2-25-09

 

We were exhausted. Reducing two years of life into two 60 liter bags was turning out to be a logistical brain strain. Finances, belongings, finances, shipping, moving everything down four flights, clothes, immigration, driver’s licenses, bills, what to pack, what to give away, what to toss, and what to give/sell to friends. By the end of those three days, both of us felt more tired than we could remember. We realized that you can’t appreciate life fully when feeling like that. The goodbyes to our friends didn’t resonate like they should have, and the walk out of our apartment, with everything finished, bags on our backs, didn’t feel  as much like the beginning of an adventure as the ending of a battle. The night before, my friend Paul Park and I were walking to the store and he asked me “Has it hit you yet?”

 

We were grateful that our friends Byung Wuk and Katie were driving us to the ferry terminal, rather than having to take the two hour train.  We ate our last Korean meals, Bimbibop, Kimchi Jichae, Ja-Ja Muen and Jam-Pong at an Emart. I was paranoid that we’d left our bags in the back seat of Byung Wuk’s car. It hit me then, how important my bag is. We said goodbye and boarded the ship.

 

The ship held humans at the top and the bottom 80% was for cargo. It was the biggest ship we’ve ever been on. We both felt huge relief that we ended up with two-bed room rather than the four-bed setup we’d purchased. We were tired and didn’t want to feel vigilant around our belongings. I played some guitar, we went through our things, laid down to watch “Pushing Daisy’s” on our laptop and quickly fell asleep. We woke to the stewardesses call to dinner and got full on a buffet of sliced potatoes in sauce, mushrooms, tofu, beef stew and bimbibop. When we returned, the ship started to dip and sway. It’s funny to walk behind someone who is banging against the walls in synchronization with you. Rachel got sea-sick about 30 minutes later. We had brought some pills for that but didn’t think to take them when the rocking began. I wasn’t comfortable, but got through it. It’s interesting that the ship came equipped with a huge bowled toilet that is right on the inside of the bathroom door. I think its function is to catch puke. We slept for eleven hours.

 

2-26-09

 

Chinese Customs was a breeze. It was a chilly day. We got hustled by our taxi driver and paid four dollars too much, not knowing how far it was to our couchsurfer’s apartment. The city around the port is in disrepair compared to what it was in Korea. Plaster crumbles and buildings are abandoned. The Chinese lady sitting next to me is (I’m assuming) trying to persuade me into going to her hotel of choice. I repeat the word “friend” and point at my directions, the younger Chinese passenger in the front seat translates the word and her persistence only comes in surges after that, her husband realizes it’s useless and laughs at her effort.   They drop us off in front of a bank, the clerk lady inside braves a three block walk and cold weather to help us find the building we need. The Chinese have been helpful to us without fail.

 

Shirley, our host, comes half way across the city to let us into her apartment. It ‘s brand new, she’s one of the first tenants to move into this new complex and the apartment is very charming. We have our own room and a huge window that looks out over the city. We split a taxi ride with her back to her work which is a “trading” company on the ocean. We part ways and walk about 8 kilometers along the sea. We find a cool little castle that was built as a residence and was open for anyone to visit. We walk around, the place is ours. At the top they are selling trinkets and keepsakes.  We climb up a romantic circular pillar to a nice view of the ocean. The older Chinese guy that shares it with us yells at some kids who are making too much noise while walking into the complex. People are scarce, the weather is biting at times, we begin to get hungry. The ocean front property is occupied mostly by private residences. There is little activity, more trees than would be common in Korea, and we take note that a lot of Chinese have smiles on their faces. We went inward in search of a restaurant, got turned around, walked for four hours and never saw one. I’m frustrated that the Chinese map for my GPS is offset by about 400 meters. After talking to a French girl, we found a KFC surrounded by restaurants and a movie theater, all closed. This inactivity is quite strange after coming from Korea. In Seoul, you could be blind and find a place to eat in minutes. The ocean-side in Qingdao during the winter is practically abandoned. We both sigh at the site of wine bottles sitting behind closed doors.

 

Lonely Planet rescues us with the names of a couple streets that have food. The taxi driver laughs at our shitty pronunciation and we’re off to Yunxiou Lou and Minjiang Lu, two streets with a variety of restaurants. The tables are all covered in linen and almost completely empty. We walk into one that beaconed us into it, but didn’t find their displays appetizing. I’m getting grumpy. Rachel feels weak. We sit in another restaurant that is clean, commercial looking, and empty. There are no menu’s, no pictures, no English, no communication. We show her some of the Chinese characters next to common Chinese dishes in our Lonely Planet, she doesn’t want to look at it and says “No”. We leave.

 

We see a Korean restaurant and consider it. But keep walking to find another commercial looking “hot-pot” place. We sit down, Rachel says we should stick it out even though it looks like we’ll be having meat. (She has decided to bend with her vegetarianism for the trip) … We say “noodles?” and the girl says “OK” … Great! … She gets out her phone. Beep beep beep … and says “Cabbage?” … Great! … beep beep beep … “Soup?” …. Great! ….. beep “Beer” …. “Yes!”.  The meal turns out to be very similar to the Shabu-Shabu we’ve had in Korea. That’s fine. It’s expensive as far as China goes 62yuan which is about 11 bucks. We’re stuffed and tired.

 

We head back to a convenience store to stock up on some bread, ramen, and chips, thinking that food might soon be an issue. Then we round the corner in to the commercial area of the city. Rachel sees something that she’s been looking for all day … Starbucks. We walk in and the prices are the same as in Korea … around $3.50 for a coffee. She agrees with me that it doesn’t feel in the spirit of our new backpacking life and we sadly leave empty handed. The mall next door was like any other. Gucci, Prada, and stark contrast to a lot of the things we had seen throughout the day. Then we cross the street and find out where all the Qingdao people were. Carrefour.

 

The shopping market is huge and the selection was incredible. It puts anything similar in Korea to absolute shame. The products were varied and cheap, it was four floors high and we never made it to the forth. This place was bumpin’. Everything was cheap. I bought some things I’d never had before, blueberry chips, X2 Doritos, and candied walnuts. I bought a windbreaker that actually fits ($10) and Rachel got some tights because the cold is getting to us. I want to go back tomorrow.

 

The buses stop running around 6:30 so we had to take a taxi back to Shirley’s. We met her husband and never catch his name, but he is all smiles and they are both doing everything they can to be gracious and hospitable. We take showers, I read a book she handed me while they ate, we are all cold because there is no heat in the building yet. They surprise us with a heater, but it eventually turns off, we put on layers, hats, get under two thick covers and stay really close for heat. We sleep 12 hours.

 

2-27-09

 

Yesterday was a bumpy bus ride into town from Sally’s apartment. The bus was tired. Rusted black metal inside with exposed bolts and knobs that were unlabeled. The driver would restart the engine when necessary and the engine would chug-a-lug to the rhythm of a human heartbeat. I have gas on the back of my throat and notice that the passengers with me look tired. We take that bus to a more inner-city one … it’s much more modern; TV’s inside, plastic and paint. We both get to the other side of town (pop 1.5 million) for about 70 cents. There is a pier that shoots out between jagged brown rocks that are crawling with locals looking for ocean life at low tide. Rachel and I sit on some stars and eat Doritos, much to the entertainment of the half dozen or so rotating faces that look down at us. At that moment I felt a little like a zoo animal. We walked back into the old city; It feels sparse here. Little shops do their trade and we are occasionally solicited for a hotel or something else. I smile and shake my head; Rachel keeps her eyes forward and moves on. Good cop; Bad cop.

 

We head into an area called “Old Town”, it feels just as old as every other part of town. We visit a bookstore that’s in the Lonely Planet. It’s a somber place but we find a pocket dictionary for a dollar that will hopefully help us with communication problems. After that, we luckily spot a hot looking manga character with a sword and surmise that an internet bar is near. The place is narrow, smoke filled, and beat down. The computers look like war machines, some don’t have complete cases, the kid at the counter is like 15 years old, doesn’t know how to explain how it works or understand my questions of “How Much?” … We sit down, after some monkey like prodding and poking, figure out how to turn one of them on. We write some couchsurfers and try to check our hotmail, panicking when hotmail can’t be accessed. Is it censored? We pay 25 cents to be there an hour.

 

We go in search of a buffet style restaurant but it must be closed or something because we couldn’t find the basement they were talking about. In the same building there is a place called Mr. Lee’s. It’s clean, a chain and they serve up some noodles with salty beef sauce and a chicken noodle that reminds me of the Won Ton from a Chinese restaurant in Columbus. We also put down a couple Qingdao beers.

After eating we realize there’s a train ticket sales place not far from where we are. With some assistance from the locals we are able to find it and buy tickets to Tai An. After that we use the bathroom in a very busy KFC and briefly explore an underground market.

 

We rely on the GPS to find the bus stop we were dropped off at and need to rely on the advice of a guy on the sidewalk to catch a different bus than the one we came on. Everything worked out and we end up back at the big and beautiful Carrefour.

 

We bought some more yogurt, a garlicy vegetable dish and a fried burrito type thing with various greens. It almost tasted like a big eggroll. Shirly and Nick weren’t home that night and we wondered if they were out partying or something. They came home and apparently Shirley had been waiting for us after  she got off of work. There was miscommunication the night before which is unfortunate because we wanted to hang out with them anyways but had no way to make contact. They understood what happened and after a lot of apologizing there were no hard feelings. They had brought us back a bag of freshly brewed Qingdao beer. That right, a “bag”. The beer was cloudy and had a different taste than the bottled variety. Both are good.  We hung out a talked for a couple hours than went to bed for a warmer night than usual because she taught us how to operate the wall heater.

 

2-28-09

 

Shirley made us oatmeal (which was really good) and we were able to do some internet stuff because she just got it installed. After that we had a really informative taxi ride to one of her favorite seafood restaurants in Qingdao. She told us about a lot of Chinese history, the people, hard times, the industrial push, and some local customs.

 

The restaurant was really big and fun. She ordered a ridiculous amount of food, oysters, more oysters, a pig/corn /potato stew, fried eggplant, shrimp, and clams. We washed about three forths of it down with Qindao beer, drew some comparisons between Korea and China and just had a good time. After that, we walked around a bit because they were trying to save us money by using buses. Once I realized why we were walking around, I just suggested that we split another taxi because they’re faster, and not expensive for four people.

 

They took us to a busy area were markets and masses of people were. We were introduced to one of Shirley’s friends, Evelyn. We went to a night market and got swept up in a river of people looking at the jewelry, clothing, knick-knacks, and food. Nick and I talked about computers.  After all that we started feeling hungry again and went to a hole-in-the-wall kibab place that served up  some of the meat on a stick that Qingdao is famous for. We ate chicken knees, cow marrow, chicken wings, garlic and meat, and more chicken wings. Of course, it was all complimented with beer. I ended up slamming my head against a concrete beam that was about 4 foot high. Ouch.

 

After that we said Goodbye to Evelyn and went to the beer street for some good pics. Once we had caught a cab, Shirley remembered about a really impressive open air center that had super high ceilings, upscale bars and restaurants and frescos painted throughout. It’s hard to explain but I’d never seen anything quite like it. It looked like a great place for children and adults alike.

 

That night, Nick and I played some flash games on his computer. He had the top score in most of them.

We woke up the next morning to have Shirley and Nick walk us to our taxi and make sure we got to the train station on time. Goodbye guys, thanks for everything, you were incredible hosts.

 

3-1-09

 

We didn’t have any problems on the train and the train itself was nicer than I expected it to be judging from reports I’d heard from other travelers. There were TV’s and one girl was nice enough to let me have her aisle seat so Rachel and I could sit together.

 

I did a lot of thinking on the ride. Looking at the country side of China was cause for thought. My visibility rarely exceeded a kilometer (1000 meters) for the entire ride. This may sound like a lot but it isn’t. The air pollution is worse than the reports that I’d heard. It lays over the land like a white blanket. Around the city of Jinan I would say that I couldn’t see further than 350 meters. A mountain could have been four football fields away and I wouldn’t have known it was there. We traveled for over four hours through that haze and there were a lot of repeating sites. Wood farms (small leafless sprigs lined up like corn/ I can only assume they are sold for flooring because apparently China has a ravenous hunger for wood), greenhouses, abandoned or seemingly abandoned buildings, trash, and parched soil.  In one area, greenhouses, three foot high, stretched in every direction, on both sides of the train, for as far as we could see. This site continued unbroken for over 10 minutes. Incredible.