Qingdao and soccer updates

Well, in true China fashion, the server I use for my blog, www.blogger.com, has been blocked as well as other frequently used sites such as Twitter and Flickr. So now I'm back in the States and recollecting as much as I can from the last few months. Here goes nothing!

Since I wrote last, I have traveled to two more totally sweet places in China. The one I will relay to you now is from Qingdao. Spellbinding stories abound...

The place we traveled to in the middle of May was called Qingdao which is famously known as the "Beer Capital of China", producing China's most well known beer, Tsing Tao, as well as another beer, Lao Shan. Qingdao is also particularly interesting because of its German influence (it was colonized by Germany many moons ago). After some false starts, I was finally able to round up a few people to come with me. James, an awkward and awkwardly tall Scottish bloke, Amit, and Willie. Now for some reason, there are only a few ways to get from Shijiazhuang to Qingdao directly. One is by a bus that leaves at 8:30 and 11:30 in the morning, the other is by a train that leaves at 10:00 p.m. As a result of conflicting class schedules, our only option was the night train. Now, before going to buy the tickets I knew that the train did not have sleeping cars (cars that have beds) but rather just had seats. This made James a little hesitant to come, but everyone was still in. Even when I went to buy the tickets two or three days earlier, they told me they were sold out of seats. Dumbstruck, I bought four standing-only tickets. The train takes about 8 hours so I knew at least James would not be happy. I actually thought about not telling them that I could only get standing tickets until we met at the bar right before leaving to get on the train, but I thought better of it. I sent out a text to all three of the other adventurers with the best reply being James' which simply read, "haha, good joke." Willie and Amit were down (even with Amit's still healing broken toe) and with a little coaxing James was aboard again. Come Thursday night we meet at the bar and have a few beers to prep us for what could be a really really crappy night. When we arrived at the train station we bought two small, Chinese, fold out seats and two 9 packs of big beers and had a couple before it was time to get on our train. Amazingly enough, as we got on the train and people settled down, we noticed that there were a few seats open and we were all able to take one. However we all were sitting in different places. A female college student we befriended sat next to me as she translated between an older man and me. Of course he asked the normal train of questions that I get, "How do you like China?", "What do Americans think of China?", "What do you think of your new president?". After a while, I got tired of the interrogation and fell asleep.

The next morning I woke up bright and early at around 7 or so...and guess what, still on the train! With some initial trouble, we got to our hostel. After being settled in and taking some showers, we decided it was high time to grab some lunch (with some beer, of course!) and then mosey on down to the Tsing Tao brewery.

The brewery was what one would expect: information on the founding and history of the brewery, the basic ingredients of beer, how it is brewed, etc. Halfway through the tour we got to a "resting point" where we could try "raw beer", right before it goes through its last process of being brewed. It tasted a bit different, kind of liken cold, stale beer, but it was alright. While enjoying our fine brew, I noticed a commotion to our left and several westerners (British I was assuming) were taking pictures of something. I looked again and saw that a Chinese toddler was drinking some beer. This girl could not have been any older than four years old and her parents were watching her drink beer while being photographed by a gaggle of the Commonwealth. After a while, the girl realized she was the undeniable center of attention and started to cry as her father took her away. "Man," I thought to myself, "that would never fly in the States."

At the end of the tour, the hallway opened up to a huge beer hall where we got a free pitcher of beer. Following the pitcher we downed several cheap pints. Behind me, I noticed a girl, who could not have been more than 12 years old drinking some beer. She did not have much left in her glass, so I looked directly at her, held up my glass, and firmly said, "Ganbei!" 'Ganbei', which literally translates to "dry glass" is the word you say to signify that you and your drinking partner(s) will chug the entire glass. She did and I did, and her parents immediately wanted pictures of her with me.

After this we ate dinner at a Tex-Mex restaurant and then went out clubbing. The cabby totally screwed us on the fare to the Tex-Mex restaurant. Although it was rush hour, it took 20-30 minutes to get there...but later we realized that it was about a five minute ride from our hostel. He definitely went the long way.

The next day we decided to go to the beach which was a five minute walk from our hostel. The weather was really the best, so we just walked along the beach and made a poor excuse for a sand castle. We also visited one of the highest points in the city that gave us a panoramic view of the city. It was a great view! Later on we went to a German restaurant and I ordered a huge plate of sausages with beer! It was to die for.

That was about the extent of our Qingdao trip, but we all agreed that it was one of the funnest times we had traveling in China. However, Qingdao really deserved a four or five day stay rather than just a weekend. It ended up being one of my favorite cities in China.



Other updates:

- My football (soccer) team played a match two Fridays ago. The team we played was a rematch against the only team that we have ever lost against. The other team was playing cheap the entire time, especially one or two players. One older, larger gentleman pulled on jerseys, kicked people when they were down, and pushed. After one penalty shot and a couple excellent plays by our forwards, we had a comfortable lead of 3-1. At the end, of the game, one our midfielders was guarding the big man on the other team and our midfielder simply kicked the ball out of bounds. The big man literally turned around and kicked our midfielder square in the shin, making no attempt at even going for the ball. Our midfielder, Patrick, put his hands up as if to say that he was innocent and had not done anything wrong before the big man started yelling at him and pushed him. At this point, both teams swarmed the situation and we had to hold Patrick back from beating the crap out of the big guy. Patrick is shorter than I am, but considering his muscle mass, he could've probably taken the bigger guy. Anyway, the game unfortunately ended on this sour note with a lot of yelling and obscene hand gestures from our side. What p'd us off even more was that the manager of the field (the guy we had to pay to use the field), who also seemed to be doubling as the other team's coach came over to us and said that the big guy was going for the ball and that we should not play so hard when we have a lead. He said this with a huge grin on his face p'd me/us off even more (side note: one thing I think I have figured out is that Chinese people will smile when there is a potentially volatile situation to show that nothing is amiss whereas in the West we take that as a real jackass thing to do). If I spoke Chinese a whole lot better than I do now, I would have told them that 1. We all saw what happened clear as day and 2. Next time, when we have a lead, we'll just walk off the field and let the other team knock a few goals in. One of the other guys on our team, an African said, "If I would've been in Patrick's place, I would have killed that man."

- After losing what we thought would be our last soccer match, we decided that we had to play-and win-one last soccer match. So Hugo set up a match with a student team from one of the universities in Shijiazhuang. We played the game and were giving them quite a thrashing (the score being 9-1 towards the end of the game). However, towards the end of the game, the ball was out of play for some reason and so I started walking back towards our goal when I heard a huge commotion behind me. I looked behind me and some spectator from the sidelines had run onto the field (while the game is still on, mind you), had tackled a player on the opposing team and started punching him mercilessly in the face. Everyone on my team just began to feel dumbfounded when ANOTHER spectator from the sidelines ran with his shirt off, screaming something in Chinese, with what appeared to be a knife in his hand (I couldn't tell for sure, but he definitely had a shiny metal object in his hand that he was holding like a knife). He ran after some other guy on the opposing team and a big brawl ensued for about 10 minutes. At this point, our team just walked off the field and called it a day, still very confused about what just happened. We tried asking around to see what they were fighting about but no one had any clue. We assumed it was something personal. After the game, a friend of mine who was unable to play that day called me and asked me how the game went. I told the story about the fight and he replied, "Sometimes it's a very very bad idea to lose."