Misadventures in Qingdao

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As you well know, I had this past weekend off due to the Dragon Boat festival. That means I could lie down, relax, and take the weight of my traumatized and bandaged left foot, right?

NO.

Instead, I resolved to go traipsing around Shandong province all weekend. Although my foot was aching and throbbing and bleeding and festering the whole time, I got on the bus and headed up Qingdao. It was not that remarkable an adventure. Here's some stuff about Qingdao:

First, Qingdao is a coastal city in Shandong province and is one of the 10 largest cities in China. It used to be a German colony, or had some type of German patronage over it. As a consequence, they make beer. The brand is famous throughout Asia, and is called "Tsingtao". I hate beer, but I still drink Tsingtao because filling my glass with it prevents my glass from being filled with baijiu.

Qingdao was hard to get to. We could have flown, and it would have been that much easier. Instead, we chose to take the bus to Jinan, then transfer to a train. But the trains were sold out for the holiday, so we had to take a second bus from Jinan, which added another four hours to our journey. So, we didn't get in until late at night and probably spent more time in transit than we did in Qingdao.

Qingdao held games during the Olympics. Consequently, you will see a big stadium and Olympics sign. There is also a giant stylized red torch which is an eternal reminder that Qingdao once held Olympic games in 2008. I guess this is like the games that I witnessed in Olympus during the 2004 Olympic games in Athens.

It's a seaside town, so they have a lot of sea food. All I did for 24 hours was eat shellfish, seasnails, scallops, longclams, seaweed, and stuff I didn't even try to identify.

It's also cooler than inland because the sea mitigates the extremes of temperatures. So, it was warm when we left Jining, and downright sweltering in Jinan. But in Qingdao, it was actually chilly after the sun went down. The weather I experienced that day was like being in Cincinnati again.

And that's all I have to say about Qingdao.

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