Tuesday, December 1, 2009

June 2008 (3/3): Xi'an and Qingdao

The rest of June was spent going out at the Hou Hai lake ($$$), hanging around the sushi place, going to Lush all the time, going to Xi’an with the programme group, enjoying Beijing Kaoya, Sanlitun, The bookworm café with 小Laura, trying to find more information about the recent History of Beijing, and counting the construction cranes that kept on appearing from my bedroom window (for the record: 14).


Xi'an is an amazing city, but because our visit was done in a very, very touristy manner (we had a tour bus with a guide called "Hi! Mike" and it was practically impossible to venture away from the group), I fear that my retelling would be sort of boring to the reader. Nevertheless, I'll just mention that I finally saw the Terracotta warriors (YES!!!), the Wild Goose Pagoda (beautiful), the ancient city walls, the Arab quarters - and I also ate delicious food, including the reknown Xi'an dumpling place (they made special vegetarian ones just for me! :D ).

(Terracotta warriors / Wild Goose Pagoda)


(Awesomeness / Paraish represents!)


It was very fun in a way, but I was starting to be very sick of this whole "hanging out as a group of white people" tourism. Thus, the last weekend of June, I decided to venture by myself and go to Qingdao.

Most of my programme friends, including my roommate Connie, were going to a rave on the Great Wall that weekend - to which I refused to go because 1. a rave on one of the 7 Wonders? Hello, preservation of human heritage??! and 2. A rave= 就是一个白人的东西。So no, thanks.

So I was telling myself: yes, finally a weekend away from anyone I know, venturing into the unknown; on the other side of the planet. Can't meet anyone I know, can I? Well guess what? Ah. Ah. Ah.

I took a train on June 26th that left from Beijing Central to 四方 (Qingdao Station).

Qingdao is well known for two things. First (at least according to the Lonely Planet Guide), it's "German Architecture" is "remarkable" (what? I've been to Germany and let me tell you - there has been no "German-like" infrastructure left in Qingdao since the Cult. Rev. - well there was this one Church, but they were re-building its entire facade because they wanted it to actually look"German" for the Olympics. Go figure.). Second - and this is something I am pretty sure you know about already- is that it is the home of the Jewel of Northern China, it's greatest achievement since the invention of maths, gunpowder and war tactics (I'm making this part up): that is of course, TSINGTAO BEER.


(The reason why I didn't find the ocean on the first day: endless construction sites. / Whatever - I made a 小朋友! :DD)


These were the two reasons for which I picked this city for the weekend. These, and the fact that Qingdao is a port, read: BEACHES. I arrived in the afternoon the first night and got lost for 3 hours in dédale-like streets that never ended and with the entire horizon blocked by construction sites for Hotels, complexes and other Olympics-related buildings. It was even madder than in Beijing ...!!! So mad in fact, that no matter how hard I tried, I never got around to find the ocean that day (crazy, uh? One would have thought it is a pretty big thing to miss!).


(The "German" Church being re-Germanized; a bride taking wedding pictures in front of the church, i.e. in the middle of the construction site)


So on the morning of the second day, my mind was made up. There was no way I would fail at finding the Ocean again. Therefore, like a complete idiot, I put on a bikini under my Tee and managed to show up on the beach after another hour or so of wandering around town.

Retrospectively, I would say it was a pretty funny experience - but at the time, it really wasn't. So with a feeling of triumph, I show up there on this beach (the one with the Zhanqiao Pier), where I am the only foreigner, with practically nothing on, no water, no sunblock, and where I am clashing with the surroundings of Chinese girls with long sleeves, hats, and umbrellas (hiding every inch of skin from the Sun), who are looking at me as if I was a complete weirdo / an American. Whatever, I remind myself - I want a tan. So I stay there in the sun for forever, watching these little cute kids who are way too young to be working pulling out the pollution algae from the water and loading them in dozens of huge trucks. Apparently, they had been hired by the city so that the fact that the water is THAT polluted would not show for the Olympics - as Qingdao had been assigned as the center for all the water-sport competitions.


(kids picking the algae next to the Pier / clashing with Chinese beach clothing)


Like I often do, I passed out from the sun - only to wake up 4 hours later with a headache the size of Arkansas, my whole body unresponsive to mental orders sent to get up and with two Chinese Guys sitting on long chairs angled not towards the ocean but towards me, AND watching me creepily (for how long had they been doing that? I guess I'll never know). Anyways, so this is how I got the worst sunstroke/sunburn of my whole life.

I got back to the hostel and was sick from the sunstroke. I slept two hours, met this Isaac character I wrote about earlier and went for a Tsingtao beer in the Qingdao Fish Market (which was way, way more lively/messy/fun than the Fischmarkt I had seen two years prior in Hamburg with Aude - aka. from where it got its name).


(Isaac with Tsingtao Beer / Qingdao Fish Market)


I can't recall the exact details of the next day, but I do remember that it started with a mission for aloe gel the moment my eyes opened. I then left without a map and forced myself to get lost in the city for a few hours, just wandering, going in residential areas far from the center of the city, just watching women hanging clothes on wires, kids running in the streets and laughing, and old men playing Chinese Chess on low tables set on dusty sidewalks. These familiar scenes reminded me of childhood memories, growing up in the suburbs - and it also reminded me of a similar excursion I had done years earlier in Paris - getting off at Montmartre métro, but walking away for several hours from the tourist spots and towards the “Paris noir”, the ghetto part of it. When you do get away from the tourist spots, from the landmarks sites, where no Métro line and no frequent bus lines can bring you, you do find that everywhere in the cities of this world, people live the same life: it is the same women hanging clothes, the same kids laughing and running in the middle of the streets, and the same old men watching the world pass them by - in all the quiet residential streets of all the cities of this planet.


(A quiet residential street)


It gave me a particularly warm feeling, I remember. I told myself that no matter how far I was from understanding Chinese language, culture and worldview, there was still this part, this common parts that all urban humans share - the small routine tasks and habits, at the very core of human intimacy - that I could understand, and that I experienced as well.

At the end of the afternoon I went back to the Hostel again (?), where I just happened to bump into people speaking Québécois French - that is to say, the Université de Montréal programme group.

I learnt that they had been studying at Tianjin Uni for the summer and they were too, taking a weekend off from the city. They were staying at another Hostel, called the Old Observatory - which is a MUST if you ever go to Qingdao, because it’s the coolest Hostel ever (closely followed by the Edinburgh Castle one, the Hamburg church one, the Luang Prabang River Spa one and the ChiangMai spa-massage one, to be more precise). Qingdao is a city on the top of a hill that falls into the sea - and on top of the hill sits.. the old observatory. It was being repaired when I was there, but the view from the rooftop was just grand. OK, I’ll stop talking about it, because it makes me miss it too much.


(On the beach with Québécois/inside the Old Observatory)


After we spent the rest of the day on the beach again, I decided to spend the night with these fellow Montréalais Qingdao-style - that is to say, by drinking Tsingtao beer STRAIGHT FROM A PLASTIC BAG. And you know, not just the thick, milk-pint plastic bag we get in Québec - but the thin, cheap transparent plastic bag you get in grocery stores when you buy vegetables. It might look cool (see picture), but once you’ve taken the picture and laughed a bit, the real question is: how the hell do you drink it???

(Beer, Qingdao style, ft. Gabriel Dion)



(The solution to the highly philosophical issue:::)


We were still pondering on this highly philosophical issue when someone behind me screamed: “ANNIE??!”. I turned around - and it was my friend Jolyanne from my CEGEP years! Seriously, what the hell!!! I haven’t seen her in three years living in the same city and now I see her on the other side of the planet, by pure coincidence??? She just happened to have meet the Université de Montréal group that day as well, and decided to hang out with them for a while. Seriously. Jolyane and I caught up a bit and we spent the night playing pool and getting drunk with some American boys who were drinking Smirnoff - SERIOUSLY guys, you are in Qingdao - drink Tsingtao! Amateurs.

The ride back to Beijing was HELL. At that point I was feeling like a lobster, with a crust/shell of something that felt like 3rd degree burnt skin. It was pretty miserable, I wanted to die from the pain - seriously. Anybody who has been there before will tell you - it is an acute and terrible pain. But I guess Dog was not satisfied with the degree of pain I was in, because not only was I hurting so badly I did not dare to move a millimeter, the ride back was a very packed, hot and humid night train, on a hard seat. Also, I was sitting next to a guy who kept nodding off and putting his head ON THE SKIN OF MY BACK, which would make me instantly wake up screaming in pain. The Chinese people around me, that I would have just then woken up, would then look at me like I was a complete psycho, for I lacked the language ability at the time to explain to them that I had a sunburn. This happened three times before I decided to give up sleep, and vowed to adopt a vampire lifestyle from now on.

1 comment:

  1. ok..

    弟一個: Tsing tao = 不好喝
    弟二個: 333 in vietnam >>>> Tsing tao

    ;)

    i love your post! Makes me really want to go to China!

    btw.. guess who! ;)

    ReplyDelete