Qingdao Weekend

Sorry for the delay in posting about this. The semester is coming to an end in the next 2-3 weeks so we've been busy with schoolwork.

Thursday, May 28 was a public holiday in China for the Dragon Boat Festival and since Megan and I do not have class on Wednesday (until recently, my new class is on Wednesday afternoon), we decided to take Friday off and have a long weekend vacation. We had been planning for weeks to travel to Sanya, a popular beach destination in Hainan Province, with our friends and colleagues Kerstan and Karen but in the end we decided the cost of the flights were more than we wanted to pay (we got flights to Singapore this summer for even cheaper! Thank you Tiger Airways!). Instead, we decided to make the short trip to Qingdao and get to know the city that we technically live in.

Armed with our Lonely Planet China guide and the excitement for a long weekend, we headed into town on Wednesday morning. Naturally, our first stop was our hotel, the Beach Castle Hotel, which was some sort of repurposed old German colonial building. The rooms were great and the location was perfect, right on the water in the old part of the town.

The sign right next to our hotel, how welcoming!

Right inside the main gate, you can see the prison to the right (which we think might also have rooms now) along with the main part of the hotel to the left.

Megan standing outside of the lovely Beach Castle Hotel

Wednesday afternoon was spent wandering along the coast of Qingdao, through pleasant parks and to the nearby beach: Qingdao No. 1 Bathing Beach (not because it is the best, just because there are 6, and who needs names anyway?). We were amused to see the beach attire reversed by gender from what we're used to in the States. The men all wore Speedoes, while the women, terrified by the prospect of a tan, were fully clothed or even layered. In China, as a status symbol of sorts, women try to stay as pale as possible. Physical laborers and peasants are tan because they spend their days working outside in the summer heat, so being tan has the connotation of being poor. I suspect that I am thought to be one of the wealthiest men in China thanks to my blindingly white complexion.

One of the parks we stumbled upon while walking along the ocean.

Part of the oceanside path near the No. 1 Bathing Beach

No. 1 Bathing Beach

On Wednesday night we went searching for a restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet, but we fortunately ventured a little further and stumbled upon an even better dinner spot. We wandered through some alleys that, for those who are familiar with Shanghai, reminded us of a cross between the Xin Tian Di and Tiakang Lu areas. Like Xin Tian Di, the area consisted of old buildings that had been renovated and updated into a pleasant walking area. Like Taikang Lu, the alleys weren't as polished as Xin Tian Di and the area wasn't as blatently marketed towards foriegners. We found a great restaurant that overlooked a courtyard where performers played some traditional Chinese instruments, some that I had never seen before. It turned out to be a very pleasant first evening.

This area was quite hidden, we were lucky enough to see this little alleyway from the main street and decided that alleys aren't nearly as creepy in China as they are in the states, so we ventured in.  It was a fortunate find!

There were tons of these statues all over this area, I think this guy was cooking some 串 (the kabob-line things that are all over the streets here).  A little further up was a statue of a man smoking opium along with a few guys playing mahjong.

This was our view of the courtyard and performers from our seats in the restaurant.  There were hardly any people there when we arrived, but by the time we left it was packed.

Thursday morning we set out again full of optimisim, but our mood quickly soured when we arrived at McDonald's for breakfast at 9:45 am only to find that breakfast was no longer being served. The woman at the counter didn't even look apologetic. We ended up settling for coffee.

So, with empty stomachs and a caffine buzz, we headed out to see some of the sights. We opted to check out Xiao Qingdao (小青岛), or Little Qingdao, first. Xiao Qingdao is a pennisula that juts into the bay in Qingdao and has a nice park on it, along with a light tower. We had to pay 15 RMB to get into the park, which was well worth it to get away from the holiday crowds. The park was very green and provided an escape from the noise and bustle of the city. Due to the relative isolation of the park, we decided to relax and sun bathe for a while instead of heading to the beach, which was overrun with Chinese vacationers. Despite choosing a less busy spot, we still got numerous looks from bypassers who couldn't believe that we were, GASP, exposing our skin to direct sunlight!

On our way out to 小青岛

A little closer view of 小青岛 with the real 青岛 in the background.

There are all these awesome old fishing boats that hang out just off the coast.

Jordan at the edge of the peninsula.  

There was a pleasant, uncrowded path that went all the way around the little peninsula.  Every side of 小青岛 had a different and pleasant view, so the walk was quite nice.

The lighthouse in the middle of the peninsula.

There are fishermen on all sides of the peninsula, and they must be quite nimble because Jordan and I tried to walk out a little further to get a better picture, but quickly realized our lives could be jeopardized if we tried to walk too far out on the rocks.

This is near where we sat out.

After a few hours in the sun we started to feel drained, but fortunately on the way back to the hotel we encountered our first opportunity to have beer in a bag. I had heard tell of this wonderful Qingdao phenomenon, so we were glad to try it out. For a measley 5 RMB we bought a massive amount of Tsingtao draft beer from a friendly neighborhood lady with a keg. My initial concern was with how to drink it, but then the lady produced a few straws and we were good to go.

The pijiu (啤酒, beer) break gave us ample enthusiasm to continue our sightseeing. We stopped by both the old German Catholic and Protestant Chruches. We were unable to get inside the Catholic church, but it was an impressive structure nonetheless. Interestingly, in the courtyard in front of the church we counted 7 sets of brides and grooms getting wedding photos taken. It did not appear that any were actually on their wedding day, but rather getting photos taken before the big event to put on large banners at the wedding reception (an opportunity Megan and I missed).

The Protestant Church was also an interesting piece of architecture from the outside, but the Lonely Planet guide was accurate in its description of the interior of the church as "Lutheran". The sanctuary was extremely plain, but I was glad to see that there appeared to be a few locals sitting in some of the pews praying. The most interesting part of the Protestant church was the bell tower, which still had the old bells and clock built by the Germans in 1908.

Thursday night we had a craving for Western food so we searched the internet for good restaurant and settled on Cassani, an Italian restaurant. It was a great choice. The ambiance, food, and service were all great (I had lasagna YUM!). While the dinner was quite a splurge when compared to our meager salaries, we ended up getting a ton of food, including cheesecake, gelato, and a bottle of wine for only US$60. A meal of equal quality in a similar restaurant in the States would easily be double.

Friday we started the day checking out the old German governor's mansion, which was one of the highlights of the trip for me. The mansion had been a vacation spot for Mao in 1957, and many other notable Chinese leaders stayed there with him. The rooms had apparently remained as they were when Mao stayed there, so it was a neat piece of history. The best part, though, was the building itself. A very cool and huge old German building.

Friday afternoon was finally time for us to check out the famous Tsingtao Brewery tour. We arrived on Qingdao Beer Street around 1 pm so we decided to eat at a seafood restaurant across from the brewery. The "menu" was a bunch of tubs filled with water and various ocean creatures. As we were in Qingdao, we had to get the Qingdao specialty gao la, or clams. We also got some sort of prawn/crab hybrid. The choices were great and we enjoyed the food along with some fresh Tsingtao beer that made the trip across the street from the brewery.

The brew tour itself was great. Tsingtao brewery has quite an interesting history, having been established by the Germans and later controlled by the Japanese, the KMT, the Communist Party (you would be amazed by the progress made at the brewery during the glorious 9th 5 Year Plan!), and finally as a publicly traded company. The "Drunken House" was also a highlight, meant to imitate the feeling of drunkenness. The room was actually just very slanted in one direction so you were fighting gravity while walking though. All in all, the Tsingtao Brewery seemed to be a Chinese version of the Heineken Brewery I visited a few years ago in Amsterdam. That is to say: large, interesting, and everything slightly lower quality (except for the beer, which I find quite comparable to Heineken).

We wrapped up our weekend staying at the Intercontinental Hotel, which was AWESOME. We had seen our share of the sights and we're only a few hours away if we ever want to see more, so we took advantage of staying in the nice hotel by laying by the indoor pool and watching movies on an actual TV for once as we only watch movies on our tiny laptop screen here. It was awesome. While looking for a place for dinner on Saturday night we stumbled into some sort of fundraising event for the Qingdao Expat Community that was being held in one of the hotel restaurants. We just thought we were paying for a buffet dinner, but it turned out we were buying tickets to this event (if we were Chinese we probably wouldn't have been able to buy the tickets). The buffet was awesome, they had a GREAT Filipino band (as Filipino bands tend to be), and we got a lot of nice smiles from other westerners. I felt like I was at some event at TAC or the American Club in Singapore. What luck!

We definitely felt like VIP when we turned on the TV at the Intercontinental and found this!  Our daily lives are not very luxurious here, so every little thing excites us!

We forgot beds this soft existed.

Spying on Jordan from the bathroom- only super nice hotels give you that luxury.

Our weekend concluded with a church service (also in the Intercontinental) on Sunday morning for the Qingdao International Christian Fellowship. The community was great and there were a few hundred people in the congregation. The music and the preaching weren't the best I've heard, but effort is what counts and the feeling of being in a church service again was great. We will be sure to attend again if we in the area on a Sunday again.

I'm having trouble uploading photos so for now check out this album on Facebook (you don't need a Facebook account to view them). Hopefully I'll be able to add photos to this later.