Tsingdao Write up - finally!

October 9, 2007


It’s been too long since I wrote on the blog save some pictures I put up from Qingdao and Hong Kong. Since my last real writing, we have gone to China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.

Qingdao:
It rained most of the time we were in Qingdao. I was excited at first to see a former German colony in Asia. Some of the tour books and websites talked up the city and for various reasons, I was disappointed. In part, the rain contributed to my disappointment as did the actual port itself. We walked through oil filled rain water to get to town and had the hardest time exchanging / taking out money. For being a port city, Qingdao seemed unprepared for the onslaught of tourists that may come with the Olympics as well as their hopes to expand into a port for tourism. On the other hand, I felt that I saw everyday life in China or rather in a Chinese city which was educational. We walked through street markets where we saw livestock and freshly caught fish butchered as folks ordered. We saw vegetables fresh from gardens and farms, and we smelled and tasted (thank you Marianne!) green onion bread and fried chicken from street vendors at such cheap prices. SAS students were disappointed in the city and could not wait to get out. I was very impressed with those who traveled independently through China and who later met up with us in Hong kong. They all survived and seemed to grow from the experience of riding an overnight train to Beijing and making your way on a bus to a portion of the Great Wall.

Qingdao itself taught me about how cities view tourists, particularly those from 1st world nations ( I include Japan in this category). The locals did not seem to understand our fascination, curiousity, genuine admiration for their everyday “habits.” They did not understand why we would want to wander through the market after all. I wonder how we would feel if some tourists came to the local Trader Joe’s, ,started taking pictures and pointing at all the “exotic” food? I felt that locals were ok with tourism and tourists provided we stay on our side of the fence and that we do what is expected of us – clearly, trampling through their market day is not something normal for us or them. Where it seems to be ok for us to go to is to the Qingdao or Tsingdao Brewery. Clearly set up for tourists, the brewery is situated in a “happening” side of town with many restaurants and bars along the streets. By the time we got there (3 pm I the afternoon), some of the students were actually pretty inebriated, one to the point that he was throwing up. Students were really good though about taking care of their friends and after seeing that some of the individuals needed R & R, I had them be taken by their friends to the ship. Between the rain and the ride back, these folks were able to walk into the ship and sleep off their drinking. The rest of us and some students went ahead to the brewery and took a self-guided tour. It was a pretty neat facility and explained the history of the place as well as the beer itself. There was a small but informative section on global warming and the importance of recycling etc. They connected the importance of saving our earth with beer by the slogan Green China, Green Tsingdao (Qingdao) and Good earth makes good water makes good beer…Makes sense to me! While we had a leisurely self guided tour where the 3 staff, 1 faculty, and 3 students who followed us in actually read and took notes, there were groups of U.S. and Japanese trourists who were being shuttled in at a fast pace. There were barely any information given to them and they were being told that the tasting room is below, the tasting room is below. We enjoyed the tipsy or tipping room…they stimulated what you would be walking like if you had too much to drink..it was hilarioius, kinda like being on the ship in rough seas but without the feeling of wanting to throw up your previous meal. So, we get to the tasting room. For some funny reason, the servers were quite curious about me and August being “American” but looking Chinese. This gave us the advantage of getting all the beer that we wanted to consume. I had only one pitcher while August did not have any other than a sip or two as he was the designated sober walker for our group. It was interesting to watch the Americans (many SASers) and Japanese bond over beer. They were toasting each other quite loudly and it looked like a bad beer garden scene. There was no one that got out of control though and the students even commented on how much they liked to see us be in their space with a drink in our hand. I told them that I was there to teach them how to drink normally and to model how to walk upright after a couple of hours in a brewery. The Chinese were much more welcoming to us at the brewery. They expected us to be there and expected the loud and sometime raucous behavior to take place there rather than have us and our cameras at their local markets and neighborhoods.

The fragile relationship between the real people and what they really do vs. that of what commodities they make and sell as well as what areas are famous enough for them to promote was so interesting to watch. As a traveler and a generally curious person, I truly want to talk with and get to know who the people are in the various places I visit. How do they live, what are their opinions, how are we connected? They however seem to want to maintain a safe distance from that, a reaction in part to the way in which they have seen tourists act (e.g. obsessed with buying rather than experiencing their culture, obsessed with the exotic or if not that, the comforts of western lifestyles in these countries). After all, why should they waste their time to tell folks about the real Qingdao when what people seem to truly want to experience is Tsingdao the beer.