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I Want to Live Here
I took this one right outside the brewery. No explanation needed. Hello again my blog readers. I apologize for my long lapse in not publishing blog entries. A combination of factors is to blame. Partially it is just me being lazy, but also, the pace of my travels slowed down a lot for a while. I decided to take it easy for a couple of weekends because my travel companions, Matt and Michelle, scheduled a few trips that I did not really want to go on. Not too much has changed here. The weather has gone from cold to insanely hot (compounded by the pollution problem), and I have grown my hair back longer than it was before I left. Teaching has settled into a dull routine the way things inevitably do. I am coming up on giving my final exams now, and I will actually be done with teaching sooner than I thought. June 18th will be my last day, and that will leave me about two and a half weeks to travel before going home. The tentative plan is to take a train west to Chongching and Chengdu then go on a cruise down the Yangtze River back to Wuhan and eventually Shanghai. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan Province,
History of Qingdao
Here are some of the older labels from the history museum. The Japanese actually used to bottle Sapporo and Kirin here when they occupied the city. the area where the big earthquake struck, but according to a friend of mine who teaches near there, it should be safe to visit at this point. I really want to go so that I can sample the famous Sichuan cuisine and of course visit the Panda breeding base that is located near there.
Now, getting back to the matter at hand, this past weekend, Matt, Michelle and I visited Qingdao, the beer capital of China. Before I ramble too much about beer, I will give a short note on pronunciation. Qingdao is pronounced as “Chingdao,” and is actually the Chinese pronunciation of the beer known in America as Tsingtao. Before I came to China, I had been pronouncing this as “Singtao” because that is the way the name is printed on the beer bottles. Technically either pronunciation is correct, but the Chinese only use Qingdao. I have gotten into the habit of saying it that way, so I will be writing it that way for the rest of this entry. So, Qingdao is a charming seaside city, which will host the sailing portions of this summer’s Olympic Games, and it was formerly ceded to the Germans around the
Factory Floor
Here we can see the delicious brew in bottles, ready for packaging. turn of the century, so there is a fair amount of German influence in architecture that is visible. Of course the biggest German legacy was the brewery that they established in 1903, and this was, of course, the first place we visited. I had never been on a brewery tour before this one, but I was not disappointed. We began with a trip through the Qingdao museum where we learned about the development of the brewery and the town as it passed from the Germans to the Japanese and eventually into Chinese hands. After that, we learned all about the manufacturing process both historical and modern. We were allowed to taste some delicious unfiltered Qingdao. We saw the actual factory floor where bottles were being produced on one side and cans on the other. According to our tour guide, the factory was producing 12 cases of beer every minute. Our tour was topped off by more tasting of the finished product.
Qingdao’s other major attraction besides beer, is the sea, and that was our next destination. We walked down by the beach, taking in the wonderful fresh air, and enjoying the view. There was a small pagoda at the
Harbor Pavilion
This is the Huilan Pavilion in the middle of Qingdao harbor, which features prominently in the beer's logo. end of a pier in the middle of the main beach (I have posted pictures of it). We learned that this is actually the pagoda pictured on the Qingdao bottle in the logo. We wrapped up our first day with a trip to a night market by the bay. On day two, we did a lot of walking to see different architectural sights. First we took a trip to the top of a hill in the center of town, where there was a rotating observation platform that allowed us to get a 360 degree view of the city and the bay. We then checked out the protestant church and the German Governor’s Mansion. The church was very simple in adornment, and actually reminded me a lot of the Navajo church in Ganado. I wanted to compare it to the Catholic Church across town, but we discovered that it was closed for renovations. On our last day in Qingdao, we checked out the Tianhou temple, dedicated to Tianhou, a goddess of the sea as well as the Dragon King of the East Sea. Both of these mythical figures were traditionally seen as safeguarding the destinies of sailors. Our final stop in
Check out the Logo
This is the Qingdao beer logo with the pagoda image for comparison. Qingdao was an island in the bay where the original lighthouse of the city was located. I was very interested to discover an entire colony of cats that had made the island their home, including one hiboux and one muh grey. After our island visit, we concluded the day with a leisurely stroll along the beach, and that night we celebrated our visit by sampling some of the city’s famous seafood and barbeque and, of course, some more of the local nectar. That was it for this adventure.
Until Next Time,
Chris
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tsingtao
Sounds like the brewery was the main attraction here. Was the local stuff 20x better than the stuff that gets exported to the us and a? Were you able to sample any of the fresh, lushious, umm, fruits and vegetables the region had to offer?