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Published: January 25th 2009
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With temperatures being below -20 again and with Spring festival (Chinese New Year) on our doorstep, which means a whole week to myself, its time to hit the skies again. This time unfortunately to a-not-so warm place. Still, compared to the Siberian temperatures here in Hohhot,
Qingdao is gonna feel like a tropical paradise with possible daily temperatures of somewhere between 0 and +8 degrees...! At night it's still gonna be below zero, but who cares? I found a good hostel, there's beaches (in fact, there's an ocean adjoining it!!) and I hope to visit the birthplace of China's biggest beer brand: Qingdao.
The birthplace not being the city itself with its factories, but more the proper birthplace; the origin of the springwater that makes the beer; Lao Shan. More about all of that in my next blog from forementioned city.
I'm flying via Beijing and hope to spend 4 days in total, including half a day shopping in Beijing for all those necessities we don't get in Hohot. (Those include English books, proper sandwiches of a certain healthy fastfood brand and more of the same).
In the mean time, life as usual. Icy cold mornings with windows covered in
Massive fireworks display...
As in: 'being sold', not: 'being set off'. a layer of ice, teaching, not knowing what to eat, teaching, not enough taxies on the street, (some more teaching) and the occasional unexpected firecracker that sends you flying in the air. Not much happening as you can understand. Oh, there was one thing; I got some mild
frost bite!
Friday morning I was going to get myself a new camera (behold the photo's) seeing I had lost the last one (yet again).
Because a Chinese person can get things a lot cheaper than we can in general, I was going to meet up with Zhu. Only, I was a bit late so when he called I was still in bed. I quickly got up and went to the new shopping centre. There I had to walk for 10 minutes or so to the other side of the street to cash some money. Both my index finger and its neighbour were white at that time. After purchase I walked outside for another half an hour or so to get some other things done. By the time I got home, both finger tips hurt quite a bit, and still hurt now, 3 days later! They haven't turned black yet though, so
things should turn out allright....(?!)
Today (26th), the Chinese are preparing for their biggest day of the year, or so it feels like. Just like last year, on some street corners a large pile of coal is placed to be lit tonight. In fact, there's one right outside the entrance to my residential area.
In between the building lanterns have been hung up, and everywhere fireworks are sold. Even more so, fruit! Gigantic piles of boxes and boxes of fruit are standing in front of and next to shops' entances. Again, a Chinese tradition to give each other and to eat a lot of (good quality by the way) fruit at Spring Festival. This year I'll not experience a lot of it though, seeing that I fly out at 7:30 in the morning, just hope there's a few taxies on the street...!
For everybody out there, Chinese or not:
XIAN NIAN KUAI LE! Happy year of the ox!
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broertje
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china new year.
hey broer, goed te horen dat je weer op pad bent, als ik goed begrijp vier je nieuw jaar niet met zhu en zijn familie ? dat is toch een chineese ervaring ? maar nu ben je in beizjing voor een paar dagen om nieuw jaar te vieren ..., dat is ook vet cool ! laat gauw effe wat van je horen wanneer je je update over nieuw jaar af hebt!! ciao en rustig an gr. maarten en julia.