Mini-adventure part 4: Qingdao

Beach number 2

Qingdao; whenever I have mentioned it to anyone their first response is usually "Oh, the place with the beer!" This was definitely one of my reasons for going but not completely.

After only a few hours in Qingdao it shot to being one of my favourite places (definitely somewhere to consider relocating to anyway). I arrived into Qingdao about 3pm and it only took me about 30 minutes to find my hostel. I began walking from the train station but got slightly lost and jumped into a taxi. The taxi driver took me about 200 meters and stopped, he just giggled when I looked very surprised. Anyway, after the chaos involved with finding the hostel in Xi Tang I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was.

The hostel was a beautiful building with nice clean rooms, the only down side being for the first few nights in the hostel I was the only person in the hostel. So the bar/common room was generally locked and I was left to wander about on my own.


Food market street

I soon discovered that my hostel was a ten minute walk from the beach and was on an old cobbled street on which dozens of seafood barbecue stands would set up in the evenings. The seafood, WOW! I don't think I have ever seen prawns so big or the sheer number of varieties of crab and the different ways to cook it. The most common way, which I saw all over the city, was a sort of bread crumb and beer batter which is fantastic! I ate loads of seafood during my brief four day stay and was truly gutted to be leaving.

Another of the greatest perks of Qingdao is the beer. Qingdao is the original home of China's beer, originally introduced by the German occupation the whole city has grown around the brewery, and seems genuinely proud of its alcoholic heritage. Personally I see nothing wrong with that. On almost every street corner and outside of the vast majority of shops, regardless of what they sell, exist piles of kegs just waiting for people to walk past and grab a beer. Naturally carrying a glass or bottle about the streets would be hugely impractical, so the obvious solution is to sell beer in bags and drink it through straws. A gimmick maybe, but I still think it is a fantastic idea.


Beer museum

I believe you can guess....

One of my little excursions in Qingdao was to the beer museum (naturally) which is located at the bottom of a long and busy Beer Street. Outside of the museum are hundreds of tables and bars all selling seafood and beer. What else do you need in life? The museum is only small but is really interesting, the majority of the buildings involved are all about the history or the marketing of the beer, and then the tour goes through the current brewery. Half way through the tour I was given a sample of "raw" beer. I am not 100% certain what that means but it was bloody lovely. Then the tour continues for  a little longer before hitting souvenir shops and being given another beer. A fantastic way to spend an afternoon!

Otherwise I did very little in Qingdao; sitting on the beach reading my book, swimming in freezing cold water, wandering about the older parts of the city, eating giant prawns and drinking from plastic bags. I loved my time in Qingdao and I am seriously considering it as a future home for The Wandering English Teacher.

I was gutted to have to leave but perked up immediately when remembering my next stop is Beijing.







Mini-Adventure part 3: Suzhou

Xi Tang to Suzhou was only an hour journey by bus and by far the cheapest of my journeys at only 20RMB.

Suzhou is another ancient water town made famous by its gardens and tea houses. There are hundreds of small gardens all across the city, I visited only 2. There are loads of ponds and canal ways all through the city with more fantastic bridges. Suzhou felt a lot like a bigger and more touristy Xi Tang, lots of it looks very similar.

I spent a full three days in Suzhou and drank loads of tea. Most Chinese people I have told about my trip have asked me about the hundreds of different types of tea.

Suzhou was another truly chilled out place where I did little but wander about and people watch.

I was not so taken with Suzhou as it looked and felt like so many other ancient towns and cities I have been to. Everything was a little "been here, seen it" even down to the things you can buy in shops. I have seen most of these things in Kunming. I am convinced had I have visited here before places like Lijiang and Dali I would have enjoyed it much more. Still a really nice place to go and relax for a few days and one of the best places for people watching. My next stop is Qingdao, which has remained one of the few places that I have always wanted to visit.

Buying train tickets in China, especially around holiday time, is a pain in the neck. On the average week we can buy tickets 10 days in advance and its rarely  problem. In Golden week (October 1st to 7th) tickets are a nightmare to get and sell out very quickly. I was unlucky when buying my Suzhou to Qingdao ticket and had to buy a first class ticket. Definite luxury but much more expensive. The bullet train that runs between Beijing and Shanghai is fantastic. It runs at an average of 300km/h and is  really smooth ride, very good for snoozing. Annoyingly there are two train stations in Suzhou (something I found out after trying to pick up my tickets at the wrong one) and ended up having to blast across town in a taxi. oops!

Mini-adventure part 2: Xi Tang and Tom Cruise

After a blissful three days in Shanghai it was time to pack again and move on to the second place on my list, Xi Tang. Xi Tang is a small ancient water town about an hours drive from Shanghai. The town is so small that there is not a train station, and the bus station is an old lady with an umbrella and a box of cash by the side of the road. She was incredibly surprised to see me as I am fairly certain I was the only non-Chinese tourist in the whole town.

I had only been in the town for about half an hour before getting myself into trouble. There are no taxis in the town so I jumped into a small tuc tuc thingy armed with the address of the hostel. Immediately the guy driving hatched a plan. He began by quoting me a huge number and looked really disappointed when I called his bluff, next he tried to get my to stay in a different hotel from the one I had booked telling me that mine was closed. I had heard about this particular rouse and so I didn't fall for it. I grabbed my bag and tried to walk off, he grabbed it back and started yelling at me. I rarely get a chance to use my less-than-friendly Chinese so I yelled almost every bad word I could think of and he backed off looking very surprised. Eventually a policeman appeared and I explained all. He did not seem surprised and took over, taking some books from the hotel and keys from the guys tuc tuc and then walked me to my hostel. He was a very nice man who seemed to just keep apologising the whole time we were walking. Finally we found my hostel and I checked in.

The girl in the hostel spoke no English at all but we managed. The hostel was in a small courtyard down a long alley, had I not been with the policeman there was no way I would have found it.

Xi Tang proved to be a beautiful ancient town all set along a series of small canals with charming bridges. The whole place is really small and I walked about the whole place in a few hours having seen everything. The vast majority of the little shops and alleyways were full of touristy trinkets that can be found all over China, regardless I found a few small things that were unique to Xi Tang. Bamboo cups of all sizes being an example, I bought 2 for myself and 2 for Josh as a gimmick present although I actually really like them.

I found out fairly soon that the place is still very proud of having had Mission Impossible 3 filmed there. At several points about the town there were big pictures of Tom Cruise with backgrounds matching the one in the picture. I also came across many signs outside of restaurants saying TOM ATE HERE or TOM'S FAVOURITE RESTAURANT. I haven't actually watched the film but I am now a little intrigued.

I spent lots of time in Xi Tang having my picture taken or going for meals with the Chinese Students staying in my hostel. I think they appreciated the opportunity to escape their teacher as she was a very bossy and very scary woman. Not someone I would want to mess with (and I thought I was a strict teacher).

I went with some of the students to a bar on the largest of the bar streets, 6 of us walked in and took the population of the bar to a huge 7! I suspect we may have woken up the barman when we opened the door. A few hours in there and we were basically running the place, I taught the barman mixing drinks and the students uploaded all their music onto the music system for him. Close to 20Gb of iTunes stuff although most was KPop so i doubt it will come in too useful.

Xi Tang is beautiful and worth  visit if possible but two days there was definitely enough time.

Mini Adventure Part One; Shanghai

October the First, or National Day, is one of the biggest holidays in China so everyone gets a minimum of a 4 day holiday. from my job I get a week. Not satisfied with my limited holidays this year, I set about to extend my time off. In total I manged to get myself, with some serious negotiations and pouting, 14 days with no classes/kids/lesson planning. So I decided to visit some of the places in China that I haven't managed to get to yet.

My first stop was Shanghai, by far the easiest place to fly to from Kunming, with our new snazzy airport there are about 15 flights a day between the two places. I spent a whole week in Shanghai back in February so I felt like I know the place fairly well. I stayed in the same hostel, which I am still convinced is one of the best hostels I have stayed in in China. The beautiful Rock and Wood hostel is amazingly comfortable with a huge bar which was great for meeting people and chilling out. With Shanghai being so hot and humid the air conditioning was a god-send! 

Shanghai was a fairly quiet three days with much shopping and wandering about.  The weather was cripplingly humid and very hot . Walking a few miles in the heat was enough to reduce me to a  miserable puddle poured into a chair.

I revisited some of the places I saw in February; Nanjing Road, The Bund, several gardens and shopping areas. I got a little carried away in the Marks and Spencer's End of Summer Sale. I ended up having to buy a fair amount of more summery clothes as the heat had taken me by surprise. Otherwise with Shanghai being the first place on my mini-adventure list, I was perfectly happy to just sit and chill.  

Next Stop; Xi Tang
 

Birthday cake in the eye!

I know my birthday was a while ago but thanks to the unpredictable nature of the Chinese internet providers (or whoever it is that plays with the connections) I can not always update when I would like. At the moment it seems to be OK so grabbing my oppertunity with many more posts to come in the net few days.

This year my birthday was a school day, which is never great but I was lucky enough to be teaching one of my favourite classes in the evening. The class was nearing the end of the course so I decided to take ten minutes of the class and get a birthday cake. Typically birthday cakes in China taste awful; but the one I bought from the local bakery was not too bad. it still had the several inches of cream on top and loads of candied fruit but the sponge was chocolaty and full of cherries. And not too bad at £6 for a cake which fed 15 people easily.

The kids had been warned so turned up to class armed with a huge variety of weird and wonderful presents. I recieved everything from a teddy bear to two gold fish, they were so excited it was really sweet. Sadly the fish met the usual fate of goldfish in this country (in prticular in my house) but they hung on for a whole week first. Paul made me a small plasic gun which he had spent, according to his mother, a whole week putting together.

There is a silly Chinese tradition of slapping cake into the face of the other people eating it, especially the person whose birthday it is. The kids looked genuinly dissapointed when they clicked I was aware of this and attacked them first. Stu came into the class and joined in (I am sure just for the cake) and the kids loyal to their fvourite teacher covered him in birthday cake.

After the cake, parents came in and gave me all sorts of alcoholy presents. it truely was a profitble year. 4 months later i am still getting through the wine.

After class and cleanup we went to the usual box standard night out venue that is Moondog. It had been a busy week with several leaving parties, so my birthday night was a fairly quiet affair. Not always a bad thing.