First let’s start by stating the obvious, my original plan was to check out all the villages of the 9 Towns 1 City project. For those unfamiliar with it, it was a one of those cockamamie schemes the city government came up with to rejuvenate a bunch of these suburban villages. It’s goal was to transform a bunch of towns into little “European” themed towns that yuppies could flock to, driving developer and thus government revenue from places that were anything but flush with cash. To figure out whether or not this plan was a success, ask yourself this: Who the fuck wants to live an hour outside of downtown in a shit stain quality knock off of a European village with your only connection to the core being a subway line that closes at 10pm? Exactly. Speculators bought up, but no one actually moved in. Check out some of that top caliber construction in the 3rd picture below:

Luckily there was lots of Gaoqiao that was spared the wrecking ball. There’s many buildings from the Qing Dynasty, and the local heritage comittee has even put plaques up on the buildings giving the vital details. The one building in the sign below was dated: 清代 约120年 that I take to mean 120 years into the Qing Dynasty, or 1764. Pretty impressive by Chinese standards. All of these buildings still had people living, working and doing whatever it is they do in there, so it was pretty lively in those backstreets (although they were afraid my camera lens would devour their souls).

There was also lots of buildings that had been molested and defiled by more mordern buildings. You could catch glimpses of these dirty old bastards everywhere.

Some of the buildings even had these cancerous tumors growing on them. Check out the close up of the one below. The only thing that comes to mind are the letters w t and f.

There was also one or two buildings circa colonial times below. Not surprisingly, the old chap held up quite well despite looking like it was meant to hold crazies.

And then came the revival. Lots of new “old” Chinese styled buildings going up. I’m not sure how I feel about these. On one hand they’re certainly better than massively bland apartment blocks and a lack of human scale. On the other hand there’s a tattoo of a midget with a lightning bolts…No wait I mean the jury’s still out. I’m sure there’s bad things about them, but the beer I’m drinking right now is making me sedate.

Finally, all the other styles. Commie blocks, the ubiquitous white tiles (Good god would I love to be the man who owned the factory that made those in the 80’s), 90’s villa style, 00’s highrise and of course the glass and steel office buildings that no neighborhood in Shanghai is complete without.

So I hopped in my chauffeured humvee (which coincidentally fits as many people as a subway train and also is painted blue with name LINE 8 ) and headed into the yonder to see these dying villages and what remains. My first stop was Pujiang Station. Well in reality, my magical humvee also made stops at People’s Square Station, South Tibet Road and several other insignificant places before Pujiang, but I was rocking out to Pulled Apart by Horses at that time.

Here’s how I would think if I lived like a communist: Toilet won’t flush. Well let me see here. Since the place is mine, and what’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is his, and his is the peoples’ and we are the people…now where was I? Oh right…I’ll let another comrade sort the shitter out, where’s my vodka at? I suppose the slow disintegration of the buildings might also have to do with all the handymen being sent to the farms during the general chaos of the Cultural Devolution and the Great Leap Backwards. However I’m going to place my bets on Home Depot having poor hours and shitty service back then.

On with the show.

Pujiang wasn’t totally abandoned. There was still some life along a main street through the middle of the town with shops and people doing a whole lot of nothing. There was also the most ramshable pool hall I have ever seen. Check out the one dude just past out on the table. Actually it was so hot that day I wanted to join him…errr…not on the same table of course. Shut up, you know what I mean.

Even though Shanghai sits on the Pacific (or East China Sea for you pedants), there ain’t much beach action going on here. Seems like they’ve used every inch of shoreline for container ports, factory waste dumpage or expo grounds. So it being summer and all, some friends and I decided to trek out to Shengsi Island to get some unhealthy doses of solar radiation, and booze.

Shengsi Island is actually not part of Shanghai. It falls under the administrative incompetence of Zhejiang Province. To get there requires a taxi from wherever you are in Shanghai to the bus station underneath the Nanpu bridge, followed by an hour or so bus ride to a desolate part of Pudong where the ferry terminal is, and then a 70 minute boat ride to the island itself. The boat is the worst part, the seats are tightly packed, the Chinese tourists don’t handle the sea well, and if your stomach isn’t sick, the non-stop Mr. Bean on the TVs ensure your brain is. Avoid the washrooms at all costs. You’ve been warned.

Once you’re there, the island is pretty fucking ace. The air is as clean as you’re going to get in Asia, and that means there’s some awesome clouds doing their thing above you. Yes I love clouds.

When you plan your trip, it’s crucial you find a decent place to stay. I would not advise being bamboozled into 2 large rooms without beds for $150 a night, as our group was. Instead, there’s lots of guest houses around, and my independence seeking friend and I scored a nice air-conditioned and mosquito free place for $15 a night. Always remember to play the student card even if you’re rocking grey hair, suspenders and a sweater vest.

About those mosquitoes, you’ll want to bring the strongest repellent known to man, cause the little buggers aren’t little at all. They’re actually man eating beasts that move with the agility of mountain goats on crystal meth. I’m not really sure what that means, but they make Vlad Ţepeș look like a punk ass bitch.

The initial place we were staying at (the scamming rat bastards) had a “private beach”. What they really meant was a spit of sand covered in toxic waste from the nearby fishing/industrial village down the way. Luckily a 15 minute walk lead us to the massive, pristine Nanchangtu (南长途) beach with decent waves and practically no other people. Yeah it cost 20kuai to get in, but it was well worth being turned into a fried tomato, thanks to the Sun’s loving atomic rays.

The food on the island is mostly a poisonous variety of seafood that will destroy your intestines with the intensity of a thousand piranhas. I survived on granola bars and beef jerky acquired on the mainland. That’s called thinking ahead people. The best plan, would be to bring a small bbq, and get groceries from the town, and have a sweet rave party on the beach with glowing sweat. Interestingly, the main cash crop of the island was edamame beans that were in fact delicious.

If you can stomach other people not stomaching the boat ride, Shengsi island is a natural escape from the evil clutches of Shanghai. Just remember mosquitoes as big as 747s and seafood as bad as Michael Jackson circa 1987.

A part of my excursion to the nation’s capital during the Labour Day weekend was a little side trip to the recently refurbished Qianmen Street. Qianmen means front gate, cause the street runs right in front of the front gate to a certain infamous square and the Forbidden City.

Naturally I picked a day of the unholy trinity of Chinese holidays to visit. Instead of something that should have taken no more than an hour, I spent several wading through the unwashed masses as they enjoyed their holiday being yelled at through bullhorns, remembering which red hat wearing group was theirs, and admiring the 4.3 million sq. feet of soulless granite that makes up the TAM square.

It’s a long pedestrian walking street with two fake electric trams running along it. How exactly are the electric trams fake you ask? Well they’ve got the junk on the roof to hook up to an electrical wire, not unlike what you’d see on the streetcars in Toronto. In this instance however, there are no electrical wires running along the street. So this leads me to the conclusion that either the Chinese engineers have mastered the art of making things turn invisible, OR the trams are powered by nothing but the self-fulfillment of those engineers.

The architecture along the street is starts off in the nouveau Qing Dynasty style popular in Chinatowns the world over, and oddly it fades as you head down the street into this dark boxy modern stuff that I haven’t made up my mind about. It’s as though whoever was building it started off all traditional, with lots of details, then started to run out of time and money, so they decided to throw a bunch of rectangular shapes together and hope for the best. I don’t think it looks horrible, but the context is messed up. Just like using the font from the title of “Their Will Be Blood” for the invitations to a baby shower.

I read somewhere that this street was supposed to be open in time for the Olympics last year, or that it was open in time for the Olympics. Either way, if by open they mean the buildings are finished and devoid of life, then I guess it’s certainly open. The only buildings that had tenants were a large H&M store and a China Post office. While walking down it, I saw a side street that signs of commercial activity in the form of trinket shops, but it was also full of people, and narrow, so I dared not venture into that heart of darkness.

Qianmen Jie could be awesome. Instead of putting in banal corporate retail and chain stores, they should fill the street with nothing but bars and discos, and the odd strip club or massage parlour for good measure. It’s got a central location, but it isn’t near any residential, so noisy drunks aren’t an issue. There’s an adjacent subway station, and huge avenues filled with taxis and busses to transport the winos to and fro. Plus the Great Hall of the People (aka China’s parliament) is only a stone’s throw away, so the customers are already there!

Qianmen Street Yea or Nay?

If you’re in the area because you’re checking out the square, the Forbidden City, or Mao’s waxy corpse, then it might be worth a gander once it actually has stores. If you’ve already been to Beijing and seen all that stuff, then it give it a pass, in the same way that you’d pass on competing in a log cutting competition that used logs of poop instead of lumber.

A week ago, my friend and I decided that we’d had enough of the perpetual routine of visiting the same three bars in Qingdao. In order to break the cycle we decided suddenly Saturday afternoon to head to the train station and jump on the next train to Weifang. Why Weifang? It was close, only 2 hours away on the slow train and it was big with a population of 8 million people. There were no westerners there or so we heard, so it would be different from the norm in Qingdao.

Note to self: do not go to Sifang Station expecting to get same day train tickets. On arrival the lines were lengthy, stretching out of the ticket area. My friend and I both split into different lines to hedge our bets. My line was moving along quickly, a little too quickly. People were organized and straight, a little too organized and straight. A few people were cutting in line, a little too few people. And just then as I had almost reached the window, the ticket bitch decides to stop working, leaving the 50 or so people left in my line stranded to join the 200 people waiting in the other two lines. After about another hour of waiting, and watching tons of people cut in line, my friend and I secured tickets to Weifang for about an hour later. When we finally got on the train, we got to our seats only to find them occupied by an army guy and his girlfriend, luckily a train conductor was coming through saw our situation, and instead of saying anything to the army guy, he kicked two other random guys out of the seats right next, so that we could sit there. Turns out they were scamming too.

We arrived at Weifang well after dark, and we were too tired to wander around in the dark to find a decent place to eat, so we settled on the restaurant in the hotel. Turns out the place was original enough to have its own brewpub which is a rare thing in China, yet alone in the middle of nowhere Shandong province. Entertainment in this city consists entirely of KTV bars and outdoor eateries, not unlike any other city on the Mainland. Luckily for those of you who like to party like Amy Winehouse, but can’t sing like her, there’s a few other venues to check out. The first place we went to was Boys and Girls, definitely a Chinese bar, but still better than KTV. To enjoy yourself at one of these types of bars, you really have to get the bottle service and go with a bunch of friends. It wasn’t particularly expensive, think about $50-70 a bottle. The music ranges from bearable to stick a Ginsu knife in my ear to make it stop. The bar had two main rooms, one had a large circular stage where they were doing games ang give aways. Most people were in this room, and I’d say it was a ratio of about 15 guys to one girl. There was also a group of guys that started hitting on us which was our cue to get the hell out of dodge. We moved on to the second room where there was a bar in the middle that bar tenders were dancing on a la Coyote Ugly. The ugly part was there were some transvestites who got up on the stage to do whatever the hell it was they were trying to do. Not particularly interested in guys dressed in short shorts, tank tops and eye make ups flailing their limbs about wildly to 90’s dance music, we decided to move along. Angel Kiss bar was our other destination and despite its cheesy name, it’s the most western bar in the city. They were playing decent hip hop when we were there, but as it was MP3 styles, and we were the only real customers in the joint, so you could probably get them to throw on whatever blows your hair back. Drink prices were reasonable and they served proper drinks and not just bottles, my final analysis gives em 4 out of 5 bottles of Qingdao beer.

The next day we decided to peruse the city. We saw only one kite in flight, and I swear the guy was being paid to do it, just so that the city wouldn’t look stupid being the kite capital of China without any in the air. The city is very flat and in grid formation, so lots of scooters and bikes, not so many cars, but they did drive in a more hap hazard fashion then the bastion of civility that is Qingdao. Lots of kite shops if that’s your thing. Despite the kites and whatever else Weifang is well known for, there was one distinguishing feature I will remember it for. My friend and I were walking down the avenues, when I spotted this interesting little shop:

An entire shop devoted to nothing but TP! Great. I just had to take a snapshot while the proprietors thought I must have had some kind of mental disorder or disgusting fetish. That shop alone pretty much made my day. We kept walking, and what did we come across? Not one, not two, not ten, but a whole damn block of toilet paper stores! It was like a middle school janitor’s fantasyland. WTF was going on here? My immediate impression was to question the quality of the food I had eaten in Weifang and suspect my stomach would soon be under duress. Why else would you need an entire district devoted to the sale of stuff to wipe your bum with? Stores in China tend to cluster together with each other, but usually they sell more than countless identical rolls of TP. How does one decide which store to shop at for toilet paper? Roll dice? Don’t answer that. We soldiered on and soon the day was done, my sphincter had not ruptured and thankfully we were on the rocket train back to Qingdao, so if anything were to happen, I would soon be in the safe confines of my apartment with only my roommate to hear the pain. We made it back without incident and no problems from the food. I give Weifang a recommend rating for two types of people: one, for those who like to fly kites, and two, for those who like to fly toilet paper over their neighbor’s yard on devil’s night.

Instead of writing a guide, Kevin has already done a much better job over at his blog, so if you want to slide by Weifang, be sure to look at it for where to go and what to do.

This weekend I made a quick jaunt up to Tianjin (or Tientsin for you British Imperial types) with friends for a mission with two primary objectives. This first objective was to examine a factory and make sure that the products they made didn’t spontaneously combust after one use; the second was to check out the Tianjin International Bicycle Expo.

It started when I woke at an ungodly 5:45 in the morning to meet my friends in order to catch the 7:53am train to Tianjin. We chose to travel on the fast train from Qingdao to Tianjin. Travel time was estimated to be about 5 hours. Thanks to my friend’s array of hookups and powerful guanxi unknown to the average expat, we bamboozled our way into the first class car. Then the fun began. Our breakfast consisted of horrible yet enlightening Brut champagne at 8:30am sharp. This was followed by petit dejune consisting of Yanjing beer at 9:00am through till 10am. Finally there was a brunch of yet more Yangjing beer from 10 onwards.

Here’s the damage:

You’d think that we would be pretty ruined by the time we arrived, but thanks to Yanjing’s miserly alcohol content at 2.8%, the only thing that was ruined was my desire to drink more Yangjing. When we arrived the air was like a combination of WW1 trenches and Mexican bean convention.

After checking into the hotel, and more beers, we made our way to the bike show. It was free to get in, which although nice, but should’ve rang alarm bells. The show was indeed lame but not without its highlights:

Front wheel drive bike!

Heart Wheels!

They had this old-school bike showcase, quite ironic as they were probably plucked fresh off the streets of Tianjin, cause I didn’t see anyone outside riding anything that looked built after the Cultural Revolution.

The bike made of bamboo (according to my friend these are not that rare)

The bike that will eat your nuts if you crash it.

Someone who’s nuts still haven’t been eaten decided to modernize that design.

This is an advertisement for bicycle seats, it’s double awesome because both the name and what it makes you think of. (hint: not bicycle seats)

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. (truck pic from stewsnews)

After the Bike Show closed and the security guards literally screamed at everyone to get out (at 4:30pm I might add), we decided to go on a mission for food, and then rest to prepare for our only night in the big T. We started off on Tianjin’s bar street. I’m not sure if this place actually has a name other than that, but if so, it doesn’t deserve one. Consisting mostly of KTV’s, and Chinese bars, we settled into a bar called Cooter’s. This place had a sign outside that claimed to be American owned and operated, and with rock emanating from the speakers we figured it was worth a shot. American owned and operated turned out to mean that there was an American guy who wandered behind the bar and poured a drink for himself before leaving to another bar, and the owner being the Chinese wife of some guy who lived in the states. Since we were the only customers in the place at about 10pm on a Saturday night, I asked one of the bar maids what time it normally got busy. Her failed attempt to save face was, she didn’t know cause it changed every night, and there were lots of people there the night before, maybe they were too tired to come out again. Right. Anyways, the bar was as lively as a cemetery, but the food was good, the drinks were priced ok, and the music stayed a consistent mix of classic and alternative rock. There was also soccer on the TV which helped assuage my friends from across the pond. I suppose it would be a decent dive to go if you’re stuck in Tianjin for the night and you want to escape from the hotel bar. When the American guy returned for more booze, we got him to tell us where in this city of 10 million on a Saturday might have some life (or people without penises). He directed us to two places, Alibaba, and Si Tong.

After the soccer game was over, we went to check out Alibaba. Damn well hidden, and there’s no real sign or people/taxis loitering outside, but my spider senses lead us in. The door was a wormhole to another dimension. A dimension filled with dirty hippies. Hippy students, but these days those two things are one and the same. I made one of my friends feel my rage in foosball, and we decided that instead of discussing Trotsky or Marx, we would rather be staring at boobs. It was time to try Sitong.

On arrival at about 1:30, the place was half full, they were playing hip-hop and I was instantly reminded of Jazz Club in Qingdao. Then the Filipino cover band came on. Ok, let me make this clear, I have no problem with cover bands, and I have no problem with Filipino people. But what I don’t understand is why every freaking band in this country is both. Also, why do they all play the same damn set list? Is there some high school course in the Philippines that teaches how to be a cover band as basic life skills? I understand that many Pilipino people are musically talented, but why the hell do they only do other people’s shit songs? Why can’t they try to make some original tunes? It would sure sound a hell of a lot better than the broken revisions of Hotel California, and the crap-hop of yesteryear. So I blocked them out, and tried to make a fool of myself with some Swedish girl, but realized that I was far too sober to do my awesome pick-up line that I was a three-legged traveling banana salesman from Madagascar.

The next day I was on my primary mission to the factory in the small city of Hebei. I was picked up in a black Audi A6, so that was good news. We had some trouble getting out of Tianjin because some clever engineer decided to rebuild all the roads at the same time. The poor driver who wasn’t from Tianjin was following his GPS screen and it kept taking us down these streets that would literally stop at a giant hole in the ground with a bunch of construction workers scrambling around as we honked at them for no apparent reason. I didn’t really budget enough time for the excursion, because the train out of Tianjin was at 4:50pm, and upon telling this to the salesman who was accompanying me, I could see the beads of sweat form on his brow and his voice start to shake. He suggested that Hebei was a nice place to spend the night. I reassured him by saying that I didn’t care if I missed the train, but I would definitely like to try to get back on time.

I arrived at the factory, had an amazing lunch that consisted of great Chinese food, more than a few beers and some wine as is typical of Chinese business lunches. We then did a quick tour, talked some business smack and we we’re on our way back to Tianjin. The ride is about 1.5 hours without traffic. Unfortunately when we got to the highway, it was closed because cause some douchebag Beijing politician was using it. Apparently this happens with regular intervals up in the Beijing highway system, so I have even more reason to never live there. Once we actually got on the highway, the driver told us that even if we were a plane we wouldn’t make it, but then he tried to prove it by driving an average of 180km/h the whole way back. Arriving downtown we got a cab as my salesman/guide said that a cab driver would know the best way to get to the train station. After almost running down a few cyclists, senior pedestrians and some amputees, we made it to the station. Just as I got to the gates where I could see the platform, I got the call. “It’s too late”, my friend told me. The train had just pulled out of the station. I was off by about 2 minutes. It’s strange how history repeats itself. With this epic fail, we “flew” to the airport, where I got a ticket to Qingdao, for the last flight out of the potato shack that is Tianjin International Airport.

After a mind numbing 3 hours of waiting, the flight was both on time and short, and I made it back to Qingdao so that I could get to work, and by get to work, I mean sleep for 12 hours.

For those that have never been to Tianjin, here’s the best advice you will ever get, don’t go. Take Beijing, subtract all cultural institutions, nightlife and dining, add a sprinkling of falling apart British architecture held over from the treaty days, and double the traffic and pollution. The only redeeming feature I could get from it is that the people speak a clear dialect of mandarin that isn’t difficult to understand for someone who’s Chinese is still junk. Everything is sprawled out, there is no downtown. When we were looking for a restaurant in one of the newly built up areas, it went something like this: Pizza Hut, McDonalds, KFC, repeat X number of times till you succumb to the grease gods. One of the best comments made on the trip was when we saw a Maserati parked outside of a KTV. One of my friends aptly remarked “If you had all that money to buy a Maserati, wtf are you still doing in Tianjin?”.

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.

Just this past week I made another random journey with a friend to the only beach in the Qingdao area that I haven’t yet been to. This beach was at the entrance to Laoshan Mountain. My friend called me up out of nowhere and figured that despite the encroaching smog, it would be a good day to check the beach. Supposedly this was the nicest beach in the Area, and I had nothing better to do so I agreed to go. After spending half an hour trying to figure out which bus would take us to this mythical beach, we hopped on the mighty 304 and for 70 cents and an hour of our time, we arrived at Laoshan Beach.

What can I say about this place? Well it definitely is the nicest beach in Qingdao, because it’s so far away, it gets very few visitors, and because it’s massive, it seems like no one is there. It’s also nestled between a bunch of mountains, so the views are nice. We spent most of the day just wandering around and observing the interesting features.

One of the first things I noticed when we stepped foot on the sand were these little holes everywhere. I wondered aloud as to what they might be and bent over one to examine it. Just then, out popped a mini crab like creature that began running around. I got some snaps of the little devil and then chased him back to his hole.

The beach had crabs. That’s fine I suppose. We dealt with it by staying closer to the water where the amphibious crabs preferred to avoid not because they didn’t like the water, but because they were having a food coma after devouring all the chinese people who once populated the beach.

My friend and I continued to walk and debate the nature of space time relativaty and string theory, when we came upon this little gem, that I nearly stepped on.

The beach was now tainted. I’d seen worse I figured, and once again my friend and I jumped back into the arguments and implications of the Second Treatise melding with the State of Nations, when we happened to find this poor fellow.

We weren’t sure what it was at first. I thought it was a dog’s corpse but I was secretly hoping for sentience. It turned out to be a washed up jellyfish. From this point, surely things couldn’t get any stranger, yet of course, they did. Out of nowhere, this gentleman appeared, and decided that he was going to have Qingdao Jello™ for dessert.

Before he made off with McBlobicus, I felt it necessary to feel up our floundered friend.

And for no particular reason, here’s a picture of someone’s shoes with a blubbery mess.

Despite all these minor afflictions, the beach was still really nice, in a nice setting, and there was no one there. Not even those creepy guys…however I did manage to find our ambiguously amicable amigos:

Sunday I was invited by my landlord to go see Laoshan Park, which is this large park type tourist trap by the famous Laoshan Mountain about an hour and then some outside of Qingdao. Of course in preparation for the day, I had to get tanked the night before so that I would be in a hangover induced daze to protect me from any unpleasantness foisted upon me during what would be a long ass day. Of course my luck that the one day I’d being going hiking, would turn out to be the hottest day of the year, hitting a corn-on-the-cob-flavored ice-cream melting 36 degrees.

I met my landlord and her husband, both of whom are university professors, at the gates of hell my complex at 2pm. They arrived in this beast of a minivan, and we proceeded to pick up some of their professor buddies, their kid, and this one girl student who could speak moderate English to come along for the journey. I specifically requested someone who could speak English and Chinese come along for the ride, because I knew my Chinese was not yet up to the task of dealing with a full day of immersion. Of course here in Shandong, someone who can speak English is just someone who can speak moderately better than I can speak Chinese, but comes armed with one of those little translation computer gizmos in a belt holster, ready to gun down any miscommunication.

The ride to Laoshan was shorter than I expected, but was made longer by the continuous verbal Chinese examination by every person in the van. Anything that I happened to lay my eyes on became a new word for me to learn. This would become a theme throughout the day. I appreciated the fact that they were just trying to help me out, and I assumed it was in their nature being professors and all.

The comedy started when we got to the park. We passed through the gates, and of course this being a Sunday, and a tourist area, there was a traffic jam to get in. Once we were on our jolly way towards the parking lots, I could see the traffic jam was being caused by the fact that the road was one lane in sections, yet there were two lanes of giant tourist bus traffic. The concept of you go, then I go, doesn’t apply here. It’s more like: squeeze as close as you can get to the cliff and whoever is almost falling off goes. Then we get to this one point where we’re stuck in traffic on a steep incline. I believe the hamsters running around in the wheels under the hood of the van hadn’t had enough to eat today, because it kept stalling while trying to start on the hill. The solution was simply that we all get out and push as the pathetic vehicle lurched forward, very much to the amusement of the passengers in the giant buses.

We finally get to the parking lot, and everyone gets ready. My hosts offer me an array of things I don’t need, ranging from a walking stick which I first accept, to some weird polka dot leg warmers that are really for my arms to protect me from the sun, which I politely decline. Our hike begins as we made our way through the gauntlet of shops of hawkers selling the same shit in every stall, which seems to go on for about 20 minutes. This is how it is at every place that draws tourists throughout the country.

Once we get to the actual trail, the number of people thins out to an acceptable level and we spend several hours walking around the various features of the mountains. At every decent photo site, I am transformed into Mickey Mouse at Disneyland as I’m forced to pose in 700 pictures in every combination of people from our party. Later in the afternoon we got to some snack place where we ate a bunch of strange things that normally I wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. Garlic and bean jelly salad, sticky rice triangles and eggs that had been boiled in a broth that imbued them with magical powers. These were washed down with what everyone wants after hours of hiking in ass sweat forming heat; hot bitter green tea. Later on we finally got back to the jalopy and went for some traditional dinner at some random guy’s house in the country. All the food was from the local area, and was surprisingly delicious. The feast consisted mainly of mountain vegetables, which were quite flavorful as opposed to some of the bland junk that I’ve had to cope with.

The day was long, especially because it was mostly in Chinese, and a lot of new words that I won’t be remembering. My hosts really went out of their way to make sure I had a good time so I really appreciated that. Laoshan is a nice little day escape from Qingdao for those who haven’t been. But it’s a one-time deal. According to one of my friends, I missed the side with all the rice paddies and stuff on it that’s supposedly neat. I don’t care. It costs like 80 kuai entrance, plus probably 100 to get there. Although the area is nice, a lot of the features inside the hiking area are man made, including the water features. So just like a Playboy model, it looked good on the outside, but who the hell reads Playboy anymore? I want my nature natural thank you very much.

Pictures on the clickthrough

Yes that is a corn on the cob ice cream bar. Yes it did taste like a goat’s testicles (and thats salty with a butter flavor for those of you who really had to know).

The Haier Homos have manifested themselves again! And it look’s like one of them just had a Cleveland steamer!

There seems to be a contrast in the colour of the rocks there. I wonder why?

Fake waterfall.

Aye! She’s a fine vessle indeed

This weekend, for no reason in particular, I thought it would be interesting to meet some people I had never met, in a city I’ve never been to, all to wind up doing something I’ve painfully experienced oh so many times before.

I had met a friend through the powers of the Internet, and set forth to see her in a non-digital manner. She had informed me that her Canadian friend had a bar in Huangdao, across the bay from Qingdao. To get there I needed to sail on the majestic Qingdao-Xue Shi Dao ferry. We had originally planned to meet at 6:30 at Huangdao’s Jusco.

Thanks to my planning skills, or lack thereof, I managed to make it to the ferry station just as the boat I needed to get on was cruising away. I of course didn’t know this, because I had purchased tickets to go to another city. I figured because I was to meet my friend in Huangdao, that’s the ferry I should take. I was wrong. The Huangdao ferry actually goes someplace else, possibly North Korea. The ferry I needed to take was the one that went to the Xue Shi Dao station in Huangdao, farther away from Korea. After exchanging my ticket, and watching the mad rush of people trying to jump onto the Huangdao ferry as it was sailing away, I got in line for the next XueShiDao ferry. I’m not exactly sure why I did this, or really, why anyone did. I would have been better off just sitting down, because as soon as the line started to move, it quickly dissolved into a giant blob of humanity trying to crush it’s way through the turnstiles to get aboard the boat. Once I got on the vessel, and peeled off some of the Chinese people from my shoes, it was apparent that the whole mess had been futile, there were plenty of seats, and the boat wasn’t going anywhere for another 20 minutes.

Upon meeting my friend at Pizza Hut, I met up with some of her friends; we enjoyed some good by Chinese standards pizza before making our way to the bar/club/disco. The bar was called Revolution, had nice interior, and it was apparently brand new (Canadian operated of course). Salsa was the soundtrack of the night, and I proceeded to enjoy 15RMB Coronas and meet a number of people while forgetting their names to before they had finished telling me them. Things were going well, as I don’t mind salsa music, and I definitely don’t mind two-dollar coronas. However my new friend’s friends decided to leave quite early and after a while my friend suggested we go check out what else Huangdao had to offer.

As we were leaving the club, I noticed a number of interesting looking establishments. These places had massive flashing neon signs, typical of anywhere you go in Asia, yet were all on seedy backstreets. The most peculiar thing about them, was that despite their signage that could capture the attention of a blind man, they had no windows, and their doors were solid metal gate like entrances with small buzzers near by. It was then when I noticed that the luminescent signs were not in Chinese, but in Japanese. I could only imagine that what was going on inside of those quality looking places was not two obese naked men in underwear wrestling each other in the sand. Well I hoped to God it wasn’t.

After a short walk, we wound up at a Chinese disco. From excessive previous experience, I knew Chinese discos should be avoided at all costs. Picture a dark cave, filled with smoke, drunken Chinese people, and extremely loud pop or techno music. The bad part is that they spill beer at rate that makes the Exxon Valdez look like small misunderstanding. I’ll admit the music is rough too. Think of what was popular back in 1993-5. Think night at the Roxbury. Now think faster tempo, and Chinese people who stole their clothes the set of Saved by the Bell flailing about wildly. I know, I know, your brain can’t think anymore, it just shriveled up and died. But who was I to say no to my date, even with those shady Japanese clubs looking mighty good at this point.

The people in the club love to chug beers. I’m not sure why, because that’s the same as Paris Hilton having an infatuation with quantum physics. I commented to my friend about this, and of course she egged me on to challenge someone else. This of course, is what I wanted, and what better way to impress a girl than by showing her the ultimate measure of a man’s worth, the speed at which he can consume a beer. It took a little while to find someone who wasn’t so drunk that they would drop the bottle on their face while chugging, but I found my man. Now I must admit, I am not a speed drinker. I’m much more Terry Fox, than Ben Johnson. In fact, I wouldn’t be able to make the B-Team in the boat races back in school if the future of ale depended on it. In light of this, I was confident my opponent wouldn’t best me. We ganbei’d and I gorged my beer as if I had successfully used a fake ID for the first time. I slammed down the bottle. I figure I must have finished it in about 10 seconds. My opponent was still going. Sometime later, he was still going. After about a good minute or more, he finally finished and high five’d me. Good sportsmanship indeed, for then he congratulated me with a beer…suddenly it dawned on me; I may have found my place in these Chinese discos!