Rolling, Rolling, Rolling on the River

One thing I've wanted to do before my time in China is done is to go visit a water village. There are lots of neat towns near Shanghai that are basically built around waterways (a few claim the title of "Venice of the East"). A few friends coordinated a day trip to go to Zhujiajiao, which was about 45 minutes west of town. This little village is super cool - it was built nearly 2,000 years ago. There were a few small bodies of water intersecting to form roads, with shops, restaurants and other buildings lining the sides. Here are a few photos I snapped:

We decided to start by walking around a garden at the front of the village:

Since we were in a water village, there was no way we were leaving without taking a leisurely boat ride. It was so fun! What a great way to travel. We saw some great sights along the water, and went under several beautiful bridges:

There were other buildings to check out in Zhujiajiao. We went into Buddhist and Taoist temples, art galleries and even a historical pharmacy:

One of the greatest parts of this day trip was the shopping! I picked up a few great things - stitched artwork, a great drawing of the village, a unique jewelry box and a few other trinkets that some of you may see in your Xmas stockings! It was fun exploring and seeing the crafts here. There was still chotchky shopping and junkie stuff, but there were many more stores filled with artwork, crafts, jewelry and other unique items. I'm also really regretting not purchasing either the "Congratulations for Getting Rich" or the "Propitious is Pleasant" magnets. Either would have been a lovely addition to my home:

I loved my day at Zhujiajiao! Another thing I can cross of my list.

I've mentioned in here a few times that I've enjoyed eating at a style of restaurant called hot pot. This was a big week for people coming to China from my company - we had three new faces in Shanghai on shorter-term assignments. We got the crew together and headed to dinner one night at a hot pot place. I had to laugh when one of my co-workers pointed out this option to add to our food sauces:

Yep, MSG. Sounds delicious.

It's nearly Labor Day Weekend, and I'm missing out on some fun festivities at home. I guess I got my Labour Day back in May, but it seems weird that I'll be working Monday. Have a great holiday weekend for me!

Checking out Qingdao

Before I get into my adventures in Qingdao, I'd like you to know that I survived my first typhoon! Typhoon Hai Kui was a much-talked-about storm here in Shanghai. Apparently much of the Eastern part of China experiences typhoons, but this one was predicted to be big. When it swept in, I watched the sky go from fairly clear to nearly pitch black in a matter of moments. The wind started before the rain, but then the rain came - we're talking some serious rain.

Shanghai wasn't directly hit, but we still had buckets of rain dumped around the city and a lot of wind damage. Many companies closed - mine did not. But when I got to work and saw that myself and a co-worker were the only two people on the floor, we decided maybe coming in wasn't a great idea. It continued to get worse throughout the day, so we headed home for the afternoon. It ended up being a fun night of drinking wine and eating random food that my co-workers and I had in our apartments since every restaurant and delivery service was closed. Great way to bond! Overall, not extremely scary, but still a big storm. Here is a pic of the storm from my balcony:

On to Qingdao. So first things first ... "Ching-dow". That's how you say it. This cute little (well, maybe not so little) town on the East coast of China is where I spent a weekend recently. It's internationally known for being the home of Tsing Tao beer. I'm not really sure why the beer name and the city name aren't spelled the same in English - likely an error at some point in time. Have you tried it before? I've had it at a few restaurants in Columbus even. My co-workers Erika and Jayson and I decided to participate in a group tour of lovely Qingdao, which included a visit to the International Beer Festival.

The weekend started off with the standard frustrations of being a traveler in a foreign country - airline delays, change of hotel plans at the last minute from our tour company, trouble communicating with the front desk, etc. Our front desk staff was awesome though - they were calling friends and family who spoke English and having us communicate through them. One guy even gave us his English-speaking son's cell phone number in case we needed anything in Qingdao! So nice. Just when we were starting to feel good about the trip, we walked into the room:

Yikes! Now we understood why the trip package was so affordable ...

We headed to dinner, mostly to escape the hotel room, and ended up seeing a beautiful part of the coastline:

The morning started off with us learning that even though we were to be part of a group tour, the group consisted of the three of us and our beloved tour guide Brandon. Actually that was fine by us - personalized itinerary! We headed to Mt. Laoshan to do an "easy hike". At least that was what the agenda said. After 45 minutes of straight stairs up the side of the mountain, I realized this was no easy hike. But it was gorgeous and totally worth it:

This sign definitely says, "Treasuring life and no climbing". Thanks for the tip.

We went to the beach. Despite the rampant seaweed, it was quite nice. We also were able to witness a fashion trend happening in Qingdao:

Aahh! The face-kini! The trend is sweeping the nation: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/08/20/159366234/on-chinese-beaches-the-face-kini-is-in-fashion. Pale skin is very in and sun is very out, so this is clearly the solution for how to go to the beach and get no sun. Such a contrast from US beach-going vacations!

The beer festival was a hit. We checked it out Saturday night and again Sunday afternoon. An even bigger hit? Us - the laowai. We heard this word over and over throughout our Qingdao adventure. It loosely means "foreigner", though I think it's a bit more demeaning. Like so many other words, those of us who are laowai have embraced the word and made it cool (there's even a magazine called Laowai!). Nearly everywhere we went, we heard screams of "laowai!" and fingers unabashedly pointing at us. A few people literally wanted to take pictures of us or with us. This must be what it's like to be a celebrity. This never happens in Shanghai because there are throngs of laowai, but apparently in Qingdao we were the real attraction.

The first indication that it would be a good night was when we walked into a pavillion and basically EVERY man had his shirt off drinking and singing along with the band on stage. Have I brought up the shirtless/shirt-raised fashion statement yet? When it gets hot, the trendy thing for men to do is to roll up their shirts and rest the rolled up part on their bellies. Not sure if that actually helps anything, but hey - whatever. Here are a few of my favorites from the two days of the festival:

In the last one, a camera crew came over to film the crazy laowai. I'm pretty sure I might be featured on the 2013 festival advertising - come see foreigners!

And as a side note, this gentleman captured the general feel of the place:

Don't worry - I stayed and waited long enough to see that he was breathing. Someone enjoyed their Tsing Tao a little too much!

On Sunday we also went to Xiaoqingdao Island, complete with a "Behave civilized when you visit the garden" sign, then headed to the beach:

What a great weekend! China has a lot to offer. There are so many neat cities to visit and just not enough time!

Best. Week. Ever.

Sean came to visit me last week! It was so great seeing him and showing him my life here in China. His good friend Anand came along for the journey too. I worked most of the week, so it worked out perfectly that they could go explore together. Their arrival in China started off with a ceremonious Tsing Tao toast at my apartment and a trip to dinner. Sean commented that we HAD to get out of the taxi immediately when we got to the restaurant, which took about 15 minutes, because the driving and chaos was just too much. I remember that exact feeling. When did I adjust to cars swerving between lanes, dodging motorbikes and oh, the worst of the worst - trying not to get crushed by the wreckless city busses?

After dinner, we headed to a neat bar known for their speak-easy style and unique crafted cocktails. Here are Sean and Anand enjoying theirs (one is a corn-bacon margarita!):

The next day started early with some shopping and exploring. Here we are in front of some cool greenery dragons and on the Nanjing pedestrian street:

We also checked out the city skyline from the SWFC (bottle cap opener) building. This is the first time I went there during the day, and it was awesome!

That evening was really fun. We got a group together and went to the delicious restaurant Lost Heaven for some good Yunnan food. After dinner, we hit up a few cool bars in Shanghai. What a fun night!

Here are a few of my personal favorites from later in the evening. Please note that the one of Sean and Anand climbing through public art made it onto a local website here in Shanghai! And please also note that just like in Columbus, all Sean could talk about was street meat. In China. Gross:

The next day we headed to Jing-An temple. It was unbelievably hot - maybe the hottest day of the summer:

The guys toured YuYuan Garden and snapped these shots. Take a look at the special snacks menu sign ... urinate noodles? Yummy:

We had some awesome dinners. Here's a few that were great. Look at the view from a place called Char:

Anand made it very clear to me before this trip that he intended to try some "weird" food in China. He took that call very seriously, including stocking up on the right stomach meds, antibiotics and more to make sure he'd stay healthy while downing what I believe to be disgusting menu options. Here are the guys enjoying duck tongue, bullfrog legs and snake (sorry Anand, caught you mid-bite!):

As part of their trip here, we planned a getaway to Macau and to Hong Kong. So if you're not current on your China policy, let me tell you a little bit about these two Special Administrative Regions. Macau was a Portuguese colony from the 1700s until 1999. Similarly, Hong Kong was a British colony from the 1800s until 1999. In 1999, both colonies were peacefully handed over to the Chinese. Both still exist in a somewhat-autonomous, somewhat-part-of-China way today. And they both will for a set period of time. That means that though they are technically China, they both have their own monetary system, laws, government structure, etc. for now. That also means that you have to go through Customs and Immigration each time you travel between Macau, Hong Kong or mainland China. Because we went from mainland to both islands, I had my passport stamped EIGHT times in the course of 48 hours. Ridiculous.

Macau is basically like the Las Vegas of Asia. In fact, we stayed at the sister property of the Vegas Venetian. We all played a game I'd never heard of called Sic Bo. One thing we learned - you have to have lots of moolah to gamble in Macau. The minimums were so high! And another annoying lesson learned - Macau's money is called patacas, but in the casino you actually have to gamble with Hong Kong dollars. What?! That makes no sense. Here are a few shots of the Venetian:

From Macau we headed over by ferry to Hong Kong. I pictured the ferry being fun ... instead it was choppy and kind of awful. Here are Sean, Anand and Holly on the ferry. And why does the sign say this?

Hong Kong was awesome. So great. I would love to go back again and spend even more time there. The British influence is definitely everywhere still. We walked around downtown for a bit before our next big adventure: 

Also, it was 10,000 degrees. A bit of an overstatement, but we were struggling. We wanted to check out the Peak Tram and take in views from atop a mountain right in the middle of the downtown area. The tram line took forever and people were crammed in trying to get onto the next Tram. So getting up there was not a fun experience. In fact, when the tram doors opened, people bolted in and nearly ran me over. I got to enjoy the climb up the mountainside in a standing position since all the seats were gobbled up immediately. Please check out these amazing flip flops the lady in front of me in line had one - rubber ducky!

Getting there was frustrating, but oh-so-worth-it for the views. Look at these incredible shots!

The night ended in a cool part of town called Lan Kwai Fong. We had a bistro dinner and then went to a few bars. The area is packed full of restaurants, clubs and bars, and there was some truly unreal people-watching to be had. It was a really fun night:

The next day we headed to Stanley to close out our trip. It is a great little seaside area with shopping and places to eat galore:

Back in Shanghai, the guys were on their last day. Anand had told me about something called a Marriage Market. He read about it online, and apparently it happened in the park next to where I live. We thought it would be fun to check it out. It was crazy! Older folks (mostly appearing to be grandparents of adult grandchildren) would stake out a spot and put up flyers advertising their grandchild's age, height, weight, monthly salary, interests, telephone number (!), a picture and more. These seniors would also walk around to view other people's flyers to try and find a match. None of the actual eligible bachelors/bachelorettes were at the event. We're not sure quite how this matchmaking happens - do they just collect phone numbers and pass them along to their grandchildren? Do the grandparents set a blind date on-the-spot? No clue. Regardless, apparently this was the hot ticket in town because thousands of people were up for grabs on these flyers. Picture taking is probably rude, but we snapped one anyway. Those are rows and rows of flyers behind us, and the flyers stretched on throughout the park:

I had such a fun time with my Ohio visitors. I was sad when they left - we had great experiences and it felt more like home having Sean there. But I have so many memories to smile and laugh about now from their visit. Thanks for coming all the way to Asia!