Vacation III--Qingdao

In our hotel room in Taian, Rory set the alarm clock for 4:00 am, hoping to get to the bus station early enough to get us tickets for our Qingdao bus (that we thought left at 6:00). I started packing up our stuff. Fifteen minutes later Rory was back--"The bus station's not open yet." So we went back to sleep until 5:00, when our alarm went off again. I picked up where I had left off, packing-wise, and Rory ran back across the street to try again. Fifteen minutes later, he was back. The station still wasn't open. So we were ready to go, but we didn't have tickets, and we didn't know what time the bus station was going to open. At 6:00 he ran back across the street. Fifteen minutes later he was back--"got the tickets. Let's go." Evidently the voyage from Taian to Qingdao is a pretty popular one, so there are buses that depart pretty much as soon as they fill up. We were some of the first people on the bus, so that was good, and it was nice to know that we didn't have to worry about anything for the next 4 to 5 hours. After about an hour of waiting for other folks to board, we actually departed.

As we were en route to Qingdao, we got to really experience how hellish it is to be on the road during a major Chinese holiday. If I thought Chinese people were impatient and sneaky in line for the bathroom, they were even more so on the road. Rory and I had fallen asleep pretty much immediately on the bus, but we both woke up to standstill traffic. In the United States, when you are in bumper-to-bumper, standstill traffic, there are a number of things that go through your head: the road is just really busy/it's a bad time of the day, there's been an accident, or there is construction being done on the road. In any one of these three situations, it (usually) doesn't occur to an American to swerve over to the shoulder of the road to take a shortcut--in fact, you will be pulled over if you're caught. And if there is an accident or some sort of construction, emergency and work vehicles rely on the shoulder, not impatient vacationers. But we saw people driving on the side--passing on the right or wherever there was enough room to sneak a car through--like it was nobody's business. It was really frustrating to watch, and it made me understand more why there is a sterotype (in the United States) that Asians are really bad drivers.

Luckily for us, though, the trip to Qingdao was significantly shorter than we thought it would be, and we pulled into the bus station ready to get our bearings and to relax. We noticed that we didn't seem like we were in the heart of downtown. We bought a Chinese map and found the coast, where there was a lot of activity/civilization. We tried to flag down a couple of taxis, but both times, the drivers refused to go to where we pointed on the map. We were getting progressively more frustrated, when a friendly Chinese man came up and said (in English): "Can I help you with something?" We were so relieved.

He told us that his name was Jim, that he was from Weihai, and that he was studying at Qingdao University. He also confessed that he didn't really know his way around Qingdao. But he was very helpful nonetheless. He pointed to the bus station on the map--it was way the hell away from anything! He said it would be hard to find a taxi to take us into town (and it would be expensive), but he would find out which bus we should take. He hopped on a couple of different waiting buses to talk to the drivers, and we figured it out. We crossed the street and waited. And waited. And waited. He checked with another bus driver, and then told us that we were in the right spot; the bus would show up any minute. While we were waiting some more he told us that his dream was to meet foreigners and to speak English to them. He was really earnest and friendly. He also asked how much money we made, which didn't offend us at all. We told him how much we make a month, and his eyes got very big; he explained that after he graduates from university, he will be lucky to make 1,000 rmb ($131) a month. I felt very spoiled.

I felt even more spoiled when a taxi pulled up next to us, and the cabbie said he'd take us to the center of the city. As Jim explained that the bus was cheap but we should look out for people trying to steal our stuff, we opted to take the cab. And we felt really bad, simply because taking a taxi whenever it's convenient was not and is not an option for Jim; and here we were, in his country, getting paid a lot more, going on a lavish vacation with the intention of buying a guitar. We took the taxi anyway; we exchanged phone numbers, Jim told the cabbie where to go, and he negotiated a rate. Away we went.

As we got closer to the city part of Qingdao, it became more and more like I had envisioned it in my head. Enormous buildings, people (9 million of them, in fact), cars, double decker buses, beautiful parks, all of it. The cabbie turned on to a really busy street, teeming with Chinese folks who looked like they were about our age. Jim had done a good job. We asked where a cheap hotel was, and the cabbie pointed up and down the street on which we were stopped. We were certain it would be a piece of cake to find a place--we hoped so anyway, as we were carrying all of the stuff we had thus far accumulated on vacation, Rory's backpack alone filled with the bulk of the stuff. We walked around for about fifteen minutes, popping in and out of little places that either weren't hotels or didn't have a room available. We were at the "fifteen more minutes of this and I'm going to have to take a breather" point when Rory noticed a woman just sitting at a desk inside a sort of empty room. He popped in and asked if it was a hotel. It was. We were sold.

We only paid for one night, thinking that we might search for a cheaper place the next day, but we were so relieved to have a place to just store our stuff and wash our faces. The ladies working were really friendly, and though they didn't have the super cheap room we were hoping for, they did show us up to ours--it was the nicest room of the trip. We had two separate beds, but that was okay, because there was actually a significant amount of water pressure in the shower. And there was a picture of a naked Chinese lady right at eye level if sitting on the toilet. She was actually painted into the tile, not taped or adhered to the wall or anything. Funny stuff.

We set our stuff down and went to find some food and drink. It was only 3:30, but we hadn't eaten all day, and we were ready to explore. As we were walking past all the different stores and boutiques, we saw a picture of a giant steak dinner on the outside wall of a restaurant. Sold! We walked in, and after having some difficulty explaining that we wanted a giant plate of meat, Rory walked outside with the waitress and pointed to the wall. Turns out they didn't actually have that item. Oh well--they had pitchers of beer. From kegs. We'd sort of forgotten what kegs and pitchers looked like, because we hadn't really seen them anywhere in Weihai (now we do because it's warm). We ordered an entire fish (we learned how much we loved it in Qufu), some chow mein, some tomato beef soup and some rice. It was amazing. We ate so much! We drank a fair amount of beer, too--humoring some college-age kids with our across-the-room "cheers"-- and the fact that the beer was sort of cold was really nice. We are lucky that we started drinking room temperature beer (Chinese-style) while it was still February and really cold in Weihai. So we've sort of been eased into the whole experience--it's not as hard as I thought it would be, considering the fact that we're beer lovers.

We left the restaurant and wandered around, asking younger folks where the guitar stores were--we had heard there were guitar shops everywhere, yet we still turned up a lot of "I don't know"s and "Nowhere around here"s. We ended up at a really big musical instrument store, but it was closed, and just from peering through the windows, it didn't look promising. We wandered around for a couple more hours, visiting the Super Wal-Mart we had discovered that was fairly close to our hotel, marvelling (still) at all the people. It made us re-hungry, so we decided to stop by (what we thought was) a shabu-shabu place similar to one we had experienced in Korea. They had a pretty nice special advertised on the sign outside--a bunch of food for only ¥19--but once again, we discovered that this option didn't really exist. It also wasn't really shabu shabu--it was just regular ol' hotpot--but we got our own, individual pots in front of us, so that was cool.

What was not cool was the temperature of the restaurant. I'm not talking about the food temperature; I'm talking about a hot-ass restaurant, where we were stuffed on the second floor, and the windows didn't open. And someone was wearing makeup, so it was a bad scene. I looked like I had melted. But the food was really good. As we were leaving and walking around more, we got a phone call from Jim. He wanted to show us around Qingdao the following morning. We thought it would be a good opportunity to not only see the "hot spots", but also to gain insight as to where a guitar store (or street) might be.

We woke up pretty early the next day, paid for two more nights in our hotel and hoppped in a taxi to meet Jim, who texted us his location in Chinese. The taxi took off and stopped 15 minutes later in front of a gate at Qingdao University. We waited and waited, and finally we sent Jim a message asking where he was. He wanted to know where we were--the cabbie took us to the wrong spot! So after a little more walking (and showing Jim's messages to strangers), we were finally able to find a different gate--the right gate--where Jim and a friend would meet us. While waiting, I annihilated a Snickers--they're hot commodities over here--my eyes light up every time I see one. It's not like I would eat snickers all the time in the US, but something about the Chinese version of chocolate makes me appreciate US candy more. Anyway... Jim showed up with his friend John in tow. John didn't speak much English, but he understood a lot of it, and he was really friendly. I think he was just intimidated being around Jim and us at the same time.

We walked over to a little grove area and talked about where we would go. We hopped on a double decker bus (my first time!) and went to the big red sculpture that had long been the desktop picture on our computer back in CoMO. It was at a coastal park in Wu Si square, an area full of tourists--most of them Chinese--their enthusiasm for this particular spot bolstered by the fact that the upcoming sailing portion of the Olympics will be held there. There were Olympics signs everywhere, too; but they're pretty much everywhere you look in China, even in Weihai. We walked next to vendors, saw a few foreigners, and we got tailed by some unsavory Chinee who were probably just waiting for us to look the other way so they could try to steal something. Next we hopped on another bus. I'm not sure where Jim wanted to take us, but we ended up driving past some German architecture--we wanted to explore that more, but didn't have the chance--and to another really crowded beach.

We took our shoes off, walked down some steep and narrow concrete steps, and we sat on newspaper on the beach. With several thousand other people. It was crazy. John opened up the backpack he'd been lugging around and pulled out some water and nuts. So we sat on the beach and ate nuts, watching little kids dig in the sand while we got harrassed by people trying to convince us to go waterskiing. Rory and I were felt like time was wasting--we wanted to do some guitar shopping! We told Jim and John that we would take them out to lunch since they showed us around, but we wanted to eat lunch in an area where there were guitar shops. We insisted that we take a taxi and pay for it.

I think we were en route to a taxi stand when John stole some little plush animal toy. Evidently someone had been looking at it, and this person dropped it. John picked it up and later gave it to me. I just assumed that he'd bought it, but Rory saw the whole thing go down. I mean, it wasn't too big of a deal because the thing cost maybe a nickel, but still--I didn't know I was receiving stolen goods! And it was just some junky little toy, not worth stealing.

Moving on...after some more guitar queries in Chinese and a quick taxi ride, we ended up back in the same neighborhood where we were staying. We were really hungry at this point, so we walked around looking for the perfect restaurant. Each time John and Jim would see some little hole in the wall/food poisoning restaurant, they would suggest it. We certainly value Chinese judgement when it comes to food recommendations, but I told them that if we were treating them to lunch we were going to do it right. We ended up at an upstairs place. We tried to order a whole fish, but the waitress said it would take too long to prepare during the busy lunch time. Fine.

We ordered some other food, including one of the superhot Sichuan dishes. The first bite I took featured some strange spice (that looks like a peppercorn/little pacman) that made half of my mouth feel frozen or numb or something. I was drooling a little bit on the left side of my mouth, like my dentist's anesthesia hadn't yet worn off. It wasn't a bad feeling--it was actually pretty cool--but I didn't feel like eating any more of that dish. We also drank beers. John and Jim said that they weren't big drinkers, and when we tried to "ganbei" them (keep in mind these are with little glasses), Jim didn't finish his beer, instead pouring his beer in the other three glasses. At a certain point, Rory and I were stuffed, so we sat back and told them we were finished eating, but we encouraged them to keep on. And eat they did. They finished every piece of meat and every (edible) vegetable. It was like they hadn't eaten for days and this was their feast. It was nice--it felt good to be able to give them the best meal they'd eat all month. Also gave me that weird, spoiled feeling, but I quickly got that out of my head. Eyes on the prize--guitar.

We left the restaurant and started walking around a little, Jim ocassionally asking for directions, and soon we were in a very familiar niche of our (3 day) `hood. We started walking to a store, and even though we knew we were going back to the store that had been closed the day before, we didn't want to say anything, so we just sort of went along with it. Maybe we were wrong about it. Maybe we would get lucky. We didn't. It was a bust. But at least Jim tried for us. We told Jim and John that we were going to go back and take a nap and put on sunscreen--Rory was already a lobster--but we promised to talk again before we left. They wanted to show us around their university the next day, but we all sort of knew that probably wasn't going to happen. We wanted to explore, but really with just the two of us. That's how we rolled on this trip.

We did go back to the room, to regroup and figure out how we were going to find a freaking guitar. We talked to the girls at the front desk, and they gave us cab directions to a store that they knew sold guitars. Great! Away we went. We walked into the store, and though it did have more of a selection than the first place, it still painted a bleak picture. Luckily for us, though, the couple that ran the store found us highly amusing (the wife got really excited about tattoos--very rare amongst older folks here in China). They gave us directions to another place; they wrote the directions down on paper, but then they followed us outside to help us flag down a taxi so they could actually talk to the driver. They were great!

So we drove to place number two. Along the way, I saw another guitar shop, so I was thankful that we stopped relatively close to it, or I would have forgotten where it was. We walked into this place called "Orient" or something. It was really promising. Rory was like a freaking kid in a candy store. It was funny to watch. They had a bunch of good guitars, including some Italian brands that he'd never heard of before. He had his eye on a Fender Stratocaster. We asked the owner what time they closed and told him we'd be back. At this point, we were both pretty much sold on this Strat, even though it was used and (we didn't realize it at the time) way overpriced. But we wanted to do a little more investigating.

We walked down the street to the other music store, where I had seen drums in the window. As we walked in, it was like in Wayne's World, where a big beam of light shines down onto the perfect guitar. There she was, Rory's soon-to-be new plaything, a white Epiphone Les Paul with gold hardware. He sat down and tooled around a little bit, warning me that he was about to "riff" (that word makes me giggle just writing it. I don't know why). It was a little out of our budget, but we knew we had come to Qingdao for this very moment, plus Rory said it was a guitar that he'd wanted for a long time--though he could have just been telling me that to make me forget about our budget... I didn't really care. It was going to be his baby. We talked to one of the owners about a guitar and amp package deal, and soon she was on the phone calling someone about an amp, though there were several lined up against the wall behind her. We also eyeballed our future purchase from the store--a drum machine. But that will be another blog altogether, I'm sure... While Rory went to an atm, I practiced my Chinese with the woman, and her husband started giving drum lessons to a little girl who couldn't have been older than 10. Her mom stood there the whole time watching. It was really cute. She was practicing on this big drum set in the window, so anyone who walked by could see her.

Rory came back with money, and shortly after another man walked in with a couple of different little amps for him to choose from. We picked out some picks and strings and made the purchase. His guitar even came with a leather hard case. Success! We took a taxi back to the hotel, and as we walked in with a guitar and an amp, the workers and other patrons looked at us like we were rock stars--good stuff! Inside our room, we tried to "hide" the guitar the best way we could, just in case. We walked to a pc bong to check out different cherry blossom festivals that were supposed to be happening in and around Qingdao. Extremely satisfied with the events of the day, we decided to eat at a restaurant we had noticed on the first day we arrived. It was a Sichuan/Canton restaurant. It was just okay. We thought we had ordered the breaded pork dish we enjoyed in Qufu, but it was actually shrimp and the batter was gross. Oh well.

We left that restaurant still a little hungry, so we explored the convenience mart offerings close to our hotel. We gravitated towards a larger, lit up pseudo-Family Mart place that had a cooler full of ice cream. I got an ice cream bar, and it was awesome--it made up for my mistake at Mt. Tai, when I thought the picture of beans on an ice cream wrapper was actually grapes. What a surprise! We headed back to our room and fell asleep early.

We woke up the next day and asked the front desk ladies about buses to Weihai, thinking it would be really difficult for us to figure out on our own so we should try to do it ahead of time. Luckily, right there on the tv, there was a channel you could turn to that had all of the departing buses and destinations. The buses left fairly often the following day, and we wouldn't have to go back to the super far away station--there was a station that was ten minutes away. We felt relieved. We decided to be American and eat at Pizza Hut, conveniently located by the Super Wal-Mart and the KFC.

Chinese Pizza Huts are considered fine dining, and the prices reflect that. But we were on vacation, dammit! So we sat down, ordered Budweisers and pizza, and we ate the whole damn thing. It was awesome--real cheese! After looking at some different boutiques and drinking some bubble tea outside, we opted to go to Zhongshan Park to check out their cherry blossoms. I had wanted to go to Laoshan (part of Qingdao) before we even left for vacation, to go to their annual cherry blossom festival. But we weren't exactly sure how far away it was, and though we knew which buses to take, we opted to just go to a park in the middle of Qingdao; evidently this park was supposed to have some impressive cherry blossoms.

The park itself was huge! I've never been to a park so big. It was really cool, but the only map we could find was posted on a giant sign as soon as you entered. And it was all in Chinese. So we walked around, past rickety spinning roller coasters and super primitive carnival rides, cool flowers and sculptures. It was nice. There was also a huge stage erected in the middle of the park, and these whored-up Chinese girls were dancing, trying to promote a new apartment complex that was being built. There was also a magician, but we saw him from the side of the stage, so we could see through all of his tricks. That was funny, though.

Throughout the park there were even little signs directing us to different areas--the magnolia trees, some cable cars, the cherry blossom alley. We started walking along, and we couldn't find any elaborate array of cherry blossoms. Sure, there were some cherry blossoms, but nothing I would call impressive. I felt very defeated. We almost left the park, but we decided to give it one more try. We walked around in circles--no festival. But we did find some more cable cars, and for fairly cheap, we got to ride above Qingdao, up to a really tall tv tower that overlooked the city. There were three different stops, but we sort of just got off the cars to get on the next one. At each stop you were expected to enter another park and pay another fee, but we just opted to...not. We are now in love with cable cars.

We left the park, and went back to our hood. We walked into an underground area, full of boutiques with really cute clothes, but we weren't in the shopping mood, so we ditched that and started walking back to our hotel as a huge storm was brewing. A storm will clear out a busy part of the city, too. There was no one on the street. It started raining as we entered our room. We napped through the storm, and when we woke up it was significantly cooler. We decided to try to find a bar--we'd yet to go to an actual "bar" on vacation, though they are certainly harder to come by here. We also needed to eat dinner, so we wanted to go back to a Mexican restaurant we'd seen as we were heading into Taidong that first day in the cab. After some searching, we found the place!--as they were closing.

But across the street there was what looked like a little dive-y sort of bar. We walked in, and we were the only people in the joint. Sweet. The waitress led us upstairs to a booth that overlooked the closed Mexican restaurant. It had cool curtains that you could close for more privacy, and the interior of the place looked like someone barfed up a paper mache tiki bar. It was awesome, Christmas lights everywhere! And they were playing Tom and Jerry on tv. So we sat there drinking beer, eating a fruit plate, watching Tom and Jerry while listening to American hip hop. And we were pretty much the only people there. It was one of my favorite parts of our entire vacation.

We still hadn't eaten anything substantial, so we opted for our old standby (standby at this point meant whatever the hell was open)--hotpot. We were definitely the last two people there, but the food was really good and all of the workers were really friendly. Even when I clumsily broke one of their plates. We walked back to our hotel to pack and sleep. We were glad that we didn't have to rush the next day because there were so many buses to choose from. And though vacation is always awesome, we were definitely ready to go "home."

It's funny--as we were unpacking in our dorm room here in Weihai, after being on vacation for 9 days already, we decided to go to the beach. All this traveling around, and we still got to go to the beach at the end of it all. How lucky. During the summer we get a month and a half of paid vacation--who knows where we'll go.