Qingdao’s luxurious Meng Gu Lu Bus Station

This weekend I took my first Chinese long distance bus ride up to the city of Changyi to visit my Japanese friend. I’ve wanted to visit him now for a while for a number of reasons.

1)Partying at the same two expat bars in Qingdao gets mighty lame after about the 300th time.
2)Qingdao is very westernized, even though it’s still impossible to get a good burrito.
3)Chance to see some China that’s more representative of the 900 or so million people who make welfare bums look like Saudi sultans.
4)The possibility that there could be lions and tigers and bears!

I was able to completely satisfy my mission’s objectives, and complete a few bonus kills. For example: while I was in Changyi, I was only one of three non Chinese people in a city of 900,000. My friend and an African English teacher were the other two. So for the western attention whore, this is the perfect get away. Everyone stares at you everywhere you go, as if you’re wearing Joseph’s amazing Technicolor dream coat.

Changyi is a city in northern Shandong province, near the yellow sea. I would guesstimate that its main industries are farming, and food processing from the large number of farms and food processing plants that I saw surrounding the place. There is one big supermarket where everyone hangs out at. There are a couple of KTV (karaoke) bars, but other than that no western bars, restaurants, or clubs. So the night life consists mostly of loitering around shops, and drinking at the Korean BBQs, which are actually Chinese BBQs, but called Korean BBQs in a meager attempt at being exotic. The great thing about Changyi is that it’s dirt fucking cheap. Try 3RMB cab rides. 17RMB meals. Everyone has scooters and bikes, very few have cars. The air is generally quite clean, although I was only there for two days so that doesn’t give you much of a good survey size to average. My friend’s rent is only 400RMB a month for a one bedroom. That’s 52$ friggin dollars!

There really isn’t much to do in this city other than visit the factories where everyone lives and works, and drink. The people are all really friendly, even to my friend, and we all know how good of buddies Japan and China are. Actually if I had a scooter I could have a pretty good time just cruising around and being stared at. I’m a little conflicted as to how long I could stay in a place like this. While there isn’t much to do of what I’m familiar with, I can speak enough Chinese to make friends and get creative with the things you’d be able to do, a lot like living on a farm back in the West. On the other hand if I failed to get creative I would be so bored, being cryogenically frozen would be a viable activity. I was told of a Welsh lad who previously lived in the town, and was a local celebrity. He virtually had his own TV show on the city’s station.

The other interesting thing about Changyi is that it’s like visiting China when it was still communist in ideology. No one is really wealthy, even the local managers and bosses don’t live any more lavishly than the regular people. Many of the factory workers live in dormitories on the factory grounds, which from what I saw were obsolete but clean and well maintained for what they are.

Me being me, I really didn’t spend too much time with the common folk, I was more interested in finishing the bottle of Stolichnaya I had brought down for my bud. It was a Saturday night after all. I do want to go back. Next time I want to rent some guys scooter and boot around town challenging people to cross town races. Then after I beat their asses I’ll spend my spoils of victory by trying with futility to go shopping at the grocery store without looking like a space invader.

Filed under: tourist shit