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Published: December 17th 2007
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Tai'an train station
Rather large for this size town. Finished in the modern Chinese urban style of green/blue glass and beige tiles. We decided to go to Jinan to do some Christmas shopping.
First mission: Tai'an train station to buy a ticket. There are six queues at the ticket office, one for each window. Which window to choose? There's a sign for each one. Any idea what it says? None at all. Let's chance it then. While waiting we had a chance to bend our schoolchild Chinese around Buying a Ticket, a topic our textbook has not yet covered.
This is what we cobbled together:
'Hello. We like go Jinan. Today morning. Two people. Thank you.'
Ni3 hao3. Wo3men yao4 qu4 Ji4nan2. Jin1tian1 sheng1wu3. Lian3ge ren2. Xie4xie.
It worked. Two tickets to Jinan.
Second mission: To the main station. Find the appropriate waiting room. Match train number on ticket with train number on screen floating over one of the waiting zones. Find a seat in said zone. Train time comes up, gates to platform open, everyone herds through showing tickets to militarily uniformed station assistant. Along the underpass, onto the train, locate seat. Job done.
We spent a happy hour or so splitting the time between reading and watching workers in fields out the window.
Waiting room
The Chinese system is that everyone waits in the waiting room. One isn't allowed onto the platform until the train's ready and waiting. The countryside seemed mostly low spiky hills which had been terraced who-knows-how-long-ago. Occasionally we'd see a small group of people digging, or walking, or just standing. The odd village of low one-story houses connected in courtyards, children playing in the yards bundled almost to twice their usual size in layers of coats. The last layer of such wrapping is usually a cotton all-over apron like a shirt on backwards, which can be washed when grubby much easier than a whole winter coat. Eminently sensible idea.
The fields turned to shiny new blocks of flats, which turned to grubby blocks of flats, which turned to dense and grubby towers of flats, and we were there.
Mission three: Buy tickets back to Tai'an for this evening. Done.
Jinan gets rather a scathing review in our Rough Guide, which describes it as best thought of 'as a stop on the way to or from Qufu and Tai'an' and adds 'Jinan's buildings aren't pretty: the fashion for facing buildings with white bathroom-style tiling seems to have reached its zenith here.' True enough I probably wouldn't consider it as a holiday destination. But when considered as a functional city
Jinan train station.
By way of comparison. Is actually rather larger than it looks here though, as I couldn't get a lot of it in the frame. Also a lot of it is underground. to live in or visit to buy things it's actually quite worthwhile.
We caught a taxi from the rank to one of the larger shopping centers and did some present-bashing. We've more or less got the trick of them now. Prices are negotiable. If the staff realise that you, a foreigner, are going to attempt to haggle they usually get out their calculator and show you the Standard Markdown rather than try to do it in words. Different stores have different policies, but the one we were in gave 30% asking-for-discount discount. A bit of frowning, head-shaking and calculator prodding on my part will usually knock another few kuai off. Our Chinese friends still tell us we're paying over the odds for stuff, but in some weird way I feel it's my duty as a Rich Idiot Foreigner not to mind too much. Call it a contribution to the local economy. And by British standards everything's pretty cheap anyway.
Department stores duly raided, we caught a taxi to cross town to another shopping area. The taxi driver didn't want to accept the name of the road as a destination, probably because it was too long, so
Scenery
Some of the less inspiring sights to see. Very representative of the city in general, though. we pointed out one of the parks to stop at. Once dropped of Chris decided on the spur of the moment that it would be nice to go in.
Jinan's Baofu natural spring park is one of it's major tourist attractions. The real natural springs, I'm told, dried up a long time ago due to a combination of climate change, local building works and pollution. But the park has a river, lots of natural-esque springs, temples, trees, memorials, bamboo woods, and groups of old men playing chess. Again, I wouldn't say it's something to backpack a hundred miles for. But it's a lovely city park. We watched the goldfish swimming in the water, listened to the old mens' nightingales in their cages, strolled arm in arm through the dusk admiring the bright reflections of the illuminated pagodas... and got rather lost.
It took about 20 minutes of hurried walking, giggling, signpost decryption and botched navigation attempts before we staggered out of the North Gate 10 mins before closing time. I think it was my favorite part of the trip.
We had a cup of coffee in McDonalds, lingered in the English Language section of
More scenery
More of same. the massive Xin Hua bookstore, then headed for somewhere to eat. First we tried the guidebook's recommendation, but found it empty and stale-looking so we escaped and dived round the corner.
We ended up in a hot-pot restaurant. These are majorly popular in all the parts of China we've been to so far, but probably couldn't be easily exported to the UK without some alteration due to our health and safety regulations. In the middle of the table is placed a big pot of stock with something under it to keep it simmering. In a smaller restaurant it might be an electric hot-plate, in a grander one it'll be a gas burner or possibly even a bucket of coals. You choose the stock and a bunch of stuff to eat with it; raw vegetables, thin rolled up slices of raw meat, noodles, etc. The stuff arrives, you plop a selection into the stock, you wait until it's cooked and then you pick it out with your chopsticks and eat it. You may even order a selection of dips to dip it in.
Different restaurants offer different stocks, often depending on the type of cuisine they're aiming
Inside Jinan People's Market
So much shiny clutter it made my head spin. for. Mongolian hotpots have a relatively plain stock. Sichuanese hotpots stock is so full of chillies that it's bright red and thick with peppercorns at the bottom. There's a lovely little place near our campus that does a really rich duck one for only 18 Kuai. The place we chose in Jinan was unusual in our experience in that the stock pot was actually divided into two sections; one for plainer stock and one for fiery Sichuanese. Both proved delicious.
To the station, to the waiting room, to the train. Managed a little conversation with a Shanhai-an businessman in a hodgepodge of Chinese and English. Off at Tai'an at about 10pm. Taxi. Home. Give thanks that yesterday I managed to totally sort my lesson plan for tomorrow and don't have to think any more complicated thoughts than those necessary to brush teeth. Bed.
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