Qingdao

For my 31st birthday, we took a weekend trip to Qingdao. Before you think that Peter has become a master planner of romantic weekend surprises, let’s just say that we started out with a high-speed train to Qingdao which excited him much more than I. Certainly the technology has improved in Chinese train travel, but the ticketing system is still really arcane, and the trains still unfortunately smell of bathroom. But it did have a top speed of over 150 miles/hour (exactly 250 km/h).

Qingdao is a coastal city, home to Tsingtao beer, a nice leftover from its days as a German concession. The older part of the city has a distinctly European flair, with narrow, wind-y streets, and churches prominent in the skyline. We wandered around a bit, and stumbled upon its large, daily open-air fish and produce market, which I have pictured below. There are lots of “bathing beaches” in Qingdao, creatively named by number, which offer nice city views and a bit of respite from the crazy heat.







We splurged and stayed at the Shangri-La Hotel, a lovely five-star hotel. One of the nice things about traveling in Asia is that these luxury hotels, while still expensive by local standards, are much cheaper than in the U.S. Western breakfast in bed, that made Peter happy as a clam.

We went to the Qingdao Beer Festival Saturday night, in a part of town called Beer City. Basically you pay admission into this beer theme park, where Tsingtao Beer, Budweiser, Asahi, and a bunch of German brands each have tents under which there is a stage with a singer or other entertainment, and lots of tables filled with Chinese drunks. Basically a big beer garden. There was also an amphitheatre, and some state fair-type rides.



Unfortunately, we didn’t really have a train ticket back, and they were all sold out, so we had to take a flight back to Beijing. The only seats available were in first-class, where the two flight attendants fussed over the eight first-class passengers constantly. I sat in seat 1A. Definitely a luxury weekend.

Good Luck Beijing

There are 340 some days left until the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and Beijing is wasting no time getting ready. Currently there is something called "Good Luck Beijing" going on, where they have exhibition tournaments in various events to test out the stadiums and staff.

Peter being the baseball addict that he is, we had to go to the baseball Good Luck Beijing event. We went to the final game, between China and Japan. Japan dominated, with the score 5-2 at the end. It was a pretty quick game, for which I am always grateful to the baseball gods.

In this case, I think it was more to ensure time for the elaborate awards ceremony at the end. The Chinese audience was not the most sophisticated baseball audience (baseball is not nearly as popular here as basketball, volleyball, badminton, diving, any other sport where China either has a star, or is historically strong in) and cheered for any bat to ball contact, even repetitive foul balls. The cheers were much louder for the fuwas 福娃, the "Friendlies," the Chinese Olympics' ubiquitous mascots. They came on the field, danced around while they set up the podiums, and then medals and flowers were distributed to the players individually. We caught the Caucasian press guy from MLB.com taking pictures of the crowd rather than the ceremony also, and agreed that the crowd reaction was more entertaining.

Markets and Economics

There’s one English-language TV channel available to us, CCTV 9, run by the main Chinese TV network. Needless to say, we’ve been watching it frequently. It’s a mix of news, cultural pieces, and travel pieces. My favorite show is the economic news, as it’s the most clearly propagandized segment. It’s all about the art of reading between the lines. For example, there’s been a lot in the news here lately about the rise in consumer prices, mostly food, particularly pork. A big rise, something like 5% over the last month. The Chinese news reports about the increase in the consumer price index, in pork prices, and talks about various things the government is doing to improve the situation. But nothing about the actual underlying cause. I mean, they mention things like increased demand, and being sort of between pig harvests, but that makes no sense. The cyclical nature of pig availability is likely the same every year, and demand does not spike quite that suddenly. Really, what’s going on is some mysterious pig illness, but they’re never going to discuss that.


What they do constantly champion is the robustness of the Chinese economy. So, in the spirit of China’s economic prowess (its annual exports that now exceed US$1 trillion), it was time for us to finally go shopping for touristy things. We went to Panjiayuan Antiques Market, a giant outdoor market with everything from vases to shadow puppets to embroidery to paintings and everything in between. It was overwhelming. The things for sale were likely not true antiques, but there were still lots of beautiful things. We bought some small watercolor paintings depicting Chinese girl children and babies to put up for the impending kiddo. Check out the pictures below…

Panjiayuan Antiques Market

You Need A Shower After This Meal

Lucky for us, some of the Chinese interns at the China Academy for Urban Planning and Design (CAUPD) are foodies. And literate. I do OK in live conversation, but it’s frustrating for me that I have such difficulties reading Chinese; the whole world of the Chinese-language Web is inaccessible to me.

So they found out on some food website about this hole-in-the-wall restaurant, Wu Ge Ji Chi, 五哥鸡炽, tucked into a 胡同 hutong district that specializes in spicy chicken wing skewers. Basically that means you wander down this little alley until you come to this tiny, non-air conditioned restaurant where it turns out you need to make a reservation at least a week in advance. Wang Wei, one of the interns, had called last week, yay!

The chicken wings come in four levels of spiciness, from hottest to least hot, named 两面辣 liang mian la (two-sided spiciness), 一面辣 yi mian la (one side with spice), 微辣 wei la (less spicy), and 不辣 bu la (not spicy). Literally, the hottest kind had the spicy rub on both sides, then only one side, then less rub on one side, and finally no rub. Some sort of rub with dried chiles, cumin, and other spices I couldn't identify. The 一面辣 yi mian la was really enough for me. Really yummy chicken, but I was super sweaty and had a runny nose afterwards, despite lots of cold cold Coke.

Peter had 17 skewers total of various spiciness strengths. He’s pictured below with He, one of the interns from Nanjing University, who also ate many skewers, and who demonstrated a special skill at picking the bones very clean. I always tell Peter he leaves behind too much meat when eating off the bone. Compare and contrast their two piles after eating and you decide whether Peter’s being wasteful. ☺

They also had grilled bread, 馒头 man tou, on a stick, flavored with a bit of chicken drippings, with a lovely crunch. Peter, the bread fiend, was very fond of them. At one RMB each (the exchange is about 7.5 RMB to the dollar), who can resist?

Chicken Feed

Weekend Pursuits

All the other urban planning students here from USC and UCLA have been raving about the Beijing Urban Planning Museum, so we finally went. Apparently, every major city in China has a planning museum, but Shanghai’s is the best, and Beijing’s is among the best. The life of a planner or architect is so different in China; you definitely would never lack for work.

Anyways, the highlight of the planning museum is the scale model of Beijing. There’s a photo below. You can walk around the perimeter and it’s really detailed. We were even able to locate our apartment building. The other highlight for us was this hilarious cartoon video of a musical public service announcement about transportation. It’s about 3 minutes long, and basically a little girl sings about how it’s best to use public transportation during the week and your car on the weekends, how you should drive courteously and safely, and how together we’ll build a better, modern Beijing. My description just doesn’t do it justice. The thing is, in Beijing, and really all of China, there are public slogans everywhere. Most are quite short, some are very strident, some are relentlessly cheery, but what one is most struck by is the ubiquity. They’re just everywhere. It’s a somewhat blunt instrument, but you wonder what life in the U.S. would be like if we had more positive public service announcements. Would we be nicer to each other? Would we have more of a sense of community? Or would the slogans just be ignored or mocked?

Our other weekend activity was to go to Chuandixia, a Ming dynasty-era family village outside of Beijing. After a nearly interminable bus ride, we arrived at this village perched on a mountainside. It’s basically a tourist village now, but the architecture is well preserved and you could tell by looking at the villagers that they are still mostly one large family clan. Kind of fun to see especially given that the day before we had read about how 95 of Mitt Romney’s relatives are helping him out in his Iowa campaign. Me being an only child and Peter being the son of two only children, that sort of extended family size is staggering. The village had lots of lovely in-home restaurants, a little temple, and lovely views.

Planning Museum and Chuandixia Village

One year to the Olympics!

It’s the one year pre-anniversary to the 2008 Beijing Olympics! It’s heard not to get caught up in the Olympics fever here. There are billboards everywhere advertising the upcoming Olympics, and exhorting the local people to love it. Which they seem to do. It’s going to be China’s great debutante coming out to the world.

We’re enjoying racking up the information and crazy statistics about the Olympics prep. For example, more money is being spent on this Olympics than all the Olympics since 1976 combined. About $9 billion US plus. That includes “small” capital expenditures such as a brand new airport, 5-8 subway lines built in five years, various new stadiums including the famed Bird’s Nest National Stadium pictured below, the Olympic Village, the Olympic Park surrounding the Village, and about 30 other parks destined to function as “green lungs” around the perimeter of the city. But it’s not just the building frenzy, it’s also the campaigns to reduce public spitting (a personal fave campaign of mine, but none too successful) and to encourage orderly queuing; it’s the daily English lessons on Beijing TV and on the cabbie/traffic radio station; it’s the 2 week experiment later this month where all nonessential government vehicles get taken off the road to see what impact it might have on the constant summer smog. Every crazy detail leading up to the 2008 Olympics is being masterminded by some extremely obsessive central planner, and we love it! Even the opening time is super-special Chinese-auspicious: 8/8/08 at 8:08 pm. There are giant digital readouts of the countdown in days, hours, minutes, and seconds spread out all over the city.

Peter went to a transportation conference last weekend, where the opening session was held at the Hall of the People, off Tiananmen Square, so that’s what’s pictured below. The rest of the conference was at the International Convention Center, near the Bird’s Nest, so we took that as an opportunity to check out the Olympics’ most famous architectural piece. It’s so amazing looking. As you can see by the surrounding construction work (photos taken on a Saturday morning when work was nonetheless in full swing), there’s still a lot to do.