Qingdao

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post about the first part of my travels to Beijing and Qingdao. I have actually been a little sick this past week. When we got back from Beijing and got off the airplane we noticed something strange, literally, in the air. The airport was smoky and had the matching smell that something was indeed burning. As it was 1:00 in the morning, none of us felt the need to solve this mystery immediately. A very quiet and fatigued cab ride back to our barracks seemed much more appropriate than an ecological investigation. Unfortunately, the next few days also were smoky, for lack of a better word. Weather.com concurred. It listed the weather as “72 degrees, smoke.” Apparently, that is a weather condition in China. The smoke also made  me sick, and in the end was believed to be from farmers burning mass amounts of straw. But anyway, I’m better now.

 The Qingdao leg of my journey was incredible. In brief, Qingdao is a medium sized modern city on China’s coast.  The skies were blue, the temperature moderate, and the scenery, sublime. Qingdao is also China’s beer capital as they are home to China’s largest brewery, Tsingtao. At one point we saw a sign that boasted the city as the beer capital of the world. Ohh, the Chinese. Highlights included a tour of the brewery, a walk on the beach, and a nice hike to the top of a park where we could see much of the city overlooking the Yellow Sea. The strangest (the word “strange” is losing meaning to me and is an inevitable descriptor of at least one part of everyday) part of our stay occurred after a couple bags of beer while meandering about the winding streets of Qingdao which  has a tangible European feel as it was under German control from 1898 until 1914. As we were passing one alley way with seemingly not-too-out-of-the-ordinary Christmas lights, “Let’s check this way out,” Anna said. I was sold; after all it was curiosity in its purest form that brought me to China in the first place--even if I told you it was because I wanted to learn Mandarin and I was an Econ major or any number of official reasons, although most are true. We continued down this rabbit hole of an alley way that presented clues that this alley way was extraordinary. But it could be that we were all sharing a bag of beer with straws? no, the alley gives way to archways and  louder sounds… a hubbub. Joe, Anna, and I pressed forward with steeled resolve, and like Alice and her rabbit hole we found a bizarre world which seemed only the imagination could conjure.  

We entered what was called “Vallerium City.” This place was the strangest of strange. It was a two or three block European city replete with artificial sky. But in practical terms it was a really cool mall. There was a magician performing publicly as we entered. As we continued we saw a man dressed as a pig, a man dressed as a witch, a man dressed as a princess, and several other men dressed in ways that would not make their mothers  proud. Eventually, we pressed through Vallerium City and shook off its confusion to put some grub in our bellies. We spent a total of two days in Qingdao and enjoyed every second.