Qingdao

I went to Qingdao on July 18, last Friday, together with my colleague. We took the D-train and after 6 hours, we arrived in Qingdao. The main train station was under renovation, so we had to stop at a smaller station in a remote suborb of Qingdao. My husband arrived in Qingdao earlier, so he could go to the Sifang Railway Station to pick us up.

Qingdao is coastal city. It will also co-host the Olympic sailing games. It is quite clean, and the weather was good. Cool air, gentle breeze. Two colleagues came to Qingdao from Shanghai, one from Jinan, the capital of Shandong province. Totally we had seven people.

On July 19, we went to Laoshan. Laoshan is famous for its daoist monks, but I didn't see any, because we only toured one third of the mountain. It was raining very hard, so we didn't venture to the main tourist site, where there are a number of Daoisim temples. Laoshan is not very tall, but very scenic, and you can see the sea from the top of the mountain. It broadens your horizon, and you do feel good when you see the ocean. It is just so huge.

We returned to the hotel around 3pm, and we were all wet. We decided to have a late lunch at a Korean restaurant. There are many Korean establishments in Shandong and Korean restaurants are every where. The one we went to was not particularly popular, but it was one of the nearest. The food was so so.

After lunch, we strolled to the seaside. It was not far away. Qingdao citizens are very lucky - they are so close to the sea. The sea was beautifully calm, peaceful, and gentle, and its color is deep blue. The commercial and residential buildings along the coast are high-end complexes. We also saw some Olympic "happy doll" shaped lights on some buildings. There is also a red torch sculpture on the promenade. Two young kids were playing slalom on roller skates betwwen a line of beer cans.

Dinner was the highlight of the day. We enjoyed some tasty local seafood at a famous restaurant not far away from the sea. The most delicious (and probably cheapest) seafood that we had was called "Ga La". We just couldn't live without it. Another dish appealing to our taste buds was "Dao Xian".

The last day in Qingdao was also wet. We took a bus to Ba Da Guan, which consists of eight streets and is home to many European style buildings constructed in the early 20th century. I was thinking about gorgeous, grandeous European castles, palaces and churches which I had seen on Lu Shan, but what I saw in Ba Da Guan was actually just a bunch of short regular town houses and they definitely did not look like that they were built a hundred years ago. Especially, due to the rain, we couldn't fully enjoy the scene. We did, however, see one building called "Princess Castle", but when we asked one nurse-like woman whether we can enter into it, she compained that it is actually a kidney recovery center and not some tourist attraction. She said that they were constantly disturbed by tourists who kept asking whether it is open to the public and which country's princess lived here before. "Very annoying" she said. We went to antoher tourist attraction which was open to the public. The entrance fee was RMB6.5 per person. This building was a Gothic style, three stories tall. It was occupied by Jiang Jieshi when he was the chairman of KMT. Standing on the third floor, you can have a spectacular view of the sea.

Green algie was a headline story in June and early July - from nowhere they suddenly overwhelmed Qingdao coastline in June, and could make the Olympic sailing events impossible if not cleaned up. But China is China and its execution capacity is unparalleled. The central and local government quickly assembled a huge army of people to clean up the algie and now, the sea has returned to normal. But we did see a small amount of algie in one location, as well as hundreds of navy personnel who shoveled and carried the algie away. The algie smelled noxious but are nutricious. We were wondering whether the government would sell the algie and if so, where the money would go. Our military forces are wherever there is a disaster and they are amazingly efficient in dealing with horrible situations. Three cheers to the armed forces!

Another place of interest was "Zhan Bridge". I guess all tourists were attracted as when we arrived, there were millions of people standing on that bridge. I was afraid that the bridge would just collapse. We decided not to add any more weight onto the bridge.

We had nothing else to see so we retreated to a Starbucks located in the center of the city. There we heard the disappointing news that our flight would be delayed for three hours due to some "mission". Oh, the torch relay will take place in Qingdao the next day and maybe our airplane was called upon to carry the torch from the last venue to Qingdao. Also, President Hu visited Qingdao on July 20, so the air plane maybe was used to carry his staff. Who knows what happened!

Fortunately, at around 10pm, we boarded a brand new plane which had just been delivered from Seattle to Jinan and was seconded to Qingdao to carry us back to Beijing. We could still smell the newness of the seats.

When I got home, it was already 12pm. I must say that the trip was not that exciting, and that's why I didn't have the incentive to update this blog earlier. But I was pleased to see my colleagues in a different city, and I thoroughly enjoyed Ga La and Dao Xian. Oh, I almost forgot to mention the best thing of Qingdao: Qingdao Beer!! It was really fresh and tasty!