I head out with my family! I might indeed not! We shall seeeeee which will be which, when.
Anon, then, folks! Pico will see you laters!
...watertribe
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Awlright, Ladies and Gentlebugs! For long have I intended to make this entry, but I kept doing more and more thiungs, so I figure better late than never, or something like that. Yeah?
ANYWAY. It's Vay Cay Shun for a Pico nowadays, and I have been treating it exactly as such - ie, friggin RELAXING. Mostly, anyway. Grades have been trying their best to be intrusive (bleh) and the buying of tickets is a hairy and expansive thing that only gets hairier and expansiver the closer you get to ticket-date. But blah blah blah. I shall get to these delightful details in the fullness of time, by which I mean: WATCH ME AS A I BLOOG ALL TEN OF THE PAST AWESOME DAYS.
LET'S GO
June 24th
June 24th was my Day Of Exit, and hell, it was a long day, mostlyb because I didn't sleep. Yes, ladies and germs, I did indeed start June 24th on June 23rd - that nght I spetn entirely at my grading. It wasn't as bad as it could've been - this was, after all, the grading of the final project stories - but it was no great river of peaches, either. Let's jsut say I sucked down about 4 cups of strong tea, and by the end of the night, I was seeing floaty things when I closed my eyes.
(No, really, literally. Do you guys know this unforgivably adorable but unbelievably addictive game? Now you do. And now you know the kinds of floats I saw behind my eyelids.
BUT THE NIGHT DAY WAS YET YOUNG!!! I must needed to go in and hand in the grades. I was mostly-almost-entirely done, so I went in by 8.40 and did that, and then zoomed back to my dormlump and cleaned a bit up, put my planties out where they wouldn't parch (ie the hallway, and, after being helped take pics of my finals by Wencui (I wanted a copy, but the origs had to go into the dept), skedaddled.
We skedaddled through busses and busses and finally, through long and arduous finangling, made our way to the hairport, the plane, and to Weihai.
Weihai! Ah, Weihai. We found Marcy (my other friend, teaches in the US) at the hairport and loaded ourselves into a bus to get downtown. Talked the whole way, exchanging goings-on and such-all, til we got downtown. Switched to a cab, which got us to the hotel we were in (not Jin Hai Tan or Jin Hai Wan, but Jin Hai An - yes, all three iterations existed within close proximity to each other, because China), got out, paid our rooms, dropped our stuff, and went to the sea.
The sea! The sea was about 100 feet from our doorway.
For those unfamiliar with Weihai (most people who don't live in China) - it's a city of 2 million that feels like a seaside town of ten thousand. It's a long, sunny strip of city built mostly alongsides a sea-long highway/road - about three to seven blocks in either direction,and then crawls up into the mountains along the sea. Forget your California or Florida, though - Weihai's temperate, and this what I love about it: it's a city of sycamores, mimosas, oaks, locusttrees, mulberries. Wait-a-minute vines and dandelions and morning glories along the paths, all mixed with some beautiful, ubiquitous yellow flower like a black-eyed-susan without the black. Pines like stone pines and junipers cover the higer reaches of mountain where people aren't allowed (YES. KEEP THAT NATURE UNSULLIED), and in the display areas, pansies and pomegranite trees provide showey stuff.
You guys, I love the idea of a temparate ocean area. Add me some mountains, drop in some delicious food, and Weihai instantly becomes one of my most-liked cities in China.
Speaking of that delicious food - but wait. First, the beach.
Marcy had apparently been waiting for four years to have a dip in that water, so that is what she promptly went and did. I only dipped my feet, since we had a dinner date, but I found a whole ton of shells and critters that were interesting. A sea-star was clomped onto a floating bit of seaweed, so I admired him a bit and then put him back in deeper water; shells were all lined up along the the high-tide-line and Wencui and I pickeup a good bunch while Marcy dipped.
Marcy's student-friend memet us alongside the ocean. What did we want to eat? "Anything." (Marcy) "Something good." (also marcy.) "Something local" (me.) Well, fish was local... and she showed us this business-card with a picture of an iron pot with fish in it. Nobody needed convincing after that. We hopped a cab and scooted on over to that place.
And, need it be said, that place was fantastic.
The restaurant was done up in little room-house-things. Tables were separated from each other with partitions made of blue fake brick and dolled out in pointy little rooftops. Each table was thick and pale wood, with heavy big chairs around it and a heavy wooden round cover in the center. Lift that cover, and there's an iron pot scooped into the table. Underneath, a giant gas canister.
We went and chose our dishes (the typical chinese display of "here are the ingrediants already laid in the dish all artfully, look what you'll get, pick from these and we cook 'em up") and then returned to the house-room and chilled, talking. The iron pot got taken away, filled with fish, and then returned to us - but first!
Various starters - just-hatched bean sprouts in oil, scallions and tiny shrimps, tofu strings, and such - and then the greens. These: a plate of a local favoured green, fleshy leaves in a very light vinager sauce; some style of tiny and curly radicchio, in sesame oil and vinager and sugar; some other local green shaped like queen anne's lace, cooked in a stone pot with eggs and bacon and soup; gourd flowers quick-fried with garlic and chicken. The fish-things came then - a plate-ful of little "huaga" - little inch-long clams steamed and vinager-garlicked and delicious, and our fish. That last: the iron pot they'd taken, dropped ladel-fuls of herbed cornmeal to cook on the curved sides, and then fish, all manner thereof, cooked in a brown, vinager-and-salty sauce, with turnips, potatoes, and onions.
Yes, you guys. I do indeed remember a meal I had ten days ago, because it was that good.
We were ridiculously stuffed after that, and rolled back to our hotel and to internet and sleep.
tl;dr:AND THAT WAS ONLY THE FIRST DAY.
June 25th
The nexy day dawned I don't know how - Don't know if it was sunny or what - but it was nice enough out for me to steel my resolve to my good intentions, and so I donned running shoes and running clothes and went out for a run.
I went right alongthe beach, figuring I'd go up the mountain and ruyn along hte coastline. This sounds well enough until you consider: oh, China. By which I mean: I ran until I hit the part of the beach that turned into sort of storage buildings, then had to turn off it and run up the coast-road. The coast-road was nice enough - trees and impatiens and coleus plants to either side - and it led on up the mountian to a turn. I took the turn. The turn led to a Gated Community. It was forbidden to continue along, because of construction, and also because this piece of mountain belonged to the Community (and also> I think, to the workers who tended personal gardens on public land?). So I took the turn back around and returned to the coast road.
Followed that on up, under a line of sycamores and along a roses-lined street, til I hit another turn. That seemed to be the main road, so I ran along that until so I took that along the mountain, dsown a street through another beachtown, and up and over yet another mountain.. To my left, the sea, clear while the water was shallow, but then peppered with fishing boats and the little peppercorn dots of nets in perfect formations. To my right and front, Chinese houses- that meaning buildings with aparments, very few actual free-standing houses - and construction and people doing stuff.
Up and over a third mountain, to another beach. I was getting pretty tired by this time, and decided to turn back, and was rewarded with teh restaurant-sign: ALIVE AND KICKING FROM THE SEA DELICACIES.
By the time I returned to our beach, I had run an hour and a half, and nd it was just beginning to rain. FUCK THE RAIN, I said, and went to change into my bathing suit, and then Marcy and I dipped and paddled while Wencui poked around the beach and the rain decided "fuck this I can't ruin their parade."
We were met again by Marcy's student-friend, and after showers and cleanups, walked along throuhg the HIT-Weihai campus around to the front, where lay: A HOTPOT RESTAURANT.
Hotpot is another Very Chinese Thing, and so for those poor souls of you swho've never experienced it, I'll try to lay it out in full:
You go in, and there's your big table with (in this case) individual little hotplates set into the table. (This varies - sometimes it's just one, sometimes it's a big hoop-and-chimney affair set into the center of the table, etc). You order your various off a menu, and then: waiter/resses come out first with individual pots full of broth, and set 'em to a boil on your hotplates. You wait, and they come out a again with small plates full of washed clean veggibles, and meat cut so thin it curls, and tofu in frozen chunks and gelly chunks, and all manner of sea creatures you wish to cook. You then, once your soiup is boiling, pick things up and dunk 'em in til they're cookedf, and then eat them.
It really is that simple. The only haard part is waiting - soup takes a bit to boil, and meat takes a bit to cook, and so your meal ends up being stretched all out into an affair of almost Sunday Dinner/European Dinner length - you pick some meat up, drop it in your soup, wait, take it out, put it on your plate, put some tofu in to cook, take your meat, dunk it in your sauce-bowl, eat it, rinse, repeat. The only thing I didn't have were the huaga/clams - they are remarkably delicious, but I dind't have the heart to put living ones into a pot of boiling soup, no matter how delicious they might end up being. (I'm no vegetarian, but I don't feel the need to cook critters when I'm already stuffed on readily-prepared meats.)
By the time we finished with hotpot we were even rollier than the day before. We rolled on over to the corner and took a taxi downtown (justified since none of us knew where it was), and tried finding electronic supplies for Marcy. We ended up finding such, and also various other things - a Korean store that sold some deliciously odd drinks (Pine Bud! Red Ginseng and Honey! Banana!), and then a quiet set of thin little between-apartment lines of stoes, shaded over by sycamores, their roofs a tangle of electric lines leading to A/C. I found what is normally exceedingly difficult for me to find in China: jeans! (why everyone like skinny jeans ugh) and then a superbly cool jacket and a green shirt with more ruffles than I have ever worn but which is acceptable on a Pico due to being the exact green she likes. We toddled on down the street and also found some nice cupware and serving plates, and then were picked up by another of Marcy's friends who brought us to dinner.
To hotpot.
Luckily, this ended up being Korean hotpot, A completely different but equally delicious creature. Korean hotpot, at least in this restaurant, worked like this: You've got your wide, huge, shallow iron pot in the center of the table - almost a pan. Around it are arranged all manner of tiny eats - pickled turnip, picked cucumber, kimchi, little pickled fishes - and on it were stacked, in a shape imitative of a campfire, foods. That's really the best way I can describe it. Underneath were ribs - chunks of already-cooked ribs and meat on them; around that were arranged and leaned mushrooms, greens, noodles, salted greens, and all manner of otehr deliciouses. You turned on the heather under the table and let it boil up, and then pushed everythjing down until it was all one big delicious soup of red broth and ribs and greenery-now-turned-into-brownery.
It was a delicious meal, even with our being previously stuffed, and even with our hosts still continuously ordering more food (korean nian gao - chewy rice cylinders in red and sweet sauce - peppers and potatoes - everything) we had an excellent eats of it. We returned to the hotel stuffed. This was a pattern I did not mind.
tl;dr:SO MUCH EATING.
June 26th
Waking up and going directly to the beach is another pattern I very much do not mind. We did that. We paddled and lay about. It was quite nice. Sunburn, of course, began to set in, but who cares in the first stages?
Our hosts of the night before had told us about a market. Shandong Province - the one we were then-currently in - holds markets not in the morning/evening, like most chinese provinces - particular morning markets or night markets in particular places and such-all - but on on scheduled market-days. These Market Days are according to the lunar calendar; in Weihai, the days were 4th, 9th, 14th, 19th, 24th, and 29th of each lunar month. This day was - well, lunar calendar I don't know which (must've been mid-month or so, since the moon was gibbous waxing) - but today was MARKET DAY! so we toddled on over to the market.
The market was a far more elaborate affair than what I've gotten used to in the morning/evening markets in Harbin. Makes sense, as it's more scheduled and more country - out in the country folks save up for market day, whereas in big cities markets are sort of ... always there. I don't take 'em for granted, since I never take markets for granted, but the markets in Harbin can be summed up like this: you've got your two or three blocks of street, all with stands and tents and blankets-with-stuff and backs of pickup trucks and full on truckbeds all loaded with whatever's being sold, all advertised with either your basic LOUD VOICES or with a megaphone set to repeat. If it's a morning market, there'll be stalls selling breakfast foods - dan bao (egg-and-meat-and-bun) or you tiao (oil-dough) or hundun (wonton) etc - I'll describe you a Harbin market sometime later. If it's night market, there'll be seats out in certain stalls where old guys (and it's always guys) can play cards/chinese chess, shoot the shit, drink beer, and eat chuanr.
A Ji shi (shandong-style market) is different. You've got a whole morning devoted to this market - and whatever streets it's designated to be on, it takes right on over. This one in Weihai was a whole lot more profi than the markets I'm used to - everyone had their ten-by-ten of space, real live TABLES holding hte foods and products and stuff. It started at the far end with clothing stalls, but then moved into interspersing clothes with produce, products, and then food - and then a long street branched off to the right was all food all the time, fruit, veg, meat, etc. Meat hung out just kind of relaxed on tables. Vegetables were fresh and bright and green. Everybody seemed to be selling cherries, which I totally don't object to, since cherries are high on my long list of favorite-but-inaccessible fruits. Halfway along the alley, a cluster of people - a man with a doctor-style mirror on his forehead (I've never seen one of those IRL!) was picking in a seated man's ear with tweezers and a long pick, looking concentrating. Asperagus was being sold as though ti was some rare and nigh-inaccessible delicacy that only foreigners bought (which ... well, China, so yes). On the alleys out of hte street, people's motorbikes and bikes and dogs stood around, blocking all outside passage.
Back on the main street, you got back to the mix-of-everything stalls, that went on - and went on- and went on. There must've been blocks of this stuff. We followed the market down to a corner, but up tmountainside, up along another hill, and took a break along a halfway point, drinking some cool drinks and chatting about what we'd seen, tasted, planned, and also about what it was like to age and how you did or didn't. We shared cherries and ice tea and a flatbread made of two bread-bits pressed together with meat-oil brushed between, and chewed on coke-flaovoured mentos, talking about students and age and kids and the sea.
Eventually we came to a main street. The market stopped there, all sudden, in a rush of garden-stalls (jasmine, cyclamen, cacti, orange blossoms, gardenias, and ferns). Followed that main street down to sea-level, where we walked on back to our hotels. dropped our stuff. Went to the sea. Of course.
After that, we cleaned up and met another of Marcy's friends (one that I'd met ever-so-briefly at teh English Language Summer Camp the year before). His English name, transliterated from Chinese, was King Power, and definitely had the kind of mien that comes with giving yourself such a name. He was, however, a good guy overall, and generous, promising to bring us to "the best tourist spot in Weihai."
He delivered. That spot was Liugong Dao.
I'm still not certain what Liu Gong means or stands for, but I can tell you this: Liugong Dao is the mid-sized island visible from Weihai's main city-stretch. It's the only island of consequence - the rest have just trees or fishers (and in one sad case construction) - and it sports parks, a teeny zoo, a military base, and The Museum Dedicated To The Sino Japanese War Of 1894-1895.
And oh, this museum. This museum! This museum does not cover my area of interest in the least bit, but it is most very definitely a great example of the attitude about the war. It is a useful and well-researched place, but it leaves no room for grey, and that's all I'll say.
I had to go to the bathroom in any case.
We finished the museum and trotted up a nice little buddhist tower (but couldn't go all the way up), and then wended our way up the mountain. Liugong, being a teeny little Dao, is two mountains rising from the rather pleasantly-teal sea, and we went up the one with the cable car halfway up. At the very top of the mountain is a giant cannon. Aside of that, it's very nice - pines went all the way up, interspersed with mulberry, chestnut, and some broad-leafed tree with purple flowers that I've seen at home. At the top, I climbed a mulberry tree and filled a bag with some, which we muched on our way down. Near along the bottom of the mountain again, King Power, getting into the spirit of things, (or possibly feeling the need to Provide For The Wimmin, aww ;p ) rushed into the bushes and introduced us to come very tasty wild cherries - tart and tiny, Rainier-cherry-colored, growing on the srts of cherr trees that have those pretty pink in the spring. We sailed off Liugong Island as the tide was going out, and taxied on over to dinner.
Not hotpot, this time. Barbeque.
Chines barbeque is not american barbeque. It is not great big chunks of meat grilled on a charcoal grill, and nothing is smoked-flavoured. No coleslaw. No potato salad. Muffin to do with summer.
We met King Power's wife outside the restaurant and were led into a huge, low room all decked out in counters - but I mean serious counterspace here, people - I mean like fiftey feet of countertop, all laid out in little plates and tiny signs scribbled in red marker. Meats were on Counter One. Veg and Fish on Counter Two. Dumplings on 3, assorted pastries on 4, hot veg/tofu/meat dishes on 5, cold ones on 6, fruits on 7, cakes on 8, and a floating island boasted drinks of all types, as long as you liked beer and baijiu. You filled plates or grabbed already-filled dishes and wended your way back to your table, where a round flat holey piece of steel sits over hot coals , and then you chopstick your food out onto the steel plate and let it cook. A metal chimney centered above your food sucks up the steam so you can't get burnt too badly. Servingfolk come around and give you more hot coals when you need them, lifting the old ones out onto the plastic floor and then leaving them disregarded as they fiddle with more hot coals and people step around them with full plates of food.
Oh, China.
We had a delicious meal here, too, although we were all getting very very round by this point. Luckily Barbeque is anotehr of those meals that's perfect for China-style - you eat a lot in a long long time, and no one expects you to gobble.
We walked on back to our hostel after that, talking with KP and his wife. She likes singing, and has a nice voice; I found a cicada still in its unshelled stage and put it on a tree, and we found, all together, medicine for my sunburn.
Ah, yes,the sunburn. It had progressed, that day, to hot-all-over-my-skin stage. More on that in subsequent deposits of writing.
t;dr: In Which I Prefer A Mulberry To A Museum.
June 27th
This might be the last day I write tonight, because dang, son, these is taking hours and hours to write.
In view of the fact that it would be a long time since I'd get to swim in the ocean again, Marcy and I went out to plash about in the sea this AM. This turned out to be a great idea and a mistake at the same time.
The great idea: wonderful time! Sun! sand! beach! babies! shells! sunbwait a second
Yes. That was my downfall. I ignored the sunbuurn in hopes of having a delightful oceangoing day. It was indeed a delightful oceangoing few hours, .... until I realized I was red and getting redder.
Well, what can I do? I put my showered and put my burn-cream on; we grabbed out stuff together and checked out, and left our baggages in a hall-corner, and then the trio of us headed on downtown to see what was left to see before we had to skedaddle.
And you know what - that's a lot a lot a lot of writing, so I'mna cut off there and go rex. This is, after all, Vay Cay Shun.
I might get more written before I head out with my family! I might indeed not! We shall seeeeee which will be which, when.
Anon, then, folks! Pico will see you laters!
...watertribe