Blogs from Qingdao, Shandong, China, Asia
October 10th 2011
Photos: …..I'm in a huge reception room at the Yangzhou guesthouse, really a collection of conference rooms, reception halls & restaurants. There is a low but very wide, flower bedecked stage along one wall, with a catwalk that extends through almost the length of the room, between tall pillars of artificial flowers. There are roughly 60 tables seating 10 people each, ready for the feast. Enough staff running around to populate an Australian country town. The lights are dimmed & the curtains retract. On a screen about 15 metres wide by 6 metres high a high definition video, possibly a music video, starts. A billowing red.....flag?.....cloth?....no. Panning back it's a pretty girl in a rather fetching red, silk dress. She runs along the foreshore. A young guy with a bunch of flowers r... read more
July 27th 2011
Today was a busy and emotional day for the students and the teachers; it was our last day at the summer camp. The competition that everybody has been anticipating finally arrived. All our contestants prepared extremely hard for the semi finals and their effort was paid off. In the morning, we went to the live studio of Qing Dao Television in preparation for the competition in the afternoon. We walked through the stage and received instructions on what we had to do. It was a busy morning filled with endless rehearsals. After lunch, the moment that everyone has been waiting for finally arrived. We first enjoyed an amazing performance by a band that played ancient Chinese music, which eventually led to the competition. There were four Canadian teams which consisted of the students from the ... read more
July 26th 2011
Today we rehearsed for our closing ceremonies. We learned how to sing the concluding song with the accompaniment of an accordion. When I arrived in class, I noticed a dozen talented female vocalists seated in the room. I soon learned that they were to be our teachers for the morning. They helped us to improve our tone and to add motions into our repertoire. They also added their amazing voices into the melody, creating a soul-stirring sensation. Afterwards, I stayed behind to recite a poem with my two teammates. The background music had just been selected, so we practiced with it. Our clear voices echoed through the halls, attracting the attention of passersby. At the end of the day, my throat was slightly sore, but I went to bed proud that I knew what to do ... read more
July 25th 2011
Today, it was raining outside, so we visited the Li Cang Science Centre and Qing Dao Polar Ocean World, instead of visiting Mount Lao. This morning, we took the bus to the Li Cang Science Centre. The Science Centre had three floors. First we went to the upper floor, there were many science games, but I didn’t play any, because many were broken. I just sat on a chair and waited for the rest of the students to finish playing. After, the teacher brought us to the first floor to do fun experiments. I did experiment No.15. Our team helped each other to finish the experiment. After that I watched other teams’ experiments, I felt like the other team’s experiment was much harder than ours; they had to try again and again to succeed. I was ... read more
July 24th 2011
Today, we were in class all day, but it wasn’t boring at all. I even think that it was more fun than going on a whole-day trip! In the morning, we had a very descriptive class on the World Heritages in China. There were lots of them in China, but we only had time to learn all of them, and they seem like the most important ones. Out of the 3, the Great Wall of China is cultural heritage, Juizhaigou(九寨沟) physical heritage, and the Mongolian Folk Long-Song is an intangible heritage. Each of them has their own stories to tell and present the different sides of our lovely homeland, China. In the afternoon we had 2 classes. The first one was on the Chinese calligraphy. We learned about this history, the famous calligraphers, and the different ... read more
July 20th 2011
Today we had the most fun we’ve ever had, and I’m not even kidding. We went to the beachside, and got pretty wet. We were around 15 minutes late leaving, so we were sad that we lost 15 minutes at the beach. After we got there, we were actually really surprised that there were very little people already there, because most of the time there are a lot of people at most public places. Anyway, the sand was super soft, and I enjoyed walking in it. I bet everyone was too. We got started right away on the tug of war, with two teams, boys V.S girls. Of course, the girls won every single time, but we had a lot more people than them. Boys are stronger than us anyway, right? The boys got mad, so ... read more
July 19th 2011
We had two classes this morning. One was about Qufu and the other about Mount Tai. Qufu was the place Confucius lived. We learned about the Confucius Temple, Confucius Mansion and Confucius Grave. We also learned that at Mount Tai, there are lots of famous Stone Tablets. Some were from the Qin Dynasty 2000 years ago. In the afternoon, we went to a number of places. First we went to the Tsingtao Beer Museum where we saw the process of how beer was made. At the end, we got to taste a bit of freshly brewed beer. I thought it tasted bitter like medicine. There were some boys who got drunk, but I’m sure they were just acting. After that, we saw a movie. It wasn’t a normal movie in that we sit in a train ... read more
July 18th 2011
July 14, 2011 At 9am, I left my house. My dog followed me to the door, hoping to go to China with me. I hope he still remembers me when I return. My parents drove on Hwy401 to the airport. Before checking in, we discovered that we left my passport at home! It takes half an hour to drive home and half an hour to get back to the airport, 1 hour in total. I worried that I might cause everyone to wait for me. Fortunately, it only took half an hour. Instead of my dad driving back and forth, he asked a friend who lives close to my home to bring the passport here. That’s one reason why it's really important to have good friends. Luckily, I was not the last one to check in. ... read more
The longest bridge, the longest undersea tunnel - Day 3 in Qingdao
Published: July 18th 2011Asia » China » Shandong » Qingdao
July 17th 2011
This morning we had a lesson on languages. Our teacher talked about the types of languages, the history of languages, about pinyin and how he would improve the education of it, and the evolution of the Chinese language. In the afternoon, we set out for the Golden Beach on Huangdao. The bus took us on the longest bridge in the world that crosses the sea on the way there. The bridge is 26.4 miles, it cost 566 million Yuan. After three hours of traffic, we finally got to the beach. There was a sea of people, algae, and water. Many of us went into the sea, felt the softness of the sand, heaviness of the algae, and saltiness and wetness of the sea water. My friend and I were searching for seashells. It was really fun. ... read more
July 16th 2011
Today we finally arrived at Qingdao; it is a very cool and beautiful city even though this city isn’t a quite big city. In Qingdao the view is pretty. After the long trip yesterday, we woke up at seven for breakfast. We ate fried dough, fried rice and some congee, these foods are very tasty. The opening ceremony of this summer camp had started after breakfast, we were so happy because this is the first time everybody has been to Qingdao. We went to a presentation about the culture in Qingdao. The teacher introduced us some famous sites and food in Qingdao, these include: Tsingtao Beer, clams. And we enjoy these very much. For afternoon, we went to a place called “Zhan Qiao” which is a bridge that connects the shore and temple. There were lots ... read more
