The lush island

Qingdao (青岛, literally Lush Island) is a cute little German-style town on the seaside. It was invaded and occupied by the Germans from the late 1800s until the first world war, at which point the Japanese took over, then the Chinese, then the Japanese again, and finally the Chinese post-WW2. During the time it was occupied by the Germans, they built roads, sewers, shops, etc. and gave it some of the best public services in Asia at the time. They also built a brewery—Tsingtao (see? Qingdao/Tsingtao, same same but different), which is still the most famous brewery in China, domestically and internationally. Although the Chinese clearly see the German (and, subsequently, Japanese) invasion as subjugation by a foreign power, it’s one of the primary reasons that Qingdao is so nice to visit and so prosperous today. 

Actually, for those who have been there, it reminded me a lot of the Gold Coast in Queensland—tall shiny buildings, huge public areas by the seaside, people are relaxed and the weather is humid from the sea. Amazingly refreshing from the dirty, smelly and very flat cityscape that is Beijing. 

We went there for the international beer festival, which I expected to be a tiny little expat wank. But, as it turns out, it’s a huge Chinese tourist event, which attracts almost 4 MILLION people per year. On the day we were there I reckon there would have been HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people. We were fooled into thinking the half-kilometre square at which we entered was the extent of the festival, which resulted in a very long and confused phone call to our friends when we were trying to find each other.

As the day wore on, we uncovered more and more different parts of the festival—beer tent after beer tent, rides (horrendously expensive), several hundred food stalls that were ALL selling the same chuanr, incredibly kitsch mouse ears/masks/bracelet things, pole dancers (in the middle of the children's rides!), character parades, contortionists, food sellers dressed in drag, half naked men jumping on tables in response to an African man on stage yelling 中国好不好? (Is China alright?). What is it with Chinese men deciding that shirts are optional as soon as the temperature goes over 30 degrees?

The sheer volume of the festival, everything about it, was astounding. It's hard to describe how it feels to be in the middle of a sea of sweaty, drunk, loud, enthused, mostly male Chinese. To be honest, all the lights and sounds and people pushing was a bit too much for the senses. What got us in the end was the BLARING music from every direction. We are a group of young people who enjoy going out for a drink and seeing some live music, but seriously, the noise from this place was unbelievable. I honestly don't understand why it is that Chinese people must have music up just loud enough to make the speakers start crackling, no matter how large they are. Anyway, end of rant. Let's just say it was definitely a cultural experience—definitely worth one visit, but I wouldn't be going back without earplugs.

Notes for travellers: 

• Fast train Beijing to Qingdao is 4.5 hours, 315RMB, very comfortable. They book out quickly, esp on weekends for events like the International Beer Festival, so get your tickets as early as possible within the 10 day window allowed by the ticket sellers.
• We stayed at Old Observatory Hostel. Pros: great service, chilled out vibe, amazing rooftop bar with Western food and good beers and cocktails. Cons: beds are super hard, it's noisy because of the type of people who stay there, it's a taxi ride away from much of the seaside. Overall would go there again.
• International Beer Festival: Travel from the old city area is about 15km (40-50 kuai in a taxi), entry is 20 kuai , beers are 20 kuai each minimum. Beware almost everything inside is relatively expensive, and it's hard to get decent food unless you love chuanr.

3 days in the life of a Chinese workplace

DAY 1: Asked counterpart if 9am meeting was acceptable. She says "10am is better, 9am too earlier". Then night before she texts me:

 "I'm in the suburb of Beijing .maybe I can't arrive at our office on time in tomorrow morning .could we meet at half past 11.I would like to treat you a welcome lunch first ,after that , we can talk about our working.how about that?"

I think this is a good situation. Plus I need to register myself at Big Brother foreigner registration in the morning, which takes 1.5 hours longer than anticipated of painful language barrier-ridden queuing. Arrive at 11.30, counterpart is running 15 minutes late. Meet counterpart at 12 midday and head to lunch. Yes! More fabulous food - this time salad (surprisingly similar to how Mum makes it), silken tofu soup, eggplant fabulousness and red bean sticky rice that is like crack cocaine on my palette. No of course I cannot pay, this is a welcome lunch! Counterpart takes me for a tour of the office, fills out a form in Chinese and realises she should have told me to bring my laptop. She tells me to go home and enjoy the lovely—only moderately smoggy—afternoon. Also to pack my bags for a work trip to nearby Shandong province starting tomorrow. Sum total 2.5 hours of 'work'. 

DAY 2: Supervisor rings my mobile a 4.56am. We are flying out to Dongying and he will pick me up in 20 minutes. Sleepy ride to the airport ends in breakky at the airport of Hong Kong style soup with dumplings and noodles. First chopstickful lands on my nice clean skirt, to my supervisor's immense amusement, then I realise my cup of water is freshly boiled only after pouring down my throat (reminder this is an indecent hour of the morning). After a very pleasant flight, we arrive in Dongying at a chandelier-laden hotel with the biggest rooms I’ve ever seen. I'm told that today is for xiuxi (rest) in the king-sized bed. Ok, resting it is! Fresh pair of clean men's underwear is in the bathroom but no iron? 

Phone call at 11.30 announces someone is taking us to lunch ... now. Ok! Clothes back on. Drive into a gated series of caul-de-sacs. What? Double storey houses with white picket fences? Are we in country USA? No it's a Chinese Western-style community, which apparently is a sign of wealth. Hauled into someone's living room, eat something that tastes like peanut and sugar but looks like a spider web wound into a little ball with chunks of tasty dead fly. Not too bad, actually. 

Get up again, we are going to pick caomei (strawberries) in the garden … I’m not sure why. Then back in the car (aha! We are not eating at the obsessive gardener's East-meets-West house) to a local restaurant. A man who looks like Santa crossed with Genghis Khan motions to us with his long stick. I realise there is a big plastic pool of fish next to him—this is a nice one? He's asking me. I smile politely and then the next minute BAM he's clubbing the fish with a rolling pin. Surprise surprise, carp for lunch. It's cooked in a hotpot in the middle of the table, boiled in front of us with Chinese cabbage and tofu. The waitress comes to stir the soup and carries a bowl of yellow dough. She is rolling it up into balls and slapping it to the side of the pot so that they become lovely carp-scented steamed maize breads. My suspicion is the hot pot is actually supposed to be spicy and they have left out the chilli (as a token gesture for the foreigner) which is why it's kind of bland. Two men eat almost a whole 40cm fish while I have a whole one piece before it becomes too much. Then back to hotel to xiuxi some more. 

Another phone call heralds dinner time! Walk into a private room hoping this will be a nice cosy end to a rather strange day. Instead, we find eight men already at the table standing, smiling, and waving us into three special seats they have allocated to us. I realise my boss is the distinguished guest of a group of local politicians. Wishing I read over that chapter on Chinese banquets! Oh memory, why do you only store useless pieces of information? Let's think: host faces door, 2nd most VIP to his right, 3rd to his left. Sit where told. Don't eat or drink until the host does. Only drink when toasted. Be careful of the dreaded baijiu. Cheers with lip of glass lower than the other person's. 

Food keeps coming out and I don't get a chance to eat because I have to stand up every 3.5 seconds for another toast. And for some reason I have to drink baijiu while everyone else gets wine. No fair! Ok so finished toasting, now I can eat ... oh everybody is getting up. What? We're leaving? It's only 7.30 and after all those shots I'm slightly more than tipsy. Back to dark room. 

DAY 3: 1am get to sleep dehydrated—turns out baijiu is not easy on the stomach. 2am wake to sounds of excited or angry female voice through the wall. Think my colleague may have a mistress ... struggling to accept cross-cultural difference while half asleep and suffering from hangover. Alarms screams breakfast. Then we meet last night's guests in the foyer and three black cars turn up. Incidentally, black is a bad choice in the most polluted country in the world, but it's a national obsession. The local politicians and their buddies get in the black cars in a fluid organised motion according to a set of rules that is plainly obvious to everyone but me. 

An usher quickly shoves a small flower onto my lapel before I get shuffled into a large lecture hall. My boss is on the panel in front of me, and I am seated in the front row. In the middle. By myself. Nobody seems to care that I can't actually read or understand anything the panel is saying. I don't even know the name of this conference or what it's about. Each panel member gets up and says about 30 seconds worth of (what seems like) stirring but serious speech. Then the audience claps for barely a few seconds after each speaker—for some reason this makes me uncomfortable, as if there were some international standard for applause that is not being met.

My boss is urgently motioning for me to get up and leave. I realise the introductory speeches are over, or there has been some hiatus. I leave the lecture hall but my boss stays in there to give his lecture. Now I'm stuck with a group of local officials who do not speak English and can't really understand why I'm there. Or maybe they do, but I don't? I find out shortly that we are doing a tour of some buildings—a university dorm, a LED light factory, a 'software park', a real public park, and some government offices. Each place has a dedicated officer with a headset and speaker to provide the tour. The head honcho seems to be disinterested, and I don't really blame him. He likes the 3D televisions, though. Then we are abruptly sitting at a conference table drinking lü cha (green tea). The two sides of the table—one side with local Dongying officials, and the other side with officials from somewhere else nearby—take turns in giving epic speeches while everybody else sits in silence, trying not to fall asleep. My boss (returned from the abyss) tells me they are listing their city's achievements. What the?

Then to lunch. By this time I'm savvy. Not the stunned mullet I was yesterday. Oh yes, you can't fool me, I know what to expect. I can do this whole banquet thing, you just watch me.

Walk into the most ornately furnished dining room I've ever been inside. A whole new set of people here. Head honcho from this morning is not sitting in the host seat—he is number 2 on the table this time. The host from last night's banquet is not even in a position of honour here, he's just one of the participants. Realise there is no lazy susan to distribute the meals like any other banquet in which I have participated. Waitresses start bringing out individual meals and Mr Host turns up. Lots of standing and bowing and chasing others' glasses to the floor trying to get my glass lower than theirs. Mr Host is apparently the 2IC for the whole city, which is why everybody is suddenly silent, solemnly listening to his ranting. More individual dishes come out—soups, sea cucumbers, things that look like prawns but are only a centimetre long, vegetables, fruit, unidentifiable pieces of fish. I lose count when the whole crabs start coming out. I have to ask my boss how to eat it—how embarrassing! Luckily you don't have to do that one with chopsticks.

Then Mr Host gets up and moves to a non-honoured guest seat. What's going on? Boss seems edgy, he tells me the 'most important man' in the whole city is coming to dine with us! More toasting, more standing up and sitting down, more listening to long rants from slightly tipsy politicians in Chinese. I wonder whether it's acceptable to just get up and go to the bathroom? Nobody else seems to be doing it, or maybe they're just subtle. Where is the bathroom, anyway? Did I ever learn how to ask it in Chinese? Maybe that waitress will tell me. Oh! Everybody is up again. Time to go. Shake hands with the 'most important man' and get shuffled into a car, belly aching and head reeling with new information.

What the hell just happened?