Qingdao

I decided to escape Tianjin for a weekend about halfway through our stay to checkout the annual Qingdao International Beer Festival, located in Qingdao, China. After arriving at the train station, my friend Ben and I walked down to the beach and had a look at the surrounding area. After that we headed up through the ‘old town’ to find our hostel. The German influence on the town was immediately recognizable due to the architecture of almost all the buildings. We passed an Old Catholic church on the way as well; it was pretty cool. There was a really cool open air market right next to our hostel that we got breakfast at almost everyday. We ate dinner at a little place across the street from our hostel and the food was terrific. When in Qingdao, you drink beer and eat ‘gala’, which are small clams with an excellent garlic sauce with peppers and such. Almost every little restaurant in the city has kegs of fresh Qingdao sitting atop one another on the curb outside their places. You buy mugs of beer while eating, but the norm is to buy a ‘bag of beer’ which they price based on weight.
Once we eventually made it to the festival it appeared to be a much more family geared event than we expected. There were carnival rides, satay stalls, and of course a million beer tents, most of which were German beers. I would recommend the Qingdao beer building over any of the other tents. Being a foreigner you get a million Chinese people that want to chug beers with you (they typically provided the beer to us free of charge), take a picture, and talk to you about how great beer is - definitely the most fun, most congenial place to be AND you get to practice your Chinese.
The next morning we set off for Laoshan, Mt. Lao, which was about an hour and a half bus ride down the coast. The rock formations were unique and it was great exercise. Once we reached the end of the path, we took a little detour and pushed as far and hard as we could for the summit. Once atop, there was an amazing view of the ocean and the surrounding hills. The mountain is of special significance in Taoism.
We also managed to tour around the city for one of the days and made it to another amazing old church. I believe it was a protestant church. Due to our highly skilled Chinese levels a man in the church allowed us to climb the bell tower, which had an amazing lookout of the bay. We continued on to a park that had an even higher lookout of the city, and then onto the old German governor’s mansion. I guess Mao and some of his buddies would stay here for vacation quite frequently. Later that night we returned to the festival for more of the same thing.
One thing I noticed about Qingdao, very different from the rest of China I had seen was the dogs. They are a great variety of dogs there, instead of just the typical shiatsu. I saw golden retrievers, huskies, and cocker spaniels. For a guy missing his dog, this was an awesome thing to come across.
We also made it to the Qingdao brewery for a tour and to get drunk there. I had never had the privilege to do a brewery tour before, but this one was certainly interesting and fun. We followed up the tour with a delicious lunch at a barbeque restaurant about a mile away from the brewery. Next day: get back to Tianjin and prepare for class. I highly recommend Qingdao.

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