Hi, I’m the will sanders blog, remember me? I am long winded and often mispelled and have been MIA for a long time now. Sorry about that. Here is a comment I just got on myspace from Amy Bugg who is frankly sick and tired and will have no more of it.

“Will, I’m becoming a blog-un-believer. Sure, we talk on the phone, but it’s just not the same! When will I get the witty, yet insightful story of your trip to visit Jane in the city where you’re not a big, white, western freak? ”

—-Amy Bugg—-

Here is your answer Amy Bugg, right now. But I don’t know if its gonna be insightful, I will instead aim at 75% spelling good. I guess I will also have to work on the grammer.

First of all I want to start by posting up an email I wrote to Marcus. I almost hesitate to do so as it sort of recovers already discussed ground here at the willsanderschinaadventure, but I found myself in a train situation which was actually a bit worse than the bad time I told all a yall about earlier. And it is a lazy way for me to tell everyone about my ride to Yantai without actually having to do anything more complicated that copy and paste. Lazy me. Here it is, I gotta go to the bathroom.

Hey Marcus hositgoin?
I did again, I got on a train with no bed, just standing room. It is amazing how people pack in those trains. The majority of them are unable to sit because their isn’t enough room for their legs on the floor. I won’t even get into the toilet. It was a major deal to make it maybe 10 feet through the wall to wall humans cruched in upright cannon balls on the floor and wedged in with less regard or consideration then their luggage. What really got on my nerves was when the 22 year old kids in the National railroad uniforms came through they hollered for everyone to get up, no polite excuse me, but the people saw the uniform and jumped from where they were and climbed on top of each other to give for these important vangaurds of dangerously overbooked dirty public transport.
It was sposed to be 10 hours and wound up being 13. I thought ahead this time and broght a tiny fold stool, but got stuck sitting in the doorway. I had to get up every 2 minutes or so to let strangers climb over my entire body and shove me in the process, which lasted for the first 5 hours of my journey (give or take, maybe 4 maybe 6). Finally a dude wanted to give me his seat as he wasn’t going that far and I think he felt sorry for me. Near my seat a mom and a dad held vigile over their small daughter sleeping on the floor. I watched that man stand with one foot on either side of her small body for at least 7 hours, again give or take. He was making damn sure everyone who tried to climb through there could see where she was laying on the floor, and his wife sat indian style on the floor craddling her head. And I was supposed to get into town at 9 and it was more like 12, and I still havent slept a great deal, and I am hungry, but my plan is to wait till diner, find a cool place to eat, eat, then go to my super 8 hotel and pass the hell out. Tommarow I will go to Dalian and find my sweet jane, and I will stay there for a few days with her. Then we are off to Qingdao for october feast which means BEER!!!!!
I have also heard they have a good sushi place in dalian, I can’t believe I miss sushi.
I’ve been thinking about T Rex alot lately. Sometimes I look them up on youtube and watch them sing. You have that record, the slider. It is so good. It has a groove that makes your soul quake in its wake like a disco in your asshole. I really miss that music.
As I am sure you can tell I am slightly sleep deprived and killing time at the internet bar.
My sister is all scheduled to spew forth progeny tomarow! Ming Tian! I am so happy. This internet bar has roaches. Not the big outside kind but the little ghetto nasty in the sink kind. The worst! I hate them!
How is your wife?
w
ps last night I started in Shangqiu in the Henan province then the train went north to Tai Shan and then turned east to Yantai all the way on the ocean. I must take a boat to Dalian, that damn boat will take 6 hours. I love to travel but damn if you don’t have to wait around whole days and nights twiddling your thumbs on occasion. anyway. I am pretty tired. it is now 4 and I really haven’t slept a lot.
tell everyone I said hello, ni hou
I love you
w
ps how are the (Dick-George Tenn Tom, playing in a theater near you) screenings going?
please send my regards
w
The only thing I want to add is that the whole night I kept looking up at the sign on the wall which said the Maximum occupancy was 150, laughable!
So that was what I was feeling in Yantai, I have since learned that they don’t give Shangqiu many beds to sell as it is such a piss ant little one horse place, and this was national holiday, I souldve mentioned that too. October 1st 1949 was when the Ancient Chinese empirial system officially made way for the Peoples Republic of China, and in stepped Mao. This is a rather big holiday week in China, hence my difficulty in procuring a train ticket.
So thats where I was, Yantai, tired, hungry, my brain still adapting to no longer being one of many human BBs packed together in a speeding rattling shotgun shell, unshowerered with still the same pair of drawers on me, forelorn and trying to remember how much of an adventure it all was. Sometimes the glass is half empty though. And that was Yantai.
After I got off the train I marched past the wall of taxis and headed to where I suspected the waterfront might be. I followed the signs and became quite lost, but found a few kind souls to laugh and point me in the right direction. The first ticket I bought at the ferry terminal was for that night at 8, which would put me getting into Dalian at around 2 or 3 AM. I didn’t realize that was the time when I was buying the ticket, they were speaking Chinese and I got my numbers in my head all screwie. So I went back and pleaded and begged and they switched it to sometime tomarrow, putting me in Yantai overnight. I was so happy until I realized that the ticket was for tomarrow at 8 PM which was the same problem a day later. So a third time I returned to the window, my self respect shot all to shit. This time I made sure to specify tomarrow morning (mingtian zaoshang) and this one was for 8 AM, problem solved. I then went to the first hotel I could find, the super 8 across the street and I checked in. It was a bit more expensive than I wanted, hell I wanted a hostel with a bunk bed, maybe a few folks to sink a beer with, but I find that there is something about spending a night in a dangerously packed hot box with hundreds of people you can’t really talk to (not in a meaningful way, not yet) that makes one less pickey. That shower felt good though lemmie tell you.
Yantai is a dull place, I wasn’t there long but I got the feeling that everyone going there was trying to get on a boat going someplace else.
The next morning I checked out and headed for the ferry which would take me to Dalian. A little geography for my fellow Americans, Dalian is on the south tip of a pennensula that hangs into the ocean into a large bay formed by North Korea on the east and China to the West. The China side is very near Beijing, near for China anyway. It is a city with mountains and beaches, I understand it is like Hawaii for Russians as it is one of the closest beach destinations for them.
Last week I was talking to Jane on the phone. She told me that the foriegn teacher at her school in Dalian was from America, in the South, maybe very close to my city, Atlanta. I pressed to find out where, and a couple of days later she called back and told me Denver Colorado, which I suppose is closer to Atlanta than, say, China. So if you don’t know where Dalian is on a map you shouldn’t feel too bad. Its cool.
The first thing I noticed when we entered Dalian harbor were the United States military ships, it looked a bit like North Korean operation overlord hanging around waiting on the go code. The next thing I noticed were the majestic mountainous islands springing from the sea. It looks like a dream city on the beach, surrounded by mountains. It reminded me of Hong Kong Harbor but somehow less impossing and scary and more friendly and quiet, and much smaller.
I had the name of Jane’s college written in Chinese printed off an email, and I began showing it to the taxi men who were barking for customers at the ferry landing. Each one took a look at my paper and turned and walked away as if I wasn’t even there. This happened 3 or 4 times. I have a short temper and it was starting to piss me off, so I split.
So here I am once again wondering aimlessly in a strange city in China with no clue which way to go.
I first tried to ask a bus driver how to get there but he couldn’t even tell me. Then a lady who could see I was having trouble speaking Chinese tried to write something for me, in Chinese. I guess she thought maybe I couldn’t talk but could read chinese charactors. I thanked her for trying and left. wondering, wondering, wondering. I found a taxi stand several blocks away and waited. Waited, waited. Finally a taxi came and I showed the driver my little piece of paper, he took one look at it and drove away without saying anything. I was starting to see a pattern.
Now after wandering aimlessly and trying taxis and the random bus I started trying to use a phone. I have no cell phone, a fact I find liberating and joyful, not having some blasted noisey ringing contraption rattling in my pocket all the damn time, so I had to rely on the public phone. In China you have to find a special place that will sell you a special card to use the street phones, so I started poking around at shops to see if they had the damn things. I had my bag on and I had been walking for a while. I started feeling lost and the light at the end of the tunnel was sweet Jane, my way cool chick. I started having the proclaimers song “I would walk 500 miles” running through my head.
So I bought a phone card, only to find out that it was a cell phone card which to me was useless and worse, expensive and useless. It took a long time but I was able to find another shop with the right card. I was now 2 hours late and it was getting to be supper time, Jane would be worried, that started nagging at me.
So I was armed with the right card, only to find out that most of the public phones (as is so often the case in the US as well) were busted.
I would walk 500 miles
Finally I found one that worked, heres the rub. In China you always have to change a bunch of stuff about the number depending on where you happen to be. I have first hand witnessed many Chinese people trying to dail the same number just to have it not work. What if you put in a zero? One may offer, or a zero plus the area code. The area code is sometimes 3 digits, sometimes 2. I don’t know. I would like to think there is a system that escapes me but damned if I know what it is. I just know that I tried the number every way I could think of and it wouldn’t work. And it was a local call, it should have been easy, but I was at it for ever. Going on three hours.
And I would walk 500 more
So some kids came up and wanted to practice their english and I told them where I wanted to go and they confirmed my theory that Janes college is a really long way from the University which is they taxis didn’t even want to fool with my laowei (foriegner, often but not always a slur) ass. These kids walked me to the right bus stop and after confiring with each other for a long time and then asked a few other people hanging out everyone agreed on the 3 buses I should take to get there. 3! The first bus took me for about 10 minutes and the driver informed me that my next bus, the number 19 stop was over there somewhere, he pointed vaguely over his shouldier and in some direction and I was off. I was at the side of a very large square and I didn’t see any stop for the 19. But in the traffic I did see a 19 bus go by without stopping. So I ran in that direction. Then a few minutes later another. Finally, (after quite a long walk chasing buses) I found the stop and waited, only to be told by the driver that I wanted the 109A. I found the 109A and took it, for almost an hour to the college. Actually the last stupid thing I did in a day of stupid things was to miss my stop and wind up at the depot and have to go on another bus going that way, but luckily her college was near there anyway. It was going on four hours when I started wandering around on her campus, 20 more minutes before I said the hell with that, and another 20 minutes for me to walk to a phone that finally worked, it rang and a very sad little voice answered. She was so worried. ten minutes later I met her at the front gate of her school.
To be the man who walked 1000 miles to fall down at your door.
odalota
odalota
odalota
odalota
yodelodel yodelodel yeay
Here comes the punchline. I just now, this minute, two weeks later, called Jane to ask her what she remembers from that day. We were talking and we realized that she had actually expected me to come in at 3 AM the night before. I had called her from the hotel in Yantai and told her the story about buying the wrong ticket for the boat and she misunderstood. The poor old thing had been waiting on me all day and here it was 7 at night, she was worried sick. I feel like a real shit heal, and I honestly didn’t know that until the phone conversation I just had. Thats the trouble with dating someone who’s second language is english, especially when your chinese sucks as bad as mine does, and I suck at Chinese. Wo chong wen bu hao.
At any rate.
It was a happy reunion. We had been dating briefly in Shangqiu and then she went off to school, and I went off to South east Asia for 2 months. I guess I’m going to have to write about that sooner or later too.
We spent the next hour trying to find our hotel, which she had gotten for us. The hotel wound up being next to a whole strip of barber shop/whore houses. Here is an interesting tidbit, apparently a barber shop in China with a purple light in the window means whore house.
Anyway, our hotel wound up not being too bad, despite its being surrounded by houses of ill repute. The room was set up to look like a fancy office of a buisness man with a huge thick dark mahogany table and an oak bookshelf which displayed tiny golden statues meant to look like phoney awards and prizes, although really they were little more than heavy nick nacks. The bathroom down the hall only had hot water from 8 to 9 pm which was sort of a drag the next morning, but all in all a great place, big TV, hard wood floors.
So that first morning we set out for the beach which was right near our hotel in the whore district. We walked along the beach hand in hand to a fair, which came complete with rides, giant fake dinosuars, and stalls which were cooking up squid and fish shish kabob, just in time for breakfast. I tried my luck at an air rifle stall, shooting baloons. They told me it was only 2 RMB and I poped 19 out of 20 baloons, pow pow pow. I supposed at the time that surly I was the greatest marksman of all time and had missed my calling as an international sniper assasin for hire, deadly with a BB gun. I then learned that it was 2 RMB per BB and that I had just thrown more money into this endevour than I would for lunch that day. total scam and rip off and the first really stupid thing I did that day, but the day was young. The good news was I had won a stuffed penguin and dolphin for Jane.
Then I discovered that she had never even seen a farris wheel, so we went up. From the top we had a great view of Dalian, the from the tall mountains to the buildings to the shimmering sea.
Then we headed for breakfast at a little place that had dumplings, no squid for breakfast I said. I put my foot down.
The aquarium was way too expensive so we hitched a cab for the museum. I think that Dalian has many such places, the one the cabbie took us to wound up being the natural history and ocean museum. It was so cool! It had big fake whales and a whole whale skeleton, and it had all sorts of cool stuff about sharks. And it had tons and tons of really cool looking fish floating upsidedown in jars which was creepy. The basement was full of cool fake dinosuars. They also had the dead body of a woman who had died 250 years ago and been frozen, it really creeped out Jane, I thought it was cool.
Then we walked for a while and found our hotel.
For diner Jane said we should have snake, the dish Dalian was famous for. I said first I wanted a sandwich and then snake, as I was hungry and Dalian has stuff like sandwiches. So we went to a subway, which was so awesome and I had tuna fish the first tuna fish in 10 months, thrilling! We then went looking for snake.
Across a busy street lead to a narrow alleyway jam packed with stalls on either side. Smoke bellowed the scent of barbeque meat of every concievable animal amid screams from barkers hungry for buisness. Fruit, produce, and noodles too, soups and cookies, but mainly meat on a stick, I wondered how long it would take to hit upon the saught after snake. Jane started buying babequed squid on a stick, followed by babaqued chicken head on a stick, but still no snake. After she picked up what I guess was pork I asked Jane about it and she laughed, she had been trying to say ’snack’ but it came out ’snake’. Snack was a literal translation of the word for such barbequed delights. So no snake, just barbequed squid and chicken heads, which made me a triffle upset with myself that I had eaten first and not saved room.
The next day was pissing rain. We went to a large square, wandered around for a bit and got rained on. We then went to the ferry to buy tickets back, then to the train station in hopes of buying a ticket leaving Qingdao so I wouldn’t get stuck in cattle class again on my way home. Of coarse you can’t do that, not in Dalian. For some reason you can’t buy a ticket for any city but the one you are in and even then only five days in advance. This makes next to no damn sense for a country as dependant on trains as China, but I do not aim to get started on that rant presently. I’ll just say that I couldn’t buy a ticket and that made me say “grrrrrrr” and “grumble grumble”. Then we went shoping in an underground Korean mall, which to me feel a bit confined and claustrophobic, but it was interesting. Jane found a small comb she liked with a traditional dress Chinese lady as the handle so I bought it for her which made her happy. We took photos in a photo booth, and wandered around. I looked around for a baby present for my sister, see, that was the week my niece was due, Emma. And I was so excited, I was checking my email the way Rainman checks on the peoples court in hopes that there would be news, but on that day no news so far, also no good stuff for babies in the underground Korean mall. Then we went to a foriegn language bookstore and I picked up a collection of Hemingway stories. Most foriegn language book stores are aimed at kids trying to learn english so their selection is pretty much the list of things I blew off reading in highschool, but I’ve always liked Hemingway.
Outside the bookstore I suggested pizza for diner, trying to get my fix. Jane had never had pizza, can you believe that? so we went to a pizzahut nearby, which in china actually passes for a fancy sitdown piano in the corner kind of joint. They had a waiting list, I scoffed. Right next door almost we found an American cafe that had pizza, not crappy oily pizzahut pizza either, this was like pizza from a dream. I was dazzled by the way the cheese stretched from the slice to my mouth, I had almost forgotten that good pizza is supposed to do that. We got a medium peporoni and one hawaian. So as it turns Jane does not really like pizza, its too strange for her, I have been in China long enough to sympathize.
The plan for the next day was six hours to Yantai by boat, then maybe four or five more by bus to Qingdao, an all day affair.
A little while ago when I talked to Jane I told her I was writting this post. In addition to the realization that she was waiting for me all day in Dalian, she also told me that I had to include the lady on the boat to Yantai, I promised that I would. Hell, no way I would have left her out anyway.
Now I was the only westerner on that boat, it was clear and obvious, and many folks were starring, I am used to that. To make matters worse, there I was with this amazing beautiful thing from China. Prettiest girl in China as far as I can tell, so we were getting it good, but like I said I am used to it, it isn’t even a thing anymore, honest. That’s just my life. When I go home I will have to seriously adjust to not being starred at. So Jane and I sat along the wall and she practiced her english with me, I had her read me the short story ‘the killers’ by Hemingway which they based the Burt Lancastor movie on. Hemingway is good for teaching, his language is understandable, but usually with a deeper meaning. Eventually people lost interest in Jane and I, but we both noticed that a woman accross the room was still starring at us, and had been for some time. She was obese and wore her hair pulled back in a tight bun. She had an evil frown, and she was giving us a chilly evil eye. What I do when in this situation (as I am in this situation often) is I smile and wave at the person. This usually tends to embarrass the person into realizing that they are starring in a nonagressive way, and usually they wave and laugh at themselves just a little and leave me alone, I laugh too, with a kind smile, and everything is cool. I waved at this lady and for a second she didn’t move, so I waved and said hello (ni hou) and she smilled and waved back, but then she frowned again and kept starring with the evil eye, and the evil frown. So we went back to Hemingway for a while, picking each sentence apart. When she finished the story I kept reading to myself and she did the same from her book. Every once in a while I looked up and she hadn’t moved, she still sat in the same chair with the same demonic stare. I sketched a picure of her and showed it to Jane and we both laughed. I suggested we move to sit on the deck outside, which we did. We sat and watched the ocean go by for maybe an hour, maybe less. We saw giant caps of jellyfish all over the place just under the surface, it was so amazing. When we went back inside and sat down the evil eyed lady stood up and walked over. She was now standing right behind our chairs starring, this was getting wierd. I gave the lady a look and she went and sat down again, but she kept looking. For a while I pretended to take pictures of Jane but was actually aiming the camera past Jane’s shouldier to get a shot of the lady but I couldn’t get her in focus. Finally Jane decided the lady was suffering from some kind of mental problems, which made sense to me, we just ignored her for the rest of the trip. But as when we arrived she walked over and said to me “I’m leaving” (zou le) to me. I nodded and smiled. Later Jane was laughing at me about it.
In Yantai we stopped for lunch and had them box it up for the bus ride. On the bus, the mean lady made us throw out our lunch and told me I wasn’t allowed to take off my shoes for a five hour ride, even though I had wet socks and shoes from the rain. I got all mad about it, Jane thought I was being silly. So I calmed down. I did take my feet out of the shoe and and kept just the toes in the shoe iteslf and rode that way in full view of the driver, just to be an ass. Jane thought this was very silly too.
Flash back time here at the willsanderschinaadventure, going into the time machine, that means its time for the time machine sound
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHWWWWWWWWWWWAP!
That is how my time machine sounds.
A week before I left for this trip a dude at the Shangqiu college warned me that it would be jam packed in Qingdao and to get my hotel booked on the internet as soon as I could, national holiday don’t cha know. I agreed and after a few more days of lazy pointless procratanation I was on the job. It took a full day of surfing the internet but I finally found one hotel that wasn’t too expensive and booked it. This was one thing less to worry about, which made me happy.
So we got to Qingdao and the sun was already down. Jane called the number the hotel had emailed me and was discussing price and that sort of thing. Then she asked for directions and thats when the fun began. The sneaky so and sos had said Qingdao on thier websight but had failed to mention that they meant the Qingdao region not city, and they were actually 2 hours away by bus from the city of Qingdao. This was alarming news for me indeed as I had already called them twice (once by myself and then again once with May speaking) to ensure and reesure that I had a spot there. The sneaky guys, they were so sneaky, oh so sneaky, it made me mad.
And here we were, in Qingdao, which is in the top 10 places for tourists to go in China if it isn’t on the top 5, in National holiday, with no fucking hotel, tired from travelling all day, night time already. An adventure I tensly assured Jane through grit teeth.
First we tried the old lets try this random bus and see what happens method, always a stupid idea, always seems good at the time. It wound up dumping us a scary alley way with no light or hope for survival. As we were getting on the bus Jane’s face bumped into my backpack and I hit her in the eye with the wood footstool I had straped on the back of my bag for the train, so now we were lost hopelessly, no hotel, and I had given my girlfriend a shinner.
So we got on another bus at someones advice, and Jane struck up a conversation with a girl who told us where to go, first we went past the big bar street which was clogged with thousands and thousands of people, it was an endless sea of heads, now I was getting really tense about finding a place to lay our heads. We got off the bus in a huge square where the other passenger had told us and immediatly we could see that these were the five star posh hotels that we could never even think about affording. We even ducked into a place that had only one vacancy left, which costed 800 RMB a night. Trust me that is even a lot of money in America. Jane was so cool the whole time, she kept saying not to worry, we could always just sleep on the beach. I believe she would have too.
Outside the hotel a dude came and started fast talking us, with much trepidation we climbed into his car, off to a hotel. The way it works is they usually get a slightly higher price than usuall and you are paying extra for his comishion, so our room was 120 RMb the first night instead of the 110 we paid the rest of the time, which was fine. The room was ok too, it had 3 beds and we pushed 2 together. The problem with that room was the mosquitos. It had sqwished mosquitos all over the wall and when I woke up I had like 10 bites.
I hate them.
Qingdao is a beautiful city. It was owned by the Germans for one hundred years, until recently I think and it has German architecture everywhere. It is also where they make Tsingtao beer, sort of like the budwieser of China but a little better. You can get it in the states.
So the next day was spent wandering the streets of Qingdao. First we went to a huge catholic church which sits atop a hill overlooking the city. It was quite impressive and Jane had never been in a church before. We looked at the statues and the plate glass windows and I found myself explaining what little I could remember from whenever it was I learned all that stuff about Jesus and mary and Joseph and all that. The atmosphere in there was interesting too, it has sort of been converted into a museum of catholicism for gleeful noisy Chinese who were taking tons of flash pictures of the confessional and the pews and whatnot. I tried to explain what it was like for me going to a mass for a catholic friend whenever they die or get married. Jane seemed to think it was cool so we stayed there for a while. Watching her looking around wide eyed reminded me of the first Buddist temples I went to here in China. It seems that there is a power that resonates from a place like that, an ancient temple or Church. Just like a rocknroll club has a mystic vibe of something that you can close your eyes and recognize but not touch, when I was a kid I would find it at comic book stores. Like the lingering antiseptic funk of a hospital, or the misery that floats around anywhere near a jail or funeral parlor. I was recently at one of the killing fields in Cambodia, and the second I walked into a cave, with no knowledge that this was where the Khmer Rouge had done so many bad bad bad things I knew it, I swear the air was different. I stood there all alone and I knew that something must have happened there. Later when I left the mountain a Cambodian kid told me that sure enough that was the spot. It was something far feeling beyond sight/sound/touch/taste stuff. I am not sure where this came from but I honestly feel that some holy sacred places carry something and even least sentient beings are atuned to. Its a force which demands to be recognized. This Church had that power for Jane, I have been in Catholic churches before so it didn’t get to me so much, but I could see it on her face. Her face is all purdy.
We kept wandering the streets her hanging onto my arm, cobblestone winding up and down hills, you would swear an oath that you were in Europe if you didn’t know any better.
The next order of buisness as far as I was concerned was to find Jane a pretty bathing suite and to go swimming. Jane had not only never been to the beach, she can’t swim. So my plan was to find a pretty bathing suite for Jane and to teach her to swim. Well we looked and looked and didn’t see a bathing suite, pretty or otherwise. I was getting sort of bummed about the whole thing when Jane suggested we just go walk on the beach for a while. We went down to where the rocks were sticking up out of the tide and took off our shoes. We went out along the rocks and Jane decided that the only thing to do would be to jump in with our clothes on. She was wearing a skirt and shirt, I was in the official willsanderschinaadventure adventure clothes, (tee shirt, jeans, ski cap), so I lost the jeans, put my wallet and keys in the backpack with my pants and went in after her in my boxers. luckily I was wearing a fairly thick pair of boxers with the flap you have to reach into, not the hole where everything hangs where it may. I am a flap man. We soon found that the sharp rocks in that area along with the undertow made for stupid idea swimming, Jane being a novice, stupid idea swimming even while sober is a very stupid idea, so we climbed out soaking wet and walked to a nearby beach. Beaches in china seldom seem to have swimmers, this one had droves of people on the shore looking out to the waves but not a single swimmer until we got there. So now maybe a hundred Chinese folks were watching with dazzled eyes and gaping jaws as I tried to teach Jane to swim in my underwear with her fully clothed, the strangest thing any of them had ever seen apparantly. I have full confidence that some of them are still telling the story and have hopes that maybe others still plan on telling that story for the rest of their lives, maybe embelishing details and adding things as the years pass, maybe not. I can always hope.
Alas, I tried everything I could think of but no dice. Jane was not learning to swim that day, besides it was a little on the chilly side. Jane started getting goose bumps and shivering so we got out, and toweled off. I have will not give though, she will swim and I will help her, it will just have to be another day, thats all.
We went back to the hotel and got all showered and dry and warm. Then we made an attack plan. Jane was translating the map for me and found the beer street. On the beer street was the Tsingtao brewery /slash/ museum. Attack plan found.
The Tsingtao brewery costed an absolute arm and leg to get in, but what the hell, its beer. Most of it turned out to be sort of a drag too, blah blah blah a bunch of comercials for Tsingtao, blah blah blah we have the finest beer because we make it real good blah blah blah. There were then some interesting bits about the history of Qingdao and the Germans coming in, but not as much as I had hoped for. They had cool stuff about making beer early back in the day, they had the big wooden vats and kegs. one of the coolest things was the history of beer itself room, did you know they were drinking beer in Sumeria? I didn’t know that! They were according to the Tsingtoa museum, they were drinking big toasts to the evil capricious gods of ‘my home is flooded again please spare my children’ but it was a start.
Then at the end of the tour we got a pitcher FREE! Well, not so much free because it cost so much to get in in the first place, but it felt free at the time. Then we went to a beer resturant, I was really hoping to find something in a german beer, but this beer street wound up some kind of Tsingtao brewery street. So we had a big chinese meal which was good. Jane was being a good sport about me trying to get my western fix, I felt like we should be trying the local food as well. Plus I sampled many different Tsingtao beers, they actually have a dark beer thats not half bad.
That night we took a bus back to the beach near our hotel. We got more beer and went out to the rocks that stuck out of the water and looked at the ancient pavillion across the water, the pavillian on the Tsingtao bottle. And we watched the waves and we talked and we laughed and it was nice. The waves started getting higher and the tide was coming in so we had to leave, before we did so I told Jane about pouring out beer for friends that have passed and we both poured out beer for my home girl Jewel who we had lost the week before,
I miss you and rest easy, Jewel I wish I had called you when I still could.
We escaped the tide but only just. And we went up to the board walk that lead out to the pavillian and we sent a red lanturn with a candle in the middle up to the sky, and we both wrote our wishes in marker on the side and both our wishes wound up being the others happiness, written in two different languages the same wish for each other and we watched it sail up to the night sky and shrink until it was a tiny faint red star a million miles away. And I guess we went home to the hotel after that, I guess thats what we did. And that was easily the best day of the week and it is in the running for best day in China.
What did we do the next day? Oh, ok yeah. I remember now. Jane wanted to go to climb a mountain but we had to go get the tickets, one for her to go back to Dalian and one for me to go to Shangqiu. That was an all morning affair, of coarse they have 10 different places to buy bus and train and boat tickets all within a city block radius, all tucked away hidden. We went into one to ask a guy at an information counter and some dude in a phalony uniform tryed to push us back through the gate but the information guy helped us just the same. Finally we found the right place and learned we could get all the tickets there, which was cool. Jane still couldn’t go by boat from Qingdao to Dalian, she had to take the bus to Yantai. I also found out about the sleeper bus, a bus with beds. I jumped at it, I am on a train hiatus. Fuck trains.
After all that we realized that the mountain was too many hours away to be feasable, so we spent the rest of the day in the hotel. That night we went to a place that had beef and lamb and pork on a stick. Jane decided she could outdrink me, I begged her not to try, but I wound up nearly carring her into a taxi less than an hour later, the poor old thing.
So then the next day we got up early and went back to the bus station and said goodbye. I looked in her eyes and realized that with my contract ending in December I may never see her again, I couldn’t leave it that way. And I watched her get on the bus, and the rest of the day I conspired to find a way to see her again.
So for anyone who doesn’t know already I am trying to get a job in Dalian and stay for six months after my contract here ends. I feel like I have to see this thing through.
PS
The sleeper bus is too short for a Chinese person and for me I spent the whole ride with my legs bent in wierd positions. It was like trying to sleep in a love seat, still better than the ride over, you understand.
PPS
Emma was also born that week, she is a beautiful baby and I am so so so happy! I will be the coolest uncle just wait and see!

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