Wednesday, September 27, 2006
August 18, Qingdao to Tai An
Our last night in Qingdao, we moved to another guest house in another part of town. Moving across town was like moving to another country. We moved down the coast near where the beer festival was, near a yachting club, and into a hostel run by Koreans. This part of town, a 15 minute taxi ride from the inner city had wide sidewalks, new buildings and freshly trimmed hedges. This was the clean side of town, the rich section, completely separate from where we arrived on our ship. Here, the money was crisp and the rows of restaurants with eels, crabs, clams, snails fish living in shallow pools in styrofoam trays on the sidewalks to keep them fresh and attract customers were not present. Here, the streets didn't stink of fish or sewage. Here, we got our first glimpse of China, the superpower. It finally felt like we had arrived in the country we had read about on the news with its exploding economy and niveau riche.
With Song, Miree and two other Koreans we had just met at the guest house, a brother and sister traveling together, we went to the Tsingtao Beer Festival. A huge festival full of games and beer tents reminiscent of Germany. The beer hall we drank in had a big stage built in the center where people sang Chinese songs to Schlager music.
Aja and her new Korean friend, Eun Young, tried to get Chinese people to play Janken (rock paper scissors -- hugely popular in Japan) with them. They succeeded with a table of middle-aged folks who handed us both beers and chanted for us to chug them. Aja drank two more than she wanted to. We went outside and played circus games and watched fireworks. Then we found a taxi that would take one more passenger than he ought and went out for massages.
Near our hostel was a small massage business that gave super cheap massages (25 yuan~$3). All five of us were put to sleep. They just let us sleep for a long time, and finally we woke each other up, paid and went to bed again. We all ate Kimchee for breakfast and perhaps because of our massages, no one was hung over.
Our train left early, too early for us to have eaten breakfast, but when it was served, I couldn't resist. A slow driving, honking taxi brought us back to the poor part of town, back to the station and we ran through railway security where our bags were x-rayed and found our train. We were the last people to get on the train, and had to run through a thick white cloud of diesel smoke to get on our train.
Our train was pulled out of the station only a moment after we had gotten on. Through the city, we passed gangs of railroad workers without shirts wearing straw hats, sitting around with food or cards or just sleeping wherever there was shade. Before we were out of the city, we passed by dozens of small factories before we went by some truly large factories. Some were at least a mile long, with mountains of coal, criss-crossed elevators for grain, rocks, coal, I can't guess what. Here, we saw more skinny railway workers, mostly not working, families walking along the tracks that led to their factories. It didn't look like scenes of this era; it looked more like old photos of America in the '20s.
Once we were fully out of the city, the countryside was packed with crops. Vast fields of corn stretched out to the horizon and forests of young trees planted in neat rows covered the hills. Small farming villages still gave a slight reminder that this used to be a German colony, but they didn't look like German villages. Rather, a single German house reproduced thousands of times in on of Qingdao's colossal factories. Every house was built the same, but all are in different states of disintegration. It seems like many have been bulldozed, leaving others standing by gardens of rubble.
Further along, towns and cities dotted the landscape underneath a warm brown layer of smog. In nearly every city before Jinan, was at least one prominent cooling tower growing right out of the houses. There was no space between power plants and apartments.
At each stop, our train became more crowded. We moved to our assigned seats next to a nice looking young family. In the seats in front of us, an older man with messy Mao-like hair and blue jeans laid across two seats. When the young lady with a large suitcase and curly hair，whose seat his feet were on got on the train, she scolded him and demanded that he move. With a voice that changed pitch with each word, he flatly refused to move. The young lady raised hell and people bent their necks around their seats, watched curiously and smiled. Eventually, some of the blue-coated train workers came to help, but even they were unable to persuade the balding old man to sit up. Some time later, they came to an agreement that involved another man sitting in the lady's seat, while she stood until a seat opened up at the next stop.
Salesmen walked through the trains. One made the whole car laugh and used us for some of his jokes. Another convinced us to buy some nearly indestructible socks that he beat with a steel brush, pulled a nail through and showed it without any signs of wear.
Arriving in Tai An, we were met at the station by a barrage of people selling maps, offering taxis and hotels and a Tourist Information office that offered absolutely no help. We set off with only our Lonely Planet intent on going to a hotel at the other end of town. Quickly, we got a better offer from a lady boasting a brochure with pictures of hotel rooms for the Long Tan hotel near the station. The picture of the hotel on our key card was of a completely different building and caused us to walk in circles looking for it later that night.
Tai An is a big city with long city blocks. The big streets have separate lanes for the slower moving bicycle, moped and red motorbike rickshaws. Whole families ride by balancing on a single moped. The streets are noisy and stinky. Horns honk constantly as if the city were filled with an everlasting parade. Traffic doesn't stop at red lights and crosswalks are chaotic. Neither pedestrians nor cars have the right of way and are constantly competing for an opportunity to push through the ever-present swarm of bicycles and motor bikes. The green men on crosswalk s move to draw attention, but they are actively ignored.
Our last night in Qingdao, we moved to another guest house in another part of town. Moving across town was like moving to another country. We moved down the coast near where the beer festival was, near a yachting club, and into a hostel run by Koreans. This part of town, a 15 minute taxi ride from the inner city had wide sidewalks, new buildings and freshly trimmed hedges. This was the clean side of town, the rich section, completely separate from where we arrived on our ship. Here, the money was crisp and the rows of restaurants with eels, crabs, clams, snails fish living in shallow pools in styrofoam trays on the sidewalks to keep them fresh and attract customers were not present. Here, the streets didn't stink of fish or sewage. Here, we got our first glimpse of China, the superpower. It finally felt like we had arrived in the country we had read about on the news with its exploding economy and niveau riche.
With Song, Miree and two other Koreans we had just met at the guest house, a brother and sister traveling together, we went to the Tsingtao Beer Festival. A huge festival full of games and beer tents reminiscent of Germany. The beer hall we drank in had a big stage built in the center where people sang Chinese songs to Schlager music.
Aja and her new Korean friend, Eun Young, tried to get Chinese people to play Janken (rock paper scissors -- hugely popular in Japan) with them. They succeeded with a table of middle-aged folks who handed us both beers and chanted for us to chug them. Aja drank two more than she wanted to. We went outside and played circus games and watched fireworks. Then we found a taxi that would take one more passenger than he ought and went out for massages.
Near our hostel was a small massage business that gave super cheap massages (25 yuan~$3). All five of us were put to sleep. They just let us sleep for a long time, and finally we woke each other up, paid and went to bed again. We all ate Kimchee for breakfast and perhaps because of our massages, no one was hung over.
Our train left early, too early for us to have eaten breakfast, but when it was served, I couldn't resist. A slow driving, honking taxi brought us back to the poor part of town, back to the station and we ran through railway security where our bags were x-rayed and found our train. We were the last people to get on the train, and had to run through a thick white cloud of diesel smoke to get on our train.
Our train was pulled out of the station only a moment after we had gotten on. Through the city, we passed gangs of railroad workers without shirts wearing straw hats, sitting around with food or cards or just sleeping wherever there was shade. Before we were out of the city, we passed by dozens of small factories before we went by some truly large factories. Some were at least a mile long, with mountains of coal, criss-crossed elevators for grain, rocks, coal, I can't guess what. Here, we saw more skinny railway workers, mostly not working, families walking along the tracks that led to their factories. It didn't look like scenes of this era; it looked more like old photos of America in the '20s.
Once we were fully out of the city, the countryside was packed with crops. Vast fields of corn stretched out to the horizon and forests of young trees planted in neat rows covered the hills. Small farming villages still gave a slight reminder that this used to be a German colony, but they didn't look like German villages. Rather, a single German house reproduced thousands of times in on of Qingdao's colossal factories. Every house was built the same, but all are in different states of disintegration. It seems like many have been bulldozed, leaving others standing by gardens of rubble.
Further along, towns and cities dotted the landscape underneath a warm brown layer of smog. In nearly every city before Jinan, was at least one prominent cooling tower growing right out of the houses. There was no space between power plants and apartments.
At each stop, our train became more crowded. We moved to our assigned seats next to a nice looking young family. In the seats in front of us, an older man with messy Mao-like hair and blue jeans laid across two seats. When the young lady with a large suitcase and curly hair，whose seat his feet were on got on the train, she scolded him and demanded that he move. With a voice that changed pitch with each word, he flatly refused to move. The young lady raised hell and people bent their necks around their seats, watched curiously and smiled. Eventually, some of the blue-coated train workers came to help, but even they were unable to persuade the balding old man to sit up. Some time later, they came to an agreement that involved another man sitting in the lady's seat, while she stood until a seat opened up at the next stop.
Salesmen walked through the trains. One made the whole car laugh and used us for some of his jokes. Another convinced us to buy some nearly indestructible socks that he beat with a steel brush, pulled a nail through and showed it without any signs of wear.
Arriving in Tai An, we were met at the station by a barrage of people selling maps, offering taxis and hotels and a Tourist Information office that offered absolutely no help. We set off with only our Lonely Planet intent on going to a hotel at the other end of town. Quickly, we got a better offer from a lady boasting a brochure with pictures of hotel rooms for the Long Tan hotel near the station. The picture of the hotel on our key card was of a completely different building and caused us to walk in circles looking for it later that night.
Tai An is a big city with long city blocks. The big streets have separate lanes for the slower moving bicycle, moped and red motorbike rickshaws. Whole families ride by balancing on a single moped. The streets are noisy and stinky. Horns honk constantly as if the city were filled with an everlasting parade. Traffic doesn't stop at red lights and crosswalks are chaotic. Neither pedestrians nor cars have the right of way and are constantly competing for an opportunity to push through the ever-present swarm of bicycles and motor bikes. The green men on crosswalk s move to draw attention, but they are actively ignored.
