"Mmmmm... Beer." - Homer Simpson

Qingdao, Land of Beer!
Fresh streams of golden amber,
another round, please.

So we're temporarily unable to post picures along with our blog entries. Until that is remedied we will just have to dazzle you with our descriptive writing skills. In a pinch, I always revert to haiku... Hmm, ok that's not going to work. A better bet would be to check our posted pictures after reading this entry, which you can access by clicking along the right side of our blog page. It's titled something like "tiff and zach's photo stream", and then on the right hand side of that page click "Qingdao". This is also the direct link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiffandzach/ , after which you also click "Qingdao".


Tiff and I traveled north, to Qingdao two weekends ago, with our friends Marc and Meredith. Marc and Meredith actually went to Penn with me, and then we ran into them here in Shanghai, of all places. Meredith works for the U.S. Consulate which is also at the Shanghai Centre, so she and Tiffany had gotten a chance to know each other going to lunch together. Qingdao is only a little more than an hour flight from Shanghai, and this was the last weekend of their annual three week beer festival.

We knew the trip was going to be a good one when it started with a sign in the airport directing qualified passengers to relax in a special lounge. "Qualified" in this case meant "For the old, weak or pregnant." Chinese are nothing if not direct!

Qingdao is well known as a resort town in China, and we passed bus after bus crammed with Chinese tourists. It has a beautiful beach coastline that actually reminded me a little of Monterey. It's also known for it's hilly, tree-lined streets and European architecture. In China's history, various regions have been "conceded" to invading forces, and Qingdao was, in the early 1900's, a German concession. The ever-industrious Germans, needing a new home to celebrate Oktoberfest, quickly built a brewery in town, which has survived to this day, and now produces the world-renowned Tsingtao beer.

We got a chance to tour the brewery which was pretty interesting, and all weekend local residents and tourists were relaxing and drinking big bottles of Tsingtao along the beach and at outdoor sidewalk cafes and restaurants. We enjoyed our own dinner feast at a great restaurant where we got to pick out our seafood dishes, while they were still swimming around in their tanks! Crab season just starting and we had some great fresh crab. There was a particularly scary jar of snake liquor, I believe, on the bar, with a whole snake coiled up inside! Suffice to say, we stuck with beer.

The Germans also built a beautiful cathedral up in the hills that is visible all over town. The interior, however, was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s and rebuilt by the Chinese in the 1970’s. Apparently the bold, slightly outlandish culture of the disco 70’s was not strictly limited to the US. The interior of the church reveals the wide variety of bright paint colors available to designers of the time. Marc also tells us the image of “God” appearing over Jesus in the main mural at the front of the church is borderline sacrilegious. It does sort of remind me of the irreverent Monty Python movie, “Search for the Holy Grail”…

Qingdao is also helping host the 2008 Olympics by holding all the sailing events in their newly built facility on the ocean. We are starting to see signs of the Olympics all over China, and Qingdao's Olympic sailing facility was a lot of fun to tour.

We also visited a castle residence built by the Germans with gorgeous ocean views. In a decidedly Chinese touch, there was a "Love Playgound", complete with a giant heart teeter totter, and faux wedding aisle built into the castle gardens. Of course they charged us extra to take pictures in the garden, but for 25 cents we just couldn't turn it down!

The rest of the time we spent strolling along the boardwalk taking in the sights and enjoying the salty ocean air. We walked by a picturesque spot overrun by brides and grooms taking dramatic wedding photos. Tiffany got stopped for a picture herself, which led to the picture taker wanting his turn, and then some passerbys also wanted to get in the action. All told, Tiffany stood patiently and smiled along for about 15 photo ops with random Chinese men! It was very funny how intrigued they were. Finally, like a true celebrity handler, I waved them off, as a bit of a throng was beginning to gather, and pulled her away from her crowd of admirers.

Next time, on the blog: A trip to Nanjing with Tiffany's co-workers! Chills and thrills as Tiff and Zach sit dumbfounded on a tour bus while everyone yells at each other in Chinese for a weekend.