Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Last night when we finally made it to the hostel, the Australian was there. The one that was supposed to be with us but had food poisoning on the day we left. He brought with him an American. An American who can speak nearly fluent Chinese and can read a couple hundred of the nearly several thousand Chinese characters.

To celebrate the meeting of all our great, international minds, we went to a club where I had this much fun.

Today, however, we went to a park that housed the tomb of Tai Zong (Huangtaiji) who was the second emperor of the Qing Dynasty and the empress Xiaoduanwen, Bo’erjijite (have fun pronouncing those). The majority of the park’s buildings were made in 1643.

In the same park they had the most magnificent invention of all inventions. Ever. And why have I not seen them in Canada?! I present to you: ice bikes!

The other option was to try out these little chairs on blades and the idea is to push yourself along with really long, incredibly sharp metal rods. It’s grueling and it takes a while to get a hang of it, but it’s a lot of fun just the same.

Where art thou gone?

Today, at lunch, I noticed something that made me pause with my tofu-laden chopsticks midair. This realization was actually quite startling to me and managed to occupy my thoughts for the rest of the meal.

I realized that the dining room has not served bat wings in a long time.

What does this mean? Are bats seasonal? Are bat-catchers or bat-breeders on strike? Are bat nutrients really only needed in fall? Has there been a recent scare of "mad bat"? Was I - yet again - a victim of mistranslation?

Have I spent the last four months thinking I'd been eating bat wings when it's only been cabbage?!

Quelle horreur.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Today we left Dalian and headed up to Shenyang.

Funny thing, we managed to miss our train by a very significant amount of time. As in, we woke up an hour after the train left. And this was with a hotel wakeup call and the one remaining cell phone's alarm set. After getting up to answer the hotel's wakeup call we figured 15 more minutes of sleep wouldn't hurt. Two and a half hours later...

Alas, at this point, all we could do is take a bus which took a while longer than the train and was less comfortable but still got us where we needed to go.

It did, however, take us about an hour to find the hostel we were staying at, all thanks to the Lonely Planet Guide we carry around with us everywhere. The book claimed it was only about 500m from the station, but there is no way an hour and about 20 blocks translates into 500m.

Just thought I'd ask...

Anybody want a bean flavoured cracker?

Monday, January 28, 2008

Another relatively uneventful day in Dalian, spent wandering aimlessly. We went to the same park as last night because we'd read in the Lonely Planet Guide that we drag around with us everywhere that there was a chair life and a luge ride worth checking out during the day. Alas, neither were open when we went. In fact, almost all of the park's activities were closed.

This is a map of the park. Confusing, yes?

At night, during our hunt for Noah's Ark (a bar recommended by the Lonely Planet Guide we drag around with us everywhere) we came across this totally rad Nepalese bar that had a massively long list of different, funky-named, colourful shots.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Dalian is a beautiful city and we spent most of the day wandering around aimlessly, taking in the sights, going wherever we thought might be interesting. I think this particular method of travelling may be my favourite, I don't particularly like keeping to a schedule, always rushing to get things done.

Considering how this trip has been thus far (being chased by dogs, picked up by police etc), today was completely uneventful.

View from the room.

Church KFC.

Underground market.

Reader, meet Joy.

China has so many people.

These cartoon characters were everywhere at this park.

How utterly disturbing is this?

Happy Chinese Lantern Festival Day!

Today is the Lantern Festival Day. It is the first day of the lunar year that you can see a full moon (weather permitting). To celebrate, people will eat at a round table - to symbolize the roundness of the moon - surrounded by red lanterns with lit candles inside them.

Alas, the school did nothing to celebrate this day.

I, however, went to a park where last year there were hundreds, maybe thousands of red lanterns lit up. Of course, that was last year. Apparently it was a one-time-only deal.

This, right here, is Natalya's Lantern Festival Experience '08:



Aw, can't see what you're looking at? Here, let me help you out:



No? Here you go:


Yes, that's a lantern.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

We left Yantai after having spent maybe 16 hours there. According to the Lonely Planet Guide we drag around with us everywhere, there really isn't anything to do. In fact, the real - and possibly only - reason we were in Yantai is to catch the ferry up to Dalian. Adventure!

Once again after a massive lack of understanding and communication, we hop on the ferry expecting (hoping, more like) it would be the 3 hour trip and not the 7.5 hour or - good lord, no - the 12 hour trip.

We ended up being on the 7.5 hour ferry. And while I realize that it really could be worse, it's hard to keep that in mind when you're on the ferry and the sun deck isn't open and you're stuck with 3 other strange men in a tiny little cabin with a window that's so dirty you can't help but contemplate that maybe you're actually underground and not on the sea. On top of which, one of the men most certainly had a terrible case of toe jam, as his feet stunk to high heaven and back.

There were buses in the parking lot as we stepped off the boat, taking people who knows where. We decided not to take one as they weren't city buses and we didn't want to risk ending up in the boonies or another city entirely. There were also illegal taxis offering to drive passengers around for a remarkably hefty sum. We chose to bypass these as well.

We walked around in the dark for about 45 minutes, noticing that the city lights really did not seem to be getting any closer. It got to the point that the only way we could go was onto the highway. Thanks, but no thanks.

After walking back for another 30 minutes changing the direction as best as we could, a cop car pulled up beside us with the lights flashing. Apparently three foreigners with massive backpacks warrant flashing lights and a U-turn.

What do you do when you can't understand a policeman and he can't understand you? Why, you get in his car, of course. And where does he take you? To the customs office, of course.

This was potentially the freakiest moment of our lives - right next to being chased by dogs anyway.

The customs official asked us if we spoke English, where we were coming from, if we were tourists, if we were from Russia - and if not, where were we from originally? We stammered and stuttered (partially from the cold and partially from plain nerves) our way through the grilling. Satisfied with our answers, he eventually let us go without any further problems.

Oy.

Why I Love My Students

Me: "How are you?"
1st Student: "I am great!"
2nd Student: "I am great great!"
3rd Student: "I am great great great!"
4th Student: "I am... I am 100 great!"

In other news: it's the four month anniversary of my arrival to China! Un-freakin'-believable.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Today we're leaving Qingdao for Yantai. We left the hotel in a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the long-distance bus station. After driving for a significant amount of time (racking the bill up ever higher), we arrived at this parking lot filled with buses of all shapes and sizes.

We wandered in between all these mammoth vehicles until we finally found a little shack that we assumed was the ticket booth.

We asked for tickets to Yantai and theoretically this should be the easiest thing ever. I mean, you walk up and simply say "Yantai" or if you can, "Yantai, please." Somehow things got complicated, we were relatively certain they were saying they had no tickets to where we were heading. Why on earth not? Is this personal?

After making several phone calls to various Chinese friends, having them talk to the ticket seller and translating back to us, we found out that we were, in fact, at the wrong bus station.

It's times like these that the whole travelling thing feels a bit ridiculous and hopeless.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Today was relatively uneventful. We had a late start due to a late night. Well, two of us did, anyway. The third - the Brit - was down with severe food poisoning. That's two down, two to go. Who's next?

Our original plan was to go to the Tsingtao Beer Brewery and get the full tour but the Chinese friend of a friend who was to be our guide suddenly decided we wouldn't have enough time even though we were perfectly on schedule. So instead we drove by in a taxi and took pictures of the front gate.



An interesting side note: the street the brewery was on translated to English as "The Beer Street". On either side of the street were bars upon bars, breweries upon breweries, anything and everything to do with beer for about a block.

Afterwards we headed to the underground market. The perfect place to buy absolutely anything a materialistic heart could desire. Besides electronics anyway. Oh, and for ridiculously cheap prices.

Case in point: a Gucci belt and this tacky Canadian pirate belt ('cause Canada is rife with pirates. In fact pirates are a national symbol in Canada) for a total of 65RMB ($9.15CAD).



A funky watch that shows all the inner workings and mechanics, for about $12CAD.



And uber stylish long john underwear that made me feel about as sexy as roadkill.



Eventually, after eating Thai food and wandering aimlessly, we stopped in at a Starbucks where we decided we'd make a goal of visiting at least one Starbucks in each city we stayed in - provided there was one present.

And we finished the day by enjoying another night of live entertainment at the New York Bar.

Lunch

So it's back to work for me, unfortunately. I say unfortunately because no matter how enjoyable your job is, there's always something vaguely anti-climactic about having to resume the monotonous life you left for adventures and high times.

It was exhausting waking up at 7:00. It's something my body is no longer used to after being spoiled with late mornings and leisurely days. I felt old and cramped trying to roll out of bed. And it sucks to realize that I'll probably go to bed at the unearthly time of - good lord - 10:00pm.

One thing that quite surprised me though, was how much I missed the dining room food. Chinese food! I hardly touched Chinese food back in Canada. In fact, the only thing I would eat was the white rice. Not even brown rice, just white rice.

I'm honestly not ricest though... haha, get it? Ricest?

For most of the trip I ate Western food or Korean food (more about that later, there's a story behind the Korean food). I didn't realize how much I missed traditional Chinese food over the span of my 3 week trip.

So I suppose there are some perks to resuming the monotonous life.

Wednesday, Janurary 23, 2008

We arrived in Qingdao in the early evening and discovered our hotel room is a suite. Very nice. Very nice, indeed.

Qingdao has turned out to be a very beautiful city, quite vibrant. And there's blue sky! Actual blue sky! Not like around my school where it's so polluted the sky is more of a grey/blue than actual blue.
.

We spent the day wandering along the shore (the Yellow Sea), along the Qingdao port which is supposed to be the biggest port in China and is among the biggest in the world.

There were many stalls, all of which were selling the same sea paraphernalia, and all of which were desperately trying to get us to buy something from their stand.

At one point we saw three men in speedos swimming in the Yellow Sea. It was approximately 0°C. Absolutely nuts.

According to the Lonely Planet Guide we were dragging around with us everywhere, there was a Germ Warfare Base worth visiting. On our walk we thought we saw it off in the distance and decided to check it out.

After walking for about 45 minutes we came to a really steep hill that was off the beaten track, but we were determined to finish this adventure we'd started. So, up the mini-cliff we went.

Once at the top we realized we were in a residential area and that it most certainly was not the Warfare Base as we were expecting. Or any tourist attraction at all, for that matter.

Eventually we found what could have been a store or a restaurant or something. We figured we'd go in and ask for directions in our very broken Chinese.

We started down the hill and when we were about 5 metres from the driveway entrance, 4 or 5 dogs came out of nowhere barking their heads off. We all simultaneously - and in about 2 seconds - swore every curse word we've ever heard and ran back up the hill with the dogs chasing after us. One of them actually managed to get a hold of the New Zealander's jeans.

Cute? I think not.

Along the main drag was St. Michael's Cathedral.

At night we checked out a bar called The New York Bar. Live entertainment, foreign beer, fun posters, Western food? Yes, please.