“Don’t worry! We, Shandong people, are honest. We don’t cheat tourists here,” said the skinny man sitting in front of the van. We all let out a nervous chuckle. Yes, we’ve all heard about the cheats and conmen and charlatans that they have in China and have been told time and again never to trust anyone here (especially if they’re too nice or if whatever they are selling is too cheap). And here we are, all 8 of us, taking up the offer of a skinny man outside the train station to take us to our hostel for just 10RMB. But then again, we’ve always been lucky with the illegal cabs that we take during our travels. Haven’t really had out throats cut before.
And it all went well. We had a cheap ride to our hostel and Qingdao was beautiful! Tree-lined avenues, bluestone buildings, German architecture, maple trees…this was not China. Winding through the streets of Qingdao, I could make myself believe that I was still in Melbourne or any other European-looking city in the west. Little did I know that Qingdao is known as the Switzerland of the East by the Chinese for its very Bavarian appearance. Qingdao was a town ceded to the Germans in 1898 and the legacy of a 99-year German rule is still evident today.
Quote from Lonely Planet China: “With its cool sea breezes, (relatively) clean air, balmy summer evenings and excellent seafood, this is where Chinese Communist Party cadres come to build sand castles, lick ice cream and dream of retirement.”
The Food
The beaches in Qingdao are pretty decent but I’m not exactly sure about the seafood. They might have the good stuff but they definitely don’t know how to steam a fish. Shandong cuisine, known for its day-to-day, simple ingredients and peasant-style origins is certainly not very palatable to the Cantonese tongue. Instead of steaming our expensive fish with ginger, spring onions and soy sauce, the fish arrived coated with a layer of slimy starch and shreds of ham. The only thing they could do to fix up the mess was to offer us a small bowl of soy sauce with a few shreds of spring onion in it. We tried to drown out the fishy smell by dipping every shred the meat in it. (The restaurant is called Xinlongyuan and is recommended by Lonely Planet…don’t order your fish there)
The Beach
Qingdao’s beaches are divided into (a) public beaches with cigarette butts and beer bottles littered around; and (b) private beaches with a 2RMB entry fee for a cleaner and calmer environment. There are lockers and changing rooms that charge you a fee for usage, and there are beach umbrellas, chairs, floats etc. for rent.
However, one thing that was very obvious at the beaches in Qingdao was the number of couples taking wedding photographs there. There were tour buses organized by wedding photographers, taking hoards of people to the Badaguan beach area. There were brides running around in their once-white wedding gowns, with their jeans underneath and sneakers on and wedding photographers struggling to control his entourage. It was quite an interesting sight. The Beer
Then again, when at Qingdao, who in their right mind would forget the famous Tsingtao brewery. 60RMB for a tour around the brewery and free beer! We had a chance to sample some pure
Tsingtao before it gets processed for bottling. This beer, at its unprocessed stage, can only be drunk fresh at the brewery as it turns bad if left the way it is. Qingdao is probably the only place that you can find beer being sold in a plastic bag. Oh yeah. ..More Qingdao pictures in my Flickr photo journal
Read about the eventful train ride to Qingdao
