Cheongdo

Erma and I went to the country where Seoul is called Shǒu'ěr 首尔. (So now you know wherefrom this blog gets its name!) Aside from a brief one-day visit to Shenzhen, the special economic zone just over the border from Hong Kong, it was the first time that Erma and I have been to China together.*

I always get excited when I get to China. It's so dynamic and interesting, and it's always different from the last time I visited.

I last went to Qingdao in February 1989, nearly 19 years ago. I had just graduated from college, and had gone to Beijing to teach English. An American friend of mine was dating (and later married) a Chinese student at Peking University, who was back home in Qingdao for the Spring Festival holiday. I went to visit them there.

I took a nightmarish 13-hour train ride from Beijing. I had a "hard seat", which means I sat on a wooden seat with a non-reclining back the whole way. Still, compared to the Chinese passengers lying in the hallways and standing jammed up against the windows, I had it lucky. I remember trying to make my way to the bathroom (just a hole in the floor -- the waste was dumped right onto the train tracks) down the dark train carriage in the middle of the night, stepping on sleeping bodies the whole way.

Trip to Laoshan

Needless to say, China has changed enormously since then. Everyone knows about the economic growth that has blessed and plagued the country since the Communist leadership began moving toward a capitalist-style free market economy. The changes are most obvious in the big cities, where enormous wealth and prosperity have been generated. We flew in to Qingdao's brand-new, gleaming airport after a comfortable 1-hour flight from Seoul. Like the new airports at all the major Chinese cities, it is underused -- built with future growth in mind.

Despite the rapid development, the contrast with Korea is stark. Korea is fully developed. In most respects China still feels very much like a developing country, despite its shimmering veneer of modernity and progress.

Some things about China haven't changed in the last 20 years. Some of the buses, for example, still have a ticket-taker as well as a driver. After you board, she (in my experience it is always a woman) approaches, asks your destination, tells you the fare, collects your money, and hands you a small fistfull of paper receipts. This is what they look like:

The pink receipt is for 1 yuan (about 14 cents) and the brown receipts are for 2 yuan each, so this represents a payment of 7 yuan. You are supposed to hold onto these receipts until the end of the ride, in case there is any confusion about whether you have paid or not. In practice it is very difficult not to lose them or have them ball up into a big undifferentiated wad in your pocket, especially if you ride the buses often. In this case, I actually paid 9 yuan for two fares, but one of my 2-yuan receipts blew away at some point during the day while I was outside. This bus-riding experience was identical to those I had numerous times when I lived in Beijing in 1989.

Bus fares are also still extremely cheap. This was a 40-km ride to the Láoshān (崂山) scenic area east of Qingdao, and it cost us the equivalent of about 60 cents each.

But not all buses use this old system. Several of the buses in the city have no ticket-taker; you just drop your fare (one yuan, about 14 cents) into the cash box as you enter, or hold your radio-frequency-transmitting transportation card up near the card reader. The newer buses have flat-screen TVs on them that run public service announcements and short entertainment programs, while also informing riders of upcoming stops.


Underneath a cartoon admonishing against the dangers of alcoholism is an announcement that the next stop is 石老人西 Shílǎorén-Xī ("Old Stone Man - West"), on the outskirts of Láoshān.

Technologically, China, like many poor countries, is leapfrogging the US in certain ways. For example, China never had telephone service extending to every home; indeed, huge swaths of the country were never wired up. In the U.S. Ma Bell spent countless billions to wire the whole country for phone service. Then, with the advent of cell phone technology, suddenly the Chinese could enjoy phone service as good as -- or in many cases better -- than Americans, at a fraction of the price. Similarly, as Chinese cities grow and expand public transportation services, they can purchase new buses with the latest technology, manufactured cheaply by the local labor force, while American cities have to make do with aging bus fleets.

Coming from Korea, it was a great relief for me to be in a place where I could understand everything people were saying to me. But even without any language barrier, traveling in China -- in fact, doing just about anything in China -- is much harder than in Korea. There's a lot of reward, but you have to work for it.

For one thing, you have to do a lot of negotiating, in situations where you have to remain guarded so that you don't get cheated. For example, the ticket-taker on the #306 bus said that the end of the line was at the entrance gate of Láoshān. Láoshān is a beautiful mountainous area that has been a center of Taoist worship for thousands of years, and a national park. There are opportunities for hiking and sightseeing, and everywhere one sees Taoist temples and ancient calligraphy carved into the rocks. We visited it on Sunday. We got off the bus as instructed and found no visitor center, no helpful employees, no maps. Instead there was just a big bus parking lot and some toll gates for vehicles entering the park area. As we disembarked, we were approached by a group of taxi drivers, eagerly competing for our business. "We'll take you into the park for 5 yuan each!" they said.

This is the point at which language skills cease to be much help. Are the taxi drivers legitimate? Is the price fair? Are they trying to trick us? If we walk a little farther on our own will there be some sort of official or free transportation? Where exactly will the drivers take us? This sort of thing just doesn't happen in America or Korea.

Eventually, seeing no other options, we got into a taxi. The driver let us know that the park entrance fee was 50 yuan per person, that he would buy the tickets for us, and then we'd pay him back. When he dropped us of at Tàiqīng Palace (太请宫) he wanted 110 yuan. I had to remind him to give us the tickets first. I checked them to make sure that the printed price (written only in Chinese characters and not Arabic numerals, non-Chinese-speaking tourists beware!) was in fact 50 yuan before paying.

One way people make money in China is by steering tourists into a network of friends and relatives; if the tourists purchase goods or services, then everyone gets a cut. For example, it frequently happens that when you get into a taxi, the driver introduces you to a hotel or travel agency run by a friend or a cousin or an uncle.

Tàiqīng Palace is an old, functioning Taoist temple. We hired a cute Chinese guide for 10 yuan (less than $1.50). She spoke in Chinese, and I translated for Erma. At one point she mentioned that we could, for free, sample some teas that grew locally. We agreed, understanding the unstated assumption that we would be buying some tea. The free tea was provided by a friend of the guide, a tea-seller. After we sampled, we were encouraged to buy. The fee of 10 yuan that we paid our guide was very small, but she probably got several times more than that from her cut of the tea sales.

The Taoist temple was really interesting. Because it was a Taoist festival day, many of the Taoist priests who usually reside high up in the mountains were down at the temple. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of the priests or the grounds. Some of the statues of Taoist gods were incredibly unusual, but our guide told us we shouldn't photograph them.

Here we are outside Tàiqīng Palace. The guide took the picture of us.


December is low season, which is the reason there are hardly any people around.

From the Tàiqīng Palace we hired a small van to take us another 13 km on a windy mountain road to another area of the park. We passed through a small town, full of two- and three-story concrete houses with red tile roofs. Many of them looked brand-new. Our driver said that this had once been a dirt-poor fishing village. Probably the residents had lived in shacks. Now it looked tidy and prosperous. The driver asked if we wanted to stop and enjoy some tea. We declined.

I later found out from the driver that he had been born in the Qingdao area but that his family had moved to northeast China when he was small, looking for better economic opportunity. Recently, however, the economy in Qingdao had become better than in the Northeast, and they had moved back. I asked where his parents lived. "In that fishing village we passed through."

At the Yǎngkǒu (仰口) area of Láoshān, we took a ski-lift type cable up the mountainside. I've done this a few times in China, and every time I doubt my sanity. I doubt very much whether there is any legal liability should the cable snap and kill all the passengers, and I also doubt whether there are regular inspections or any guarantees of safety.


We arrived safely at the top, where the views were pretty impressive. This rock has, over the centuries, been adorned with variant calligraphic forms of the character 壽 shòu meaning "long life":




I know that I toured Láoshān back in 1989, but I don't remember any details about the trip. I'll have to check my old diaries and photo albums when I get back to the States.

Near the top of the ski-lift was a cave called Mìtiāndòng 觅天洞 ("Seeking-Heaven Cave"). You enter at the bottom, and the cave immediately narrows and appears impassable. Soon no light penetrates. Somehow there is a pathway up through the cave; stairs have been carved out of the rock. Here and there small cracks open in the rocks above, allowing a glimpse of a sliver of blue sky. The path winds its way up inside the cave to a height equivalent to four or five stories. You turn on the weak, plastic flashlight purchased (battery included!) just outside the cave for 5 yuan (70 cents) to make your way through the pitch-black sections. It was a lot of fun.


One sign that China is still developing is that it is still necessary to instruct people not to urinate or defecate in public places, as on this sign outside the cave entrance. (Click on the picture to see a full-size version.)


The Chinese is more euphemistic ("uphold hygiene") than the English, though it is quite direct in this sign we saw in a small alley in the old part of Qingdao city:


The sign says: "In this place it is strictly forbidden to urinate and defecate indiscriminately." It was posted by the University Road Residents Association.

Beer and Swastikas

Qingdao has a colorful history. It's a relatively new city; in the late 19th-century it was just a small fishing town. Then the Germans seized control. At that time Western powers were forcing the Chinese government to sign treaties granting them "concessions" -- ports where they effectively had full political control and could impose free trade on the Chinese.

The old part of Qingdao still looks like a little European town; it's a pleasure to walk around the narrow, quiet streets (so empty compared to Seoul and other places in China!) and enjoy the charming architecture. I know of only one other Chinese city with such prominent European architecture: Shanghai. But in Shanghai the buildings along the Bund are huge, monumental statements. Here the scale is smaller, less symbolic.

Here's Erma on a quiet side-street with our breakfast, hot soymilk and sesame bread:


One of the things I love most about China is walking around these little residential neighborhoods and sneaking peaks of ordinary Chinese people going about their lives. I also really liked getting a hot breakfast on the street.

The most famous building in the city is the German Catholic Church:


One of the first things the Germans did after they took over, being Germans, was found a brewery. This is the origin of China's best-known exported product and most famous brand name, Tsingtao Beer. In 2003, the hundredth anniversary of the brewery, the Tsingtao company created a beer museum on the site of the original factory museum. We visited on Saturday.


The kitsch, the statues -- it was like we were on a real-life Duff Gardens tour.


One display contained samples of cans and bottles of Tsingtao that had been exported to various places around the world. A surprising number had kid-attracting cartoon animals on them.





As always in China, some of the English-language signage was unintentionally humorous.


Mystic yeast? The Chinese perhaps translates better as "Amazing Yeast".

Erma was dragging a bit here, despite the encouragement offered by the sign, but she'll get her reward at the end of the tour:


Going through the functioning section of the modern factory was pretty fun. The assembly lines looked like they came straight out of Laverne & Shirley. (There is now a much larger brewery, where most of the beer is produced, on the outskirts of town.) We watched the cans and bottles get filled with beer, capped, and boxed up, while workers looked for defective or toppled-over containers.


Compare with the Shotz Brewery:


Then there was the obligatory Olympic countdown clock, this one shaped like a beer bottle. Only 236 days until the Olympics come to Beijing! (The sailing events are being held in Qingdao. On the waterfront there was a larger, non-beer-shaped clock, counting down days, hours, minutes, and seconds.)


We come to the end of the tour. Ah, Erma's reward at last. Free beer!


The factory is on Dēngzhōu Road (登州路), one stretch of which has been dubbed "Beer Street".


The most amusing thing on Beer Street was these benches.


The history of the beer company was quite fascinating, intertwined as it was with many of the key historical events of 20th-century China. After the end of World War I, the Versailles Treaty stripped Germany of control of Qingdao. But instead of returning the city to China, Japan was granted control. This was the proximate cause of the Chinese mass protests that ended up turning into the major social, cultural, and scientific reform movement known as the May 4th Movement.

The Japanese accordingly took over the beer factory, and ran it until Qingdao was handed over to the Nationalist Government of China in 1945, following Japan's defeat at the close of World War II. In 1949, when the Communists took over, the factory was "liberated". Apparently it has functioned continuously since then, although the displays were completely silent on the Cultural Revolution period. One wonders if the factory, as a potential symbol of foreign colonialism, was ever a target of the destructive Red Guards.

This poster from the early Japanese ownership period caught our eye. If you look closely (click to see a larger image), you'll notice that the beer is Swastika Brand, marked "卍".

The swastika is a very old symbol prominent in many cultures and religions, including Buddhism and Hinduism. But it's not clear why it was chosen to brand this beer.

We then discovered that this building, right near our hotel,


was the former site of the Red Swastika Society, as this sign notes:


Actually, the English on the sign says "Red Cross", but you'll note in the Chinese that there is clearly a swastika there. So, we thought, what's with all the swastikas?

We did a little research on this after getting home. According to this Wikipedia article, the Red Swastika was a volunteer Chinese society modeled on the Red Cross. It was apparently quite active and had a large membership. (By the way, the Wikipedia article on the Red Cross and Red Crescent, including discussion of attempts by various countries to add additional symbols such as the swastika and the star of David, makes for fascinating reading.)

Qingdao City

When I visited Qingdao in 1989, China had not yet established diplomatic relations with South Korea. Now Qingdao is a popular tourist destination for Koreans, and there are many Koreans living and doing business in and around Qingdao. We were very surprised on the bus ride in from the airport to see so many signs written in hangeul. In and around the new parts of the city there were many restaurants, hotels, spas, and massage parlors catering to Koreans.

We ourselves stayed in a four-star hotel (the Dōngfāng Fàndiàn 东方饭店) in pretty fancy rooms that cost about US$70 a night -- a lot more than we needed to pay for good lodgings, but we chose not to spend time comparing or bargaining. Here's our bathroom sink:


But as is still common throughout China, the fanciness was only a veneer. Workmanship was poor: closer inspection showed seams and cracks where the pipes entered the walls and floors. And, also in typical fashion, the overflow drain in the sink wasn't hooked up to the plumbing system. If you filled the sink too high, the water would simply pour through the overflow drain straight onto the floor.

The hotel provided some magazines for our reading pleasure. Bizarrely, they were issues of the industry trade magazine Global Hotel.


(For the first time in years, we found ourselves on a trip without a backlog of New Yorkers to get through, so we ended up reading a bit of Global Hotel. Some parts were surprisingly interesting. China is working hard to improve its service industries.)

In the bathroom were some objects available for sale that you would never have seen in China 18 years ago.


On the lower left is a combination condom/penis vibrator (35 yuan, about $5). Behind it are some aphrodisiac creams for men and women. The instructions were alarmingly explicit about where to apply the cream.

The old part of the city was essentially the same as when I visited it in 1989, and presumably more or less as it was twenty years before that. But the area to the east of the old city, which had been fields when I last visited, is now a bustling modern metropolis, where wide boulevards are crowded with skyscrapers, shopping malls, high-rise hotels, and the like. The old part of the city felt deserted and quiet, while the new was crowded with people.

Qingdao's primary tourist attraction is the sea. In the summer the beaches are full of bathers. There is a seaside pathway that runs all the way from Qingdao east to the Láoshān area, for a length of about 40 kilometers. Parks stretch along the path like beads on a string.

The is the view from the western end of the path, looking up toward the old part of the city.


At this end there is a long pier, called simply the Zhànqiáo 栈桥 ("pier"), that extends out into the sea. We walked out along it on Monday morning. The sky was oddly hazy, though whether with fog or smog we couldn't say.

Here's a view from the pier. Compare the newly constructed building on the left with the older ones on the right.


Tourists enjoy beachcombing along the uneven rocky formations that jut out into the water.



We never did figure out what this strange red collection of spheres atop the hill was.


It's easy to imagine that in a few decades China will dominate the Asian region in every sphere: political, military, economic, cultural. But that day is still probably several decades off, and a lot could still go wrong. For one thing, China still has a secretive, repressive government lacking ideological legitimacy. Huge social, economic, ecological, and political problems exist throughout the country, especially in the countryside, and the very same economic growth that is rocketing China along the underdeveloped-developing-developed continuum is also creating huge disparities in wealth that are in turn building a festering sense of grievance among the poor. It remains unclear whether the government has the know-how, the power, or the political sense to recognize and manage these problems.

* For simplicity, I'll not put tone marks on Chinese city names in this post. For those of you who are sticklers for such things, the toned forms and characters are Shēnzhèn 深圳, Běijīng 北京, Qīngdǎo 青岛, Shànghǎi 上海. Return to text.