In the morning we were given an option. We could have the morning to ourselves to shop, go back to bed, or do as we please, or we could go to a local university for a calligraphy lesson. After the near-miss calligraphy lesson we had the day before, I was hankering for a good ol’ fashioned calligraphy lesson, so of course I was going to that. And oddly enough, only about half the trip wanted to, most of which were people from my bus – not so oddly enough.
So we take the trip somewhere in Xi’an to a university that I cannot identify. The university is completely deserted. When I say that there is nobody around, I mean that there is not a soul on campus. And we go into one of the buildings on campus, which is also completely deserted. This is a picture of the hallway that the classroom we went into is located. Keep in mind that the flash from my camera is the light that you see on the walls.
We walk down that spooky hallway waiting for an axe murderer to kill us all, but we make it into a classroom and all sit down at our own desk. The desks have a thin piece of paper sitting on top of a piece of cloth, an ink well to share with the desk astride, and a large brush. This brush has bristles much larger than anything I’ve ever used before, and I’m expected to make precise characters with this behemoth.
And as we all sat like good little students in our desks, this environment was the most familiar educational experience I’ve had all semester. Going to school on a ship is never normal. It wasn’t at the beginning of the trip, and as we’re nearing the end, it still remains abnormal.
So a teacher walks in the room, and I’m not sure that she didn’t magically appear from thin air right outside the classroom door, because I have no idea where she could have come from, and our incredibly chatty guide designates herself as the translator, as the teacher does not speak English. I had a bad feeling that we were not going to get a straight translation. The guide was going to put her own interjections in, because who else would know?
Very quickly we learn that if we want to draw a horizontal line, that’s called, rather pronounced, ‘hung,’ and a vertical line is pronounced ‘shoe.’ The teacher is then at the front of the room hunging and shoeing through the history of Chinese characters, which you can see a bit of in the photo above. The language dates back 5000 years, then about 2200 years ago, the characters had changed somewhat, then 2000 years ago they had evolved again, and somewhere between there and today, we have the characters that are in use now. They were much easier 5000 years ago. The Moon looked like a crescent of the Moon. Now you can’t make heads or tails of the character.
Once we had the truncated history of Chinese characters (and by the way, you’re only considered fluent in the language when you’re fluent with at least knowledge of 6,000 characters, and if you want to get anywhere in life, you’ve got to have a 10,000 character knowledge base), we were taught how to make some of the most basic characters. We folded our paper into twelve sections then taught how to make each of the characters. And it’s not always what the finished product looks like as much as it is how the character is made, as in what brush strokes you make to create the character. They don’t have an alphabet, so the characters themselves take on a newer and greater meaning.
I was looking around the room as we were making the characters; and while I wasn’t the best, I certainly was one of the best. You can tell how pleased I am with my efforts:
Now that’s a smile!
We all quite enjoyed the lesson and it wasn’t anywhere as painful as our Global Studies class. Very glad I did this instead of taking the morning off. The next stop in the morning was at the Museum of the Forest of Stele. You’ve got to be saying ‘No way! The Forest of the Stele!’ Yes, way. This place doesn’t have an air of importance, and doesn’t pretend to be important, but it is actually remarkably important. 1000 years old type of importance. For example, throughout the Forbidden City were placards of information about the significant spots that we were visiting, and referenced something that happened there, or quoted some Confucian principle. Then at the bottom there was a reference number. And those reference numbers refer to the stone stele that we were at now. The stone steles are essentially the ancient calligraphy, historical records, literature and philosophy, and ancient pictorial carvings. These stone tablets are what the country references. It’s somewhat similar to our Library of Congress – except different. There’s ancient carvings of Confucius next to the stuff he said, for example. Here’s an example of a portion of a stele:
I’m not sure what happened to my group here. I got separated and kept running into the same few people that I really didn’t care to be spending much time around. It felt a bit like we were spending more time than was necessary here. It’s e decently big place, but it’s a bit repetitive, if you know what I mean. (Read: boring)
A group of us found a guy making a rubbing of one of the stele. The stele are black because of all the years of people putting ink on them and rubbing rice paper against it. I guess when the ancient texts are stone; you can do that and not worry about damaging them. Or having them in some kind of protective, roped-off area. I’m guessing that if you try to tamper with the carvings that you will be found and also tampered with.
That was interesting for a few minutes. It’s only so entertaining to watch someone make markings on a piece of paper from carvings on stone. It’s not like he was getting instructions to find the arc of the covenant – although I can’t be sure about that.
On my way back out to the entrance, I had some extra time, so I played around with my camera again to get it to take a picture of me using the timer. The gardens towards the front of the place are quite nice. There are small pagoda-like structures dotted throughout, and it makes for a lovely, peaceful environment. Here’s how the picture turned out.
I’m still trying to figure out crossing my arms. What would I do with them otherwise? Put them on my hips? In my pockets? Anyway, we met out in front shortly after and walked back to the bus. On the walk, we passed a few small shops that displayed what have to be the largest brushes I’ve certainly ever seen. These brushes were two feet long and you’d need two hands to use them. I’m not sure what I would do with something like that unless I were an expert calligrapher, of which I am not.
All that and now it was only lunchtime, but there was a twist with lunch. We were eating at the Orient Hotel, which is known for having a top-floor rotating restaurant, with excellent views of the city. It’s one of those deals where you come for the meal, but stay for the rotation. Our bus arrives at the hotel and stops in front of the doors. This is great for now, but when we come back out after eating, that bus is going to be parked somewhere in Xi’an. Judging by the lack of spaces for bus in front of the hotel, we should have ample opportunity to walk off our lunch.
We were given no direction how to get to the restaurant. At the time we didn’t know that this was a top-floor restaurant. All we knew was that it rotates. This group of the blind leading the blind found an elevator and went to the top and made it to the restaurant. But before I continue, I want you to think to yourself. I want you to remember some of the moments that have happened to me since the voyage started. And I want you to take those into account and divine what I’m about to say about the restaurant.
The rotating restaurant was not rotating. To say that I was shocked would be totally false. That fact was one of the most unsurprising moments of the voyage. I was so prepared to dine at the non-rotating rotating restaurant that there wasn’t even a second thought.
The views from the top were very nice. Unfortunately, the 8 million residents of this largely industrial city don’t exactly live in a beautiful city. Low and gray are two adjectives that you don’t want to have to use to describe a city, but they’re applicable here. It would have been better if the smog didn’t lower the visibility so much, but beggars can’t be choosers. The view is what I found to be typical of my time in Xi’an. As far as I’m concerned, this is the norm there. And that’s not healthy for anybody or anything. But I’m sure I’ll be fine…
Lunch was surprisingly good. It seems the extra effort exerted in rotating the restaurant (however they do it) was instead but into the cuisine, which may have been the best stuff I’ve had in the country so far. The food was served buffet-style in a ring. The tables were lined against the windows, and the food was along with circular inner wall. I made sure to eat as much as I could because there’s no guarantee where the next one’s going to be. And given that tonight it our flight to the ship in Qingdao, I’ve got a bad premonition about dinner.
After absolutely stuffing myself, we took the elevator down and had no idea where the bus was. We looked up and down the street and saw a congregation of buses way down the block. Not really having another option, we headed down. Amidst the sea of buses, we found ours. As soon as the group mingled its way down, we drove off again.
They gave us another option at this stop. We could go shopping, pay extra and visit the drum tower, or walk down the block to the bell tower, which is free of charge. I nixed shopping right away, and seeing no real difference between bells and drums other than cost, I headed down to the bell tower with a group of about ten. I’m not sure what happened to everyone else.
Now that we’re nearing the end of what has been both an epic and whirlwind tour of Beijing and Xi’an over the past five days, I’m finding myself looking back at it a bit on the walk over to the bell tower. Like a few of the other ports we visited, I could not have done what I’ve done in the recent past. South Africa was under great political and social upheaval. Vietnam has been warring for the past two thousand years. And China’s doors have been unequivocally shut. If there is one word to describe what I think of China, it’s gray.
The skies, as far as I’m concerned, are perpetually gray. The communist government, as restrictive as it is, tries to imbue a sense that it isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. But they do a very bad job managing that gray area. As much as they might make you think one way, no matter what you do or where you go, it is apparent that this is not a free country. There’s a difference between having military soldiers standing around in Grand Central Station in New York City, and the Chinese standing at stone-cold attention strategically placed throughout the country. And I still feel like there’s a very steely sense that I can’t get rid of. China feels different. There’s something else invading my senses here that I haven’t felt before.
Anyway, to get to the bell tower, we have to take the underground tunnel. There’s a traffic circle around the tower, so the only way for people to cross the street is to walk beneath it. That makes sense – you want to cut down on the number of people that get hit by cars. And you want to keep traffic moving, too. It’s a win-win. Here’s a look at the place:
On the walk over I was talking to Simon, the professor on the ship from New Zealand, and he was telling me that shortly before the voyage began he and his wife were at Victoria Falls in Africa. This astonished me for some reason. It’s a destination that I’d love to go to and don’t get the chance to meet people that have been there. I quizzed him a bit about it and how to plan and watch out for stuff when you’re out there. Since he’s been there the political climate in the area has become somewhat dangerous and now isn’t the best time to go, but it will be again.
Simon and I walked around the Bell Tower a bit. If you wanted to pay a fee they would let you ring the bell! I took a pass. I really didn’t see a reason to ring the bell than to be able to say that I rang the bell at the Bell Tower in Xi’an. Because you know everybody that I tell that story to is going to know exactly what I’m talking about.
There are a few levels on the Bell Tower and the one at the top gives you the best view of the area. Even on our fifth and last day of the trip, the pollution is still amazing. It’s not so bad that you feel it with every breath. But you see it and know that it’s going in and out of you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Here’s a self-portrait to give you an idea:
My bus is parked somewhere further back in the smog somewhere. I don’t see it, but I’m fairly certain that it hasn’t left me. Something else you can see in the photo is the traffic. That’s one of the four roads leading to the tower and it is a fast and busy stream that does not relent. Everybody really does have somewhere to go.
There’s nothing to do at the Bell Tower other than look around, so I headed back. I’m not sure where I lost Simon, but I did. As I neared where the bus dropped us off, I saw a group from my trip with an ice cream. But it wasn’t a Magnum Bar, it was a soft-serve ice cream dish and it looked delicious. I asked them where they got it and they pointed to a familiar looking building behind me. I didn’t know that they had ice cream there, but I don’t care.
So I walked into McDonald’s and stood on line to place my order. And it was here that it felt like I was doing the thing that most locals are familiar with – going to a McDonald’s. There was a slight moment of panic when I didn’t know if the attendant understood English. That would be an important moment, because then I would have to resort to the caveman-like grunts to get my point across, and while I’m sure that would have worked, I really didn’t want to do it in a McDonald’s.
The attendant knew English (well enough to get me a cup of ice cream) and I happily went outside with my ice cream. While it was no Magnum Bar, it was still good ice cream, that I think was more closely related to frozen yogurt. Anyway, I went back to where the group was congregating and other people asked me where I got my ice cream, and then off they went to McDonald’s to follow suit. It was one of the biggest hits of the trip. But could you imagine how much bigger of a hit it would have been if lunch were bad?
From there, we all finished our lovely ice cream and loaded back on the bus, leaving the city limits of Xi’an. But on our way back to the airport, we had one more stop to make. I still don’t know what to make of this stop. I can’t tell if this is something that in the future will be as big as the terra cotta warriors, or the Chinese just think that it will be as big as the warriors, but won’t be.
The place is another excavation site, but what makes it different is that everything being excavated is miniature. There are thousands of miniature people, all exaggeratingly thin and elongated laying in this excavation that appears to be very early in its excavation. They aren’t well arranged and they are scattered all over the place. But where the warrior site excelled in the awe of the site, the mini site makes up by appearance and presentation. We walked in glass-enclosed walkways above the pit in dark dimly lit corridors and rooms. We were at least fifteen feet underground in this immaculately clean space.
The corridor snaked its way around the perimeter of the area before descending to a lower portion. There was a pace the group was moving at with a guide, but we didn’t have to stay with the guide. I found the pace to be overly slow, so I ventured ahead a little bit expecting there to be more. After the downstairs section was the gift shop so I backtracked a bit and took some more time.
In addition to the people, most everything was miniature. There were small cattle, small fire pits, and pottery (much of it broken.) And they say that there’s much more to excavate, yet these hallways encased in glass seem a bit permanent for a greater excavation. Nonetheless, the Chinese say that as they keep digging at this site that it may be a greater find than the terra cotta warriors. I have to disagree because the warriors are also supposed to have a great more to excavate. The sheer number here would just have to be so much more, and that’s what time will tell.
After spending a little more time than was able to hold my attention (I was able to find a bench with a few other people to sit down on in the gift shop), we departed the site. Apparently we had to take a different route back to the bus and I had the opportunity to take this awkward-looking photo:
Not really sure what happened with that one. I’d like to be able to do that one again… Anyway, that was our last stop in central China before heading back to the Xi’an airport. And then my mind starts to think ahead of us. By the time we get to the airport, it will roughly be dinnertime. Will we be fed, will we be on our own, or what? There’s one option that I wouldn’t like – eating back at that horrid restaurant in the airport that we ate in on our arrival? I didn’t enjoy anything there, and really don’t want to go back in.
We arrive at the airport (without stopping to get something to eat along the way…) and our guide is just about to leave us when he says that dinner is in airport restaurant. Anything but the airport restaurant! And it’s not just me that thinks that, it’s pretty much unanimous. In fact, I’d say less than ten people went in. The rest of us spread out into the airport to either find something to eat, or check-in, which we couldn’t do yet. They took our passports again and we were told to meet back at a location at a certain time to pick our stuff up.
So I wandered off with a few people for a while, looking for a snack or something to occupy my time. The Xi’an Airport is really quite a boring place, not surprisingly. I found the Handleys (the doctors family) hanging around in a café upstairs. That became a nice place to sit.
When we picked up our passes downstairs there was a guy (best way to describe him) with scissors and a piece of cardstock cutting out profiles of people who will pay him – in a style popular in Victorian England. I didn’t see the need in having that, but other people sure did. Now they’ve got a profile of themselves that they can, I don’t know…put in their wallet?
Once we picked up our boarding passes and passports we went back up to the café before going through security. Out of all the airports I’ve been in, this one was the longest line to security I had seen. I’m not really sure why, but it was. Going through security there was a small sense of happiness that this flight would be the last flight of the voyage. After this flight, there’s only a flight home from San Diego, and that flight is still about three weeks away. It will be nice to not fly for three weeks.
After security I walked over to the gate and sat down with my Sudoku book I reserve for air travel. It has served me quite well since I purchased it in Manaus, Brazil. And after all the air travel I’ve done, I still haven’t put much of a dent into the book. And I’m quite sure that even after this flight in Qingdao (pronounced ching-dow) I still won’t have gotten very far into it.
Once on the flight I had a lovely seat – for a change. And I was sitting next to someone else from the trip, Kathryn (who happens to live just a few doors down on the ship,) which also has happened with a low frequency. And instead of doing my Sudoku book for the flight, Kathryn was chatty – and I didn’t mind at all. I was chatty back as it was something to do on the flight. The flight, roughly two hours, went by quite quickly and it was actually pleasant. I couldn’t have been happier.
And if we’ve done this once, we’ve done it a thousand times. There were many trips to Beijing this week. The ship only came into port this morning and it’s leaving tomorrow evening. All these trips have to come back some time. Our flight landed late in the evening, and the last thing we wanted to do was stand in an eternal line to board back onto the ship. That threat, along with the size of our trip’s two buses again brings along the dangerous proposition of racing buses back to the port. I understand why we need to race back to the port, and I want to get back to the port as soon as possible, but I’d also like to get there alive and in one piece. As I’ve seen in some past bus races (specifically the drag racing in India) these races can get borderline dangerous. Because for some reason, bus drivers love to be told to drive faster than another bus.
Qingdao, China
We exit the airport and hurriedly rush over to the buses so that as soon as one is filled we can depart. And it’s not just the students that do this. One of the professors got on the bus just after me and was already telling the bus driver to go – and people were still getting on the bus.
So we’re racing through the streets of northeastern China in the dead of night. There are very few cars on the road, or signs of life for that matter. The other bus is behind us, then it’s ahead of us, which elicits cries of anxiety from my bus and the bus driver goes faster and overtakes the other bus again. And all the while I’m thinking that when buses heading down to Atlantic City crash and flip over they most certainly are not racing another bus there.
And as we drive I’m expecting to see some kind of city and an eventual sign of life. But as we keep driving, I’m not seeing anything resembling someplace where I want to be. I don’t want to make it sound like we were driving through shantytowns, but we were not in areas that scream ‘advanced civilization.’ As a matter of fact, I felt the need to rename Qingdao as Middle-of-Nowhere-China. Not sure how that translates in Chinese.
And out of the depressing sites we see out the window, all of a sudden the ship appears like a beacon. This is the longest that I’ve been away from the ship and it’s quite the sight for sore eyes, especially after the parts of Qingdao we just went through. My bus wins again, with the other bus in tow shortly behind. And thankfully there was no line to get on the ship. I’m really not sure when the other Beijing trips were due back but they all have to come back here sometime.
No sooner does the bus stop do people jump up and try to get off the bus as soon as possible, so that we can get on line to get back on the ship as soon as possible. I make it on line in the first ten people, which I see as a nice victory. Bedraggled, unshaven for five days, and wanting a nice shower, I head straight down to the room and when I go inside I’m delighted to see that my laundry is returned and sitting on my bed. Yes, that’s the laundry that I haven’t seen since the day we left Vietnam, also that last day that I saw Mom. It’s nice to have it back, to say the least.
As much as I wanted to get to bed, I had to unpack everything from the trip and then pick and choose what I needed to repack for my day trip tomorrow. It’s one of those things were the bed is looming but I just can’t get to it yet because I’ve too much to do. I did as little as I could, just preparing the items that I would need for our sixth and final day in China, and then passed out.
Just for your frame of reference, today, our last day in China, is day 78 of 101 for the voyage. 78 days never went by so fast. Anyway, I was up at 7 to make sure that I ate something for breakfast, then headed over to the Union for the trip departure. It wasn’t that big of a trip, but still decently sized. Probably somewhere around twenty of us, give or take a few.
We all head down to the mini-bus and climb aboard. Our guide is an odd guy that had a couple interesting stories to tell us. As we were driving through the “ghettos” of China (which may or may not have been ghettos, but they certainly could have passed for ghettos) our guide told us about the local transportation. Back in the not too distant past the Chinese rode bicycles and cars were just not driven to any extent. Then the car caught on as a status symbol and suddenly you weren’t anybody unless you had a car. And then that devolved into being considered a second-class citizen if you could not afford a car. That seems a bit extreme to me, but that’s where Qingdao is now. Our guide never told us what he drove.
But he did tell us about the trip he wanted to take to Japan. You need to have government permission to go out of the country. So he applied for a passport out of the country, and amongst the questions he was asked was how much money he has in his name. He told them. They said that he didn’t have enough money and they weren’t going to let him go. Seems like an odd thing to be the deal-breaker. Needless to say, that didn’t exactly raise the mood on the bus.
As we boarded the bus, we were told that the drive to our first stop would be about forty minutes. But before I go any further, let me tell you about what trip I was on. The trip was about religion in Qingdao and we were to visit a number of religious sites in and around Qingdao. Forty minutes sounds like it’s outside of Qingdao, so I’m not sure where we’re getting religion in Qingdao from.
And so we’re sitting on the bus and we’re going through the unscenic countryside of northeastern China. No rice patties or sprawling cities. Just some stuff here and some stuff there. It’s a very hilly, if not slightly mountainous area. Much of it is along a body of water. I’m not sure what sea it is, but it’s some sea that we’ll be sailing through tomorrow.
Our forty minute drive, not hampered by traffic, accidents, or anything, totaled about one-hundred minutes, give or take a minute. So the estimate was off by 150%. It was about to be that kind of day. The first stop is a Daoist temple. Or Taoist temple. The pronunciation doesn’t translate to our alphabet well. The sound is a combination of a hard ‘d’ and a hard ‘t’ and it’s said with a bit of force and gusto. I’ll go back and forth with the spellings.
Unlike the thousands of Buddhist sites I’ve visited, there is no singular house of worship here. Rather, a number of small structures are scattered about a tree-filled hill/mountain-side. And the best way to describe the Daoist temple is to call it repetitive. It’s pretty much that if you see five minutes of the place, there’s not going to be much of anything else that you won’t have already seen.
In case you’re wondering, Taoism is an odd religion that doesn’t behave like any other religion that I’m aware of. Its three tenets are compassion, moderation, and humility, and it’s been around influencing eastern Asia for over two thousand years, so it must do something for them.
The “stuff” that is on the grounds is…I’m not sure what that stuff is. But I made sure to take pictures of them. One of my personal favorites was the omnipresence of this symbol:
It must mean something about the peace and serenity of Taoism. If it doesn’t, then I have absolutely no idea what is. I also found a giant urn-like structure that was right in the middle of a tiny courtyard. It looked interesting, too.
I’m sure the Chinese beneath me says something to the extent that any person that leans on this will incur the wrath of some long-gone emperor. But that can’t be as bad as one of the other features of the temple area. There’s one sickly looking tree with an arm growing at an odd angle that you’re supposed to kiss for good luck. This seemed to be a must-see stop for the Chinese because nearly every Chinese person that came by kissed that tree. I was not going to go near that tree. Just like the Ganges in India, doing as the locals do may not be the best of ideas. Besides, my luck on this voyage was been pretty good and I don’t want to throw anything out of balance.
That photo above is of our tour guide, who has the very Chinese name of Frank by the way, lecturing to us. Something that you may notice in the picture is the temperature. Some people just look chilly in their heavy coats. I’m the flash of orange bundled up in the back. Others look downright frigid, clinging to every ounce of clothing on them. You can tell that most of us misjudged the temperature this morning. This morning actually bordered with one of the coldest mornings of the trip. The only competition would be early morning back on safari in South Africa.
Around about this point, the natives (meaning the college-aged students) were growing a little restless at being led about by our sufficient tour guide. In the interim, I sat and had a picture taken with two of my favorite non-student ship people. Below on the left is Brenda, the best nurse on the ship. You’ll remember Brenda from both my trips to Kuala Lumpur and India. (To refresh your memory: Brenda was the one on the flights in India where I watched what she ate, and ate whatever she ate and didn’t touch whatever she didn’t touch.) Brenda is still my gastroenterological barometer. And Erika is in the middle. You’ll remember Erika as an RD on the ship and the advisor to the Ambassador’s Ball. You’re going to hear a lot more about Erika in the coming weeks, so we’ll leave her be for now.
Either sensing the restless natives or just doing what he usually does, the guide gave us an option to wander about for a while or to go on a hike up the mountain. Even the non-hiking types in the group were intrigued by the idea of breaking up the morning with a hike. He said it was a bit strenuous so not all of us should do it. I’m thinking that this is going to be a good hike and I’m quite looking forward to it at this point, as are a number of us from the group. Plus, there’s supposed to be a shrine at the top, too.
So we set off on the hike. There’s some stairs right when we leave, then the paved path levels off a little bit. Then there’s a bit more of an incline in the paved path, but nothing remotely strenuous yet. And about two minutes later we arrive at a shrine. “That’s it?” I said. “Wow, that was disappointing.”
The view in the photo below is a bit deceiving as the start of the “hike” didn’t start at sea level, as we had been slowly increasing in altitude during the tour. And the view was really not all that impressive. Still can’t see the sky. If we could see the sky then there might be a view worth remembering, but no.
And there’s a small shrine/mini-temple at the top in addition to the mediocre-at-best view. So we stood around for a while until it was time to “hike” back down to meet back with the group. After braving the treacherous way down, we weaved our way back through the grounds to the bus. Much like the Confucian temple Mom and I visited in Hanoi, I’m still not quite sure what the religion is about. But I’ve been culturally enriched because of it!
But now it’s lunch time already. (All that driving and hiking really ate up the time.) I can only imagine where we’re going to be eating, but I can sure bet that there’s going to be a lazy susan on the table. That much I know for sure.
We leave the Daoist temple from what I believe is Laoshan, and drive for who knows how long to lunch. Here’s a picture of the establishment. I will not forget what this place looked like for a very long time.
Walking in we passed a bunch of fish tanks on the first floor and we all got excited that we were going to have a nice lunch of fresh seafood. There were tanks and tanks and it all looked pleasingly clean. Upstairs on the second floor is the big room with the tables and chairs. There are four tables set, so we take a seat at the tables and each table has one to three empty seats, which I don’t see as a problem. The wait staff however, does see that as a severe problem and they’re going to limit us to three tables. This is where all the problems begin.
The three tables do not have enough seats, let alone room to pull up chairs, for all of us to fit at. Nonetheless, we’re playing Table Survivor and one of the tables has to go. Wouldn’t you know it was my table. I liked the people at my table, and now we were being split up amongst the other tables. So we’re all now awkwardly pulling chairs through the dining area and trying to find two people that will let us squeeze between them. Once we all get a seat, and get cozy, we can start eating.
The first stuff that comes out (and gets set down on the lazy susan) is the standard sticky white rice. We’re all figuring fish is following so we’re passing the bowl and taking a lean amount. We’re also taking a lean amount because that bowl is not big enough for the few extra people that have pulled chairs up, so we’re all going to be having a lighter than average lunch because of that.
What I didn’t know at the time was how much lighter lunch would actually be for me. A few minutes later, the cavalcade of dishes began and were placed on the lazy susan. Few were touching anything for a few reasons. First, we didn’t recognize what came out. Second, we were waiting for fish-like foods. And third, I was trying to figure out exactly what was brought out. Some stuff looked like bread, but it was stark white, like they forgot to bake it. I’m assuming that that was not bread after all. Some items looked like stringy brain-like things that I wanted no part of. As time went on, and the food stopped coming, it became clear that we weren’t going to be getting any fish. Apparently, this was one of those wacky vegetarian meals. Every table got the same items, though. Looking back on past meals, I’m very glad I never went to go sit with the sequestered vegetarians at their own table. It’s evident that I wouldn’t have much cared for anything at all.
It was here, with a few grains of rice left on my plate that I proclaimed this lunch meal the absolute worst meal of the entire voyage – hands down. The elephant ear fish in the Mekong Delta does not compare. It’s eons worse than that bowl of brown muck I got for dinner in Mauritius. And it was well below anything I came across in India. Congratulations, China! You have the title of the worst food in the world.
I dived back into the rice because I felt that I needed some kind of sustenance before we arrived back at the ship. I knew it wouldn’t be much of anything, but it was better than nothing. Later, we all decided that instead of being served the fish, we were served the food that they feed the fish. I hope to never eat fish food ever again.
Once we were all “finished” with our lunches, we headed back downstairs to depart and mouthwateringly gazed at the fish in the tanks on the way out. At this point, as if I weren’t impressed with Qingdao (and its surrounding areas, wherever we were), I certainly did not know what was in store for us in the afternoon hours. Let’s not forget that this is a religion in Qingdao tour, and I think I’ve seen quite enough of religion at this point in the voyage. So in case you’re wondering why I’m on this trip at all, what else could I possibly be doing in Qingdao otherwise?
Believe it or not, the next stop was a Buddhist temple and shrine. I know! I never would have guessed that there could possibly be any more Buddha! It was a pagoda called the Qingdao Zhanshan Temple that was built back in 1934. Here’s a picture of the place:
The excitement captured in that photo is the exact excitement that existed at the time the photo was taken. Both in myself and the group. Let’s not forget how we’ve gotten where we are today. Five days in India, three days off, four days in Malaysia, three days off, five days in Vietnam, three days off, and now we’re on our sixth and final day in China. We’re spent. And on top of it all, we have two days at sea before five days in Japan. This is where the rubber is meeting the road in the voyage, and some people in the group here at the Buddhist temple were hoping that the rubber on the bus was going to be hitting the road sooner rather than later. We’re up at the top of the hill with the pagoda, and we slowly walk down and pass around and through smaller Buddhist shrines, where we can go in but can’t take pictures of.
Along the way down, I learned something very interesting about China. Our guide was standing next to a sign written in Chinese and someone asked what it said. He looked at the characters and said what the characters mean, then tried to make a cohesive thought about what they meant in that order with one another. He gave an answer that made no sense whatsoever. Here I determined that Chinese is a written language that is open to some interpretation and much less people are really fluent in it that we might have come to expect.
To say that the group was losing interest as we walked around the incense and Buddhas was an understatement. They were done. I was still looking at it all as something to do.
We arrive at the bottom where the bus is waiting and that’s where the mutiny begins. Half of the group wants to go back to the ship, as they’ve had enough, and the other group wants to go to the last stop of the day which, as luck would have it, is the Roman Catholic church in town. I think that would be the second or third on the trip for me. I decided to be in the group to stick around for the church, primarily because I could hear my grandmother telling me to go there.
So half the trip took the other mini bus back to the ship and whatever was left of the diminished group went to the church. I wasn’t really sure what to expect of a Catholic church in China, as I didn’t know that practicing that religion was allowed. I still don’t think it’s allowed, but it’s not something that’s enforced – if you know what I mean. We go into St. Michael’s Cathedral, and it is quite lovely inside. It was built back in 1934, then shut down for the Cultural Revolution and wasn’t reopened until 1981. Here’s some of the inside:
And here’s the outside:
Inside there, you would never be able to tell where on Earth you were, aside from the Chinese characters that were randomly about the place. And for that fact it was quite odd that this was my last stop and memory of China – something completely different from everything else I saw in China.
There was a couple outside taking photos for the wedding. She was in a white flowing gown and he was in a black tux. It looked rather normal. I couldn’t figure it out, until I found that there really was nothing to figure.
Some people wanted to hang around the area instead of going back to the ship now. It was about mid-afternoon and while the neighborhood looked safe, it also didn’t look like there was anything to see or do. Plus, I was beat and rundown, and starving.
Back at the ship and off Chinese land, I threw my stuff in the room and went upstairs to get a grilled cheese sandwich. While still theoretically vegetarian, I don’t know what a fish would do with a grilled cheese sandwich, so I’m not going to call it fish food for my own sanity. And boy, was that sandwich tasty. I felt much better after it, although I did feel a bit odd. Hoping that it wasn’t the onset of a cold.
I took the rest of the day very easily. I got to unpacking my laundry that I haven’t seen in what feels like weeks. It was good to have clean clothes again. But at this point, I’ve almost got enough for another load to send out.
Slowly people made their way back on the ship, and as the sun set on China, so did my time there. There’s no view from the port of Qingdao, so as far as I was concerned we were out of China. But we weren’t out of phone range, so I found a quiet spot in the back of the ship and called home. I’m not completely sure of the time, but it’s late Sunday April 22nd here, so it has to be early Monday with the twelve hour time difference. It’s always nice to call home. It’s nice to know that the other side of the Earth is still there. And it wasn’t long after that call that I went to bed.
Leg 10: Qingdao, China to Kobe, Japan
Awoke at 9 to a lovely thought that I’ve had before: I have another cold. And this one might be a doozy. I’ve lost track of how many colds I’ve had since February. I think this is three, but maybe four. Some may have overlapped. I’m taking medicine for it and hoping that it gets knocked out early. I can’t be down and out when we pull into Japan. Japan is stacking up to be the busiest time I’ll have in port – out of all the ports. Japan is where I make my stand to prove what I’ve learned and become since the start of the voyage. The challenges that Japan throws at me will test my mettle and I will determine, once and for all, what I’m made of, what kind of traveler I am, and hopefully learn a bit more about myself in the process. But all that is hanging in the balance with the onset of this cold. And let’s not forget that the Ambassador’s Ball is about two weeks away – and I’m still the President of that. There’s a lot stacking up in front of me and there’s a lot to happen. But one thing that is certain – there are 22 days to San Diego. And this thing is far from being anticlimactic and uninteresting. You haven’t seen anything yet.
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