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Published: March 8th 2007
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On the plane for Qingdao
The fields didn't look like any we had seen before. When we last blogged, we had no idea what was in store for us as we went to Qingdao to order our pipe-making machine. We were met at the airport by the Managing Director and interpreter and the most amazing time of Chinese hospitality that seemed to never stop. We arrived at 3:00 in the afternoon. They found that we had booked a hotel and promptly cancelled that since they had a special room for us to stay in close to the factory. That surprised us and pleased us quite a bit. Mr. Geng (pronounced gong) had a VW called a Santana that was about the size of a Jetta. He drove us everywhere that we went. While in Gingdao and Jaio Zhun, where the factory was.
As we got to the factory, he immediately made us a green tea that was so delicious. It’s secret was that it had not been completely dried and had to be refrigerated or it would go moldy. I made the mistake of saying how much I liked tea and found this tea very good. We were then taken to the hotel and they had booked a room that was decorated all in red for
The Lucky Red Room
Just one view of the red bed. the Spring Festival which is just getting over with. It was quite beautifully red and had Glenn’s middle name meaning “Double Happiness” in a few places along with long life, so, they felt we’d be okay. Mr. Geng had disappeared as we were looking at the room with the interpreter. He had gone to a shop and bought us a beautiful tea set and 4 boxes of “very good” tea for us to take home. Then, we went to dinner. Since, this is right on the sea, we had seafood. We went into the restaurant and for a menu, they had about 100 plates with food under plastic and you pick from these samples. We left the choices up to Mr. Geng. Then, we went upstairs and there was a private room set up beautifully for us to eat. Mr. Geng had brought his own tea and we had that for dinner. Then, they started bringing ten different dishes each beautifully presented. We liked the raw fish with wasabi & vinegar. Then, for good health, we were to eat a sea cucumber which we had always known as sea slugs. We did okay with it, but I wouldn’t have minded
The table at dinner
The person paying for the meal sits at the place with the tall napkin it being my first & last. The rest of the dinner was great, but we couldn’t even begin to eat all of it. That didn’t seem to bother Mr. Geng at all as long as we enjoyed what we were having. After about 1 1/2 hours, we were thinking we’d be going back to the hotel, but, no, it was on to the Foot Massage place. This sounded pretty good too.
We get to this place and are taken again upstairs and put into a private room with 4 chairs like LazyBoys. These 4 very small young women with very strong fingers & hands come in and help us to take off our shoes and socks. Then, they bring in these wooden tubs with warm water to put your feet into. Then, they add some herbs in the water and add very hot water as hot as you like. Then, they start with your head, neck, shoulders, arms, legs & finally your feet. We were enjoying this a lot. Then, before they massage your feet for about 30 minutes (just on your feet) a young man comes in with a little medical-looking kit and cuts your toe nails with a
Raw Fish
This was salmon straight edge knife that was scary, but really worked well. It was so odd to be in this warm room, with people you truly had not met before, all having your bare feet massaged, but, it didn’t feel the least bit uncomfortable since they were enjoying it as much as we were. It took us two hours and at 10:30 pm, we were finally taken back to the red room to have a good night’s sleep. They thought they would pick us up quite late the next morning - 8:00 am. Jim hated to ask what early might be.
Mr. Geng just continued on in his hospitality and we’ll fill you in on it in our next blog.
We are a liitle tired and need to catch up with our e-mails.
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