A few days in Shanghai and Qingdao

Apart from our flight home on Friday night, our little jaunt to Shanghai and Qingdao was pretty uneventful.  To find out about our fun-filled attempt to get home, you can read my earlier post on Lucky Airlines.

Shanghai is always fun but a little pricey for our liking.  Pretty westernized in places since it has been a tourist destination for so many years.  Our main reason for going was to check out the  pirated software at a local market/mall know as Taobao.  Most well-known programs and operating systems are  available for very little money.  With a little bargaining, it is possible to get thousands of dollars of software for under $100.  Most of it can be downloaded if you know what you are doing but it takes a long time and is not always that easy.

[carousel]

We stayed at a new hostel called the Rock & Wood International Youth Hostel.   Apparently it has only been open for less than a year and is already the number one hostel in Shanghai on hostelworld.com.  Great little restaurant bar on the first floor with well-designed seating spaces inside and out.

We mostly did the tourist thing the next day..walked along the river, took the psychedelic ride underwater to the other side, and did a lot of walking around. Heading anywhere touristy during China’s big national holiday week is probably not the best idea.  Everywhere we went was crowded to the point of ridiculous,  even more so than usual.  Shopping would be nice but you can’t beat the Wuhan prices for much.

Next we headed for Qingdao on the northeast coast.  We had heard about it from friends and it was supposed to be an interesting place to visit.  The city was in the hands of Germany for a few decades around the turn of the century so much of the architecture in the old part of town is European in origin.  It has six well-known beaches, some of which have surfing so you do see the odd surfing shop around this area. 

It is known as China’s Switzerland and the coastline has been compared to that of Northern California. Yes, there are a few mountains around and there are lots  of beautiful villas on rolling hillsides that cascade down to the seaside but that is where any comparison ends.  We could barely see the ocean from the boardwalk as we trekked along because of the thick blanket of smog.  I’m sure on a beautiful day you could see forever but I would love to know how many of those days exist lol. 

Once you get away from this older section of town, it is pretty much the same as any other large Chinese city with a few overpriced foreign restaurants thrown in for good measure. Qingdao is also the home of China’s second largest brewery, Tsingtao.  It was started by the Germans in 1903 during their occupation and at one point in history accounted for 98% of China’s exports.  All the old equipment and buildings have been turned into a beer museum and it makes for a great tour.  At the end, you are led through the new modern part of the plant and can watch the bottling and canning process at work.  As a result of this claim to fame, there is a beer street and beer is available for next to nothing around town.  We were supplied with a free bottle of Tsingtao each night at the hostel which we thought was nice.  BTW, the Qingdao Kaiyue Youth Hostel we stayed at was also a great one.  It was originally an old church so had a lot of character.  The large bar/restaurant on the first floor had good food and drinks along with a pool table and foosball table. Anyway, I will let the pics speak for the rest. 

I admire how far and fast the Chinese have come in the last decades but they still have a long ways to go.  As we were walking along, we saw a mother holding her toddler as he peed into a trash container in the busy shopping area of town.  As we rode to the airport on the bus, we saw a man with his pants down to his ankles shitting on the sidewalk in the downtown area.  I don’t think you would see either of those activities in Northern California or Switzerland!  But in all fairness, the people we met were great and most of the area we were in was great fun walking around.