Xi'an, day one

We flew out of Qingdao for Xi'an on Tuesday morning.  The airport in Xi'an is northeast of the city, must be a feng shui thing, it seems all Chinese airports are northeast of the city!

Our cab driver must have known the city very well, because without incident, he was able to get us to as close as possible to the hotel.  More on this later.

We found the hotel, it was in a pedestrian mall area with, of all things, a Walmart across the street!  the hotel was one in the Jinjiang Inn chain.  Clean and small.  Western toilet, yeah, AC, yeah, hot and cold water, yeah.  All anyone could want, well almost!

We went out to find some food and, of course, found ourselves in a mall.  We saw a Sichuan restaurant that looked promising and went in.  There was no English menu, but there was a picture menu...ok, this will be fun.  Well, who knew there were so many ways to prepare the same thing!

Looking at the pics we made some assumptions.... Clearly all incorrect!  We thought we ordered some lotus root, some beer, some pork, some chicken, and something in the shape of a smiley face that we thought would be fried dough. 

We were given some freebies of these little apple like fruits, and a jelly like thing cut into cubes.  Both were really tasty.  The jelly, a bit on the spicy side with a vinegar and onion kick as well.  The beers came and we settled back for a "lazy lunch".  Then the fun started!

These are the apple-like things

Here is the spicy jelly

This is the lotus, sadly, it is the only picture I have at this moment, Bill has others.  It was really good.  The sauce was sesame, garlic, soy, vinegar, and spicy.  We loved it.  This was the only identifiable dish we got!  

Next came the smiley face things.  They were mashed potato "cakes", not bad, but not what we thought, then came the chicken.  It was what we thought, fried chicken strips with....fries.  Oh, but the fun is only starting....    

the next dish, I thought was going to be twice cooked pork, but instead was more potatoes.  Fried potatoes with a cumin, white pepper, salt, Sichuan pepper, and scallion seasoning.  Not pork, but delicious!  We left fully carbed up and ready for some action.

Bill wandered around to try to get a hair cut and I snoozed.  We wandered out again to see the city.  It was starting to get dark and buildings were being lit up beautifully.  This is the bell tower near our hotel.

This was taken from the steps of a "swanky" new mall directly across the street from the tower.  After shooting this and other photos, we wandered in for dinner and went to a restaurant on the top floor that was called something like spice.  We ordered some things, all of which were good, but unmemorable.  What stood out was the internal glass elevator in the mall was positioned on an unfinished wall.  All of the cables, framing, and innards were left unpainted and uncovered up.  I kept thinking that any mall in the west would have finished that wall before putting up the elevator, or would at the very least covered up the housing to disguise the wall.  It's China, Jake.

Monday....last day in Qingdao

We wandered around Qingdao looking for distractions and entertainments!  Bill wanted to find a barber to get a haircut as the hair was tickling the top of his ears and it bothers him.  I said that I could cut it for him....he declined.  We saw lots of salons, but no "old man" barbers.  The shops had cute name, such as Benny Barber...and Benny is a bunny holding scissors!

Across the street was a book store, so we headed there and wandered about for about an hour.  There was a small English book sections, and a large, "yuge" cookbook section.  Sadly, they were all in Chinese.  Almost bought one, the recipes were done mostly in pictures of ingredients and techniques. But, passed it up as it would me dragging it with us for the rest of the trip.

We found another 85 deg C and sat and drank coffee and had a sweet.  Heading home to pack up for our trip to Xi'an the next day.

Qingdao grew on me, at first, I didn't see it's charm....It was another Chinese city in a simultaneous state of rising and decaying.  There were entire building complexes of multiple buildings that were abandoned, or very sparsely populated, contrasted with shiny new ones going up next door.  Everywhere there was metro construction.  Main streets dug up and pile drivers bang, banging all over town.  We did not take any public transit while in Qingdao, as we couldn't find any working metro stops.   It seemed they were all in construction.  There were high end malls right next to low end ones.  People selling sea shells on blankets at the waterfront and sales people in spiffy suits in front of jewelry stores.  The longer we were there, the more the dicotomy of the city grew on me.  In sections, it would be hard to distinguish from a well-to-do LA suburb, and in other spots, a favela.  But, taken together, they wove a beautiful fabric that surrounds the city.

The waterfront was a bit seedy, a bit honky-tonk, a bit upscale; but all with this charming walkway surrounding the entire bay.  The promenade was a great mingler of peoples--tourists, locals, children, grandmas, entrepreneurs, police--all with a great sea breeze and a bust of Beethoven to boot!

Sunday is fun day and game day two!

We woke up and decided to have some brekkies at the same 24 hr place we went to the other night.  I wanted something like congee, but settled for a strange type of oatmeal.

This was the cost for the oatmeal below less than $1

It was perfect

The 3rd game of the weekend was played by 2 unbeaten teams, there will be some one getting an "L". The teams are. Beijing and Qingdao.  Arriving at the game was uneventful, cab knew where he was going.

Bill and I wrangled the players again, but we had to lead them through the bowels of the arena to exit from the appropriate locations.   It went off without a hitch.  It looked like Beijing would run away with it, but Qingdao fought back and almost made it a nail biter

I tried to get an "action" shot, but failed miserably.  Thought I let you all see my efforts, and hopefully, forgive my results!

The end of the game pic with victors and cheerleaders!

Dinner was a great find.  Bill wanted something other than Chinese and we walked down a street where we saw an Italian restaurant.  We walked past it to look for a second or third option.  Saw none, and walked back and went in...passed the chef taking a smoke, he was Italian....ok this could be a score!   

It was a great place, again, this is measured up against a diet of Chinese for the last 3 weeks!  We started with burrata, it was fabulous, luscious, creamy, fresh, oozy, just perfect!  Then we had some pasta.  I had a gricia and Bill had a carbonara.  Both were sauced beautifully with flavors that were spot on.  The only weak point was the pasta.  Locally made noodles were not really "pasta".

The chef came out and we talked about China, food, sourcing ingredients.  It was awesome.  Turns out, he is the nephew of the owner.  his uncle came in a short while later and we talked with him.  Nephew is a pastry chef back in Italy and has been helping him for about a year.  Bill was so proud of his choice.  Read his lips over the course of these 4 photos!

Who choose this great restaurant is the question, the answer is "This guy"

The uncle was returning from a bachelor/wedding party with friends.  The group included 3 Italians and 1 Chinese.  They were all busily speaking in Italian behind me, and I could not discern who was the Chinese!  We talked with the uncle for a while asking about what brought him to Qingdao, China in the first place.  And he was a bit evasive about the real reason, but went on to talk about doing business in China.  How to source his ingredients.  His mom sends over the cheeses, olive oil, dried meats, etc.  He felt that importing the pasta would be too expensive as there are "reasonable" noodles locally.  

The nephew told us to have the tiramisu as it was his specialty.  It was good, not too sweet, but the coffee flavor didn't come through enough for me.  I need the contrast of the bitter coffee to the sweet cream.

Saturday----"More Football, Please"

We ate breakfast in the hotel again, and were treated to a Saturday morning team building exercise happening in the open space to the left of the dining area.  There was a large group assembled, with a dais of judges in front of a small stage.  On the stage were a group of employees of some organization...an assumption on my part, singing karaoke.  This went on for several rounds.  Some groups were solos, others were groups.  Some songs seemed like popular music, other sounded like rousing political rally songs.  I wanted to pull the draperies away and be able to watch unhindered, but didn't have the nerve to do so.  Some of the hotel guests were singing along which indicated to me some were popular songs or folk songs.

Alvina texted us that she would like us to bring her some orange juice and noshes.  Bill and I wandered around looking for a pharmacy to buy the "miracle" pills.  We went left on Minjiang and then didn't find anything so opted to go to Carrefour and hope that the pharmacy there carried them.  We got something from Carrefour, not the pills I was looking for to give Alvina, but something.  So we went up stairs and got the oj and noshes and booked it for the hotel, because, we were running late to make the 1 arrival at the arena for the games.  As we were finishing the loop we came across a pharmacy, just to the right of our alley, and they had the magic pills.  Bought 2 boxes and gave one to Alvina.

Potential disaster loomed, as Bill couldn't get his phone to pull up the address and name of the arena. We fell back to non-technically advanced things, a map!  We arrived at the stadium and were ushered to the playing floor like royalty!

Our job was the same, usher the players on to the field, helmet on right hip, go through gate walk to 20 yard line and head to the far boards.

The only twist was that we had to avoid walking on the "floor" around the field for TV reasons.  So we had to wander through the bowels of the arena to get to the proper door.  

The first game was Shanghai vs. Shenzen.  The first player on the Shanghai side was the same guy I had talked to in Beijing.  We chatted again, and then sent them off  with "follow the leader".

The title of this entry is a nod to Bob Holmes, who in a comment on a previous post asked for More Football, Please!

The second game was Guangzhou vs. Dalian.  Both teams had never won a game.  Someone would log a W at this game.

We had the same job, and I had the pleasure of talking with Dwayne Brooks at the head of the Guangzhou line.  He sees China as a huge untapped market for Arena Football, and all things equal, would love to stay in China to continue to play and help organize the league.  He has played for Portland and Spokane, but did not play this last year.  He was a dynamo on the field this game as a wide receiver.  Great moves and able to slip by blockers with ease.

The half time show was a group of little girls in a cheering club.  It was so cute, they were so adorable. Here is a shot of the end of the game where the players and the little girls are on the field.  

One last pic for Bob!

The strangest and funniest event happened as we were entering our hotel. On each side of the walk way to the entrance door are shallow "ponds".  Meaning they are water pools that are about 6-8 inches deep and have water lilies growing in pots in them.  It was raining, that is an important fact.  We are walking up the walk way and hear a group of men laughing and joking quite loudly, then all of a sudden we hear a huge splash.  Because of the rain, they were unable to see that the ponds were not solid because they looked like a rain soaked sidewalk.  Now they are laughing and yelling.  They have managed to stand up and we notice that they are carrying another man who appears to be dead drunk.  The hotel staff quickly went into action and got them out of the pool.  We went to our room, got umbrellas, and left to get dinner.  On our way out, we saw staff carrying the drunken man, actually more dragging him to the elevator.  In the lobby, the other men that had fallen into the pond were standing in a puddle from their dripping clothes.  Smoking and discussing the incident.  I did see one of the men making sure to hold his drunken friend's head above water, so I was never afraid that someone would drown, however, alcohol poisoning may occur.

We had dinner at a 24 hr place right near our hotel.  I had clams, Bill had skewered meat and we shared both as well as stir fried pea pods

Good Night, and Sweet dreams.  Tomorrow is another game!

Friday - BREWERY TOUR

We started the day looking for some coffee and found a shop that is one of a chain called 85 degrees C.  There was seating so we decided to get something to eat there as well.  All of the baked goods, both sweet and savory, looked fantastic.  BEWARE OF CHINESE SWEETS.  I have had experience with sweets.  They look beautiful and perfect, but there is no taste or they are overly sweet.  So we choose savory.

In the foreground is a "smoked chicken bread", and in the background, on the left, "cheese toast", on the right, "hotdog pastry". Ah, fooled again, each was strange and the chicken was filled not with cheese, but with a mayo based cream along with a large piece of chicken breast.  I think it was the orange-y crunchy things that were the "smoked" part.

 

We wandered down a side street and it was Coffee Street, indeed there were so many coffee shops, we didn't have to suffer with the chain.  Live and learn.  Once we hit the water we wandered around and spied a "China Eastern" airlines logo and decided to go and buy a ticket from Xi'an to Beijing which was  cheapest on that airline.  We found it, but the entire bldg was closed and patrolled by security people.  

This was our second experience with mislabeled blogs.  It appears, in China, if a business moves or if a bldg changes hands, the signage never reflects the change in a timely way.  

Next, we hit the brewery.  We cabbed to the Tsingtao brewery and museum, and got our tickets.  Little did we know what was in store for us.  The museum was pretty static, 99% in Chinese with very few English translations.  The exhibits were of brewing process and ingredients as well as prizes won by Tsingdao.  We did learn that under the Japanese, the brewery in Qingdao produced Asahi, Kirin, and Tsingtao.  

There was the potential for a "ride", a la Heinekin, but it was "the drunken room".  There was a large viewing window into the "room".  People would try to walk thru the room but the floor was slanted and it made walking difficult.  There was a handrail which most people clung to for balance, hence the "hilarity" of your friends watching you try to walk in what appeared to be a normal room.

This is a shot of Bill going thru the "room".

Here is Bill in front of one of the famous brewers in the history of beer section.  I thought it would be funny for him to stand in front of the "Sisters".  Turns out, it was originally women's work to make beer, and the "Brothers" at the monasteries took it over gradually and then used selling beer they made to increase their coffers.  

There was a large tasting room at the top of the bldg.  Not nearly as swanky as Guinness' tasting room,  Just a large room with tables made from barrels and a small bar that efficiently served small glasses of beer.  For the large number of tour groups, they had developed the method of providing the required number of small glasses and then putting them into what looked like the plastic bar bins and walking them over to a table, while the tour leader got pitchers to fill the glasses.  This was smart as it did not clog up the dispensing area.

Exit into the gift shop.  Bill did get something, a small opener or magnet.  Now the escalator takes you down into what you think is the exit, but it is the beer garden.  We purchased a "sausage and stein" ticket.  All you can drink in 1 hour + a sausage.  The beer was good, the sausage was not the "wurst".  

The space was large and open with an airy feel because screening and view of the street.  We needed up being the star of the room.  A large tour group came through and there were not enough seats where we were, so a woman asked, well gestured, could she sit at our table.  We invited her to sit with gestures and the fun began.  She started to try to talk to us, and Bill pulled out Bo, which really set up the fun.  Google translate added information, as well as hand drawn maps.  Photos were taken, as many of the tour group posed with us.  The bad news was that neither Bill or I took photos of the group.  

We left the beer hall after an hour, and went looking for real food.  We found a place along "beer street" and settled in.  I had lotus root stir fry, and Bill ordered friend shrimp.  The lotus was really good, the shrimp, meh.

Cabbed home and Bill did another load of laundry.  I blogged for a bit and then fell asleep.   When Bill came back with the laundry, we decided to call it a night and snacked on a couple of the weird  things that Bill picked up at various shops he visited.  There was a crunchy thing that looked like ramen noodles before cooking, and puffed green peas in the pod.  I liked the ramen-like ones, but the flavor was unidentifiable.  The green peas were just puffed green air.

Qingdao- Day 3 (Thursday)

We slept through breakfast, well, actually we could have thrown clothes on and made it, but the coffee was so bad the previous day, we said, screw it, we will find a cafe somewhere.

We needed coffee, well, Bill in particular

After our coffees Bill perked up quite a bit.  We wandered down to the waterfront by a different path and found a restaurant alley featuring seafood.  As a port town it makes total sense that seafood would be featured in virtually every restaurant we have entered. 

Bill is tiring of "Chinese" food, but recognizes that he has been surprised at things that he thought would not be exciting for him to eat, but then has been pleasantly happy!

As we can see, he is much "Perkier" than before!

Today's wander was on the other side of the bay than Tuesday's.  Instead of looking west, we now are looking east into the harbor.

In previous days, I have taken a photo of this from across the harbor.

Dinner tonight was at 96 Barbecue, which is a local bar/rests on the main drag from which our alley cuts off.  There were full tables all over the place, with lots of different combinations of people.  There were 2 guys playing drinking games, a version of rock, paper, scissors where loser has to drink and eat something on the table.  While I watched, one guy kept losing and when he got up to use the bathroom, the other guy was quickly gobbling up all sorts of stuff form the table to soak up the alcohol.

We ordered streaky pork, eggplant, Australian beef, dumplings and 2 beers.  Bill had order potatoes, but they never made it on to the tab.

This is the pork

This is the "dumplings"

Sadly,I don't have a shot of the beef which was over enoki mushrooms

Qingdao - Day 2 (Wednesday)

We woke up relatively early and decided to get breakfast at the hotel's buffet.  It was a real Chinese brekkies, nothing western in plain sight, turns out there were some items tucked away, mostly for a reason!  There were fried eggs tucked into a corner and some cereals as well, other than that, only Chinese food.

I got some fried veggies, congee, some interesting steamed buns, wanton soup and coffee.  Well, it had a sign over it stating it was coffee, but it poured out of the urn looking like tea.  I added some milk, and took it to our table.  Neither of us could drink it....absolutely disgusting, not in a lose your cookies way, but in the way that it tasted nothing like coffee, nor did the tea fare any better!

There is a lot to learn about Chinese breakfast.  You can order some stuff, other stuff is out on the table for buffet taking, and other things you are allowed to doctor to flavor soups.  There is an array of spicy things that you can add to your soup or congee and usually I do, but I couldn't find the "spice" bar right away and I was hungry.  So I ate plain congee without any fixings...not nearly as tasty as with the fixings!

We decided to explore Old Town.  This was after logging many miles in looking for a laundry.  We went up this alley, down that alley, across the street, asked locals, and all we could find were dry cleaners that would dry clean my shorts for 16 yuan.  We had to take the laundry home, and were told that there was a machine for guests on the 3rd floor.  We checked it out but decided not to spend the day doing laundry, we would do it at night.  

I'm glad we went to Old Town because there was not much there there.  Restaurants were either fast food, or stalls near the water front, and further away, no English at all.  We ended up in a strange place that had tables and service.  There were 2 menus, one for food on sticks, and the other for classic offerings.  Bill went with the stick food, some of which was organs, and some more identifiable as other cuts.  I ordered hot and sour soup and dry fried green beans.  The soup came out in an ENORMOUS bowl, enough for an army.  The cost:  14 yuan, which is about 2 dollars.  The string beans were about 22 yuan, or 3 dollars.  The string beans were fabulous, spicy, salty, a little outside taste of sweet.  Perfection!

After lunch we wandered around Old Town, and really saw that there was no there there.  Bill felt much better about where we were staying and all of the options that are available to us in our current location.  There were some interesting street and sights, but it was not the quaint old German town that Bill was expecting.  

This explains much of how China works:  We were looking for the historic Govenor's Mansion.  We followed Google Maps, and ended up making the left turn into a hospital's parking lot and between the orderlies, people running around in scrubs, local Chinese rushing to loved ones, local Chinese escorting loved ones home, the historic Mansion was undergoing some kind of construction.  We could not figure out if it was demolision or if it was renovation.  But it is in a parking lot!  China has a habit of tearing down historic buildings only to rebuild them to look like historic blogs. When your biggest resource is man or woman power, this does make sense.  Especially, if you don't have to worry too much about the bottom line.

We cabbed home and Bill did laundry at a machine upstairs. I slept for a bit and blogged for a bit.

Perhaps our epic fail at finding one colored our entire day, but I did need a snooze before dinner.  Eventually, we went out to get dinner and ended up at a Szechwan place.  We got a cold beef dish, ma po tofu, and an eggplant dish.  For me, the eggplant was the winner.    It was spicy, sweet, sour, and salty all at the same time.  Silky smooth and piping hot when it arrived, I burned my mouth on the first bite.  The eggplant was a great foil to the spiciest of the tofu.

Tuesday - Qingdao Day 1

We got up at 5 am, which is ungodly for us.  We dressed and raced down to breakfast in the hotel only to find that it starts at 7 not as we thought 6.  Oh well.  We fueled up on the odds and ends we had in the frig and got into a cab and off we went to the airport.

We were, as told, at the airport at 7:30 for a 9:50 flight.  We found a little cafe and had breakfast.  They used teddy bears as identification of what orders went to what table. Bill had a mozzarella toast and I had plain waffles.

The flight was uneventful and we landed without incident.  No story there!  The ride to the hotel, well that was another story.

Driving in China is a test of nerves, hell, being a passenger is a test of nerves. There are unwritten traffic rules, we'll sort of, in that stop lights exist, they change colors, but this is really only a signal to traffic not turning, if you are crossing traffic and making a left turn, these lights are meaningless.  If you are making a right turn onto a road, likewise, these lights are just colors in the sky.  Crossing the street takes balls!  It appeared to me that size was the determining factor in right of way.  Motorbike trumped pedestrian, car trumped motorbike, truck won over car, and bus over truck.  This all seemed second nature to all drivers.  Then there is like on like....car on car meant a game of chicken, with unpredictable results.  Bill and my code for a crazy ride is Mr. Toad.  We had many of these in Vietnam, where we coined the term, but China, from an outsiders perspective, has many levels of magnitude possible in every car ride.  Yet, there are very few fender benders.  Aggressive drives will invariably win and non-aggressive drivers are ok with that.  Bill's method to deal with the potential nausea is to close his eyes and tilt his head back.  I have chosen to view the scenery to my direct right or left depending on which direction we are traveling.  Turn signals are virtually a useless piece of equipment on the steering column.  However, the horn is the most used item in every drivers arsenal.

There are a number of things that a horn toot can mean:  I am coming to the intersection and a signal to others that traffic approaches; Hey, wake up you moron, I'm in this lane; Hello, my friend;  Goodbye my friend; Get out of my way, I'm in a terrible hurry and I am more important than you, I have children.

Each driver has his or her style.  Our best cab driver was a woman in Beijing.  She used turn signals to change lanes and did not tail gate.  It was a wonderful stress-free ride. Now back to Qingsao.

It was a hoot trying to find the cab stand...once we understood it was downstairs, we then had to find an elevator which was all the way at the other end of the corridor, you'd never find it quickly.  Out cab driver was a woman, who wasn't really sure where we were going.  She was brusque and all business.  Don't mess with her lunch that is in the trunk either.  We then went off careening around the highways; speeding up, slowing down, honking, talking angrily on the phone, and finally announcing, with a thumb toss, here you are, not get out.

So we are now at a long boardwalk between 2 ponds and we walk up to the door of the hotel and are outraged that we have to actually push the door ourselves which we haven't had to do as our former hotel had an automatic door!

The room is quite funky.  It has a platform on which the bed sits, and the shower with a glass wall facing the bed.  Luckily, there is a curtain on the bed side that can be pulled for "privacy".  Next to that is the toilet.  The doors to both little rooms is a slider with rice paper which has been stiffened with a coating of some kind.  The sink is a delft bowl on a counter across from the toilet.  To the right of the toilet is a small couch and coffee table.  We did have a choice of  a water bed or a regular bed.  We picked regular as with my tossing and turning Bill would end up sea sick!

We wandered the area and looked for a China Unicom to get more data for my phone.  There was no one there that spoke English, and it looked like a long wait.  So we continued down the avenue to find the waterfront.  Eventually, we went into a mall to find something to eat and were surprised that the pickings were slim.

We picked Pizza Hut over KFC.  What a serendipitous choice for people watching.  At the table across from us were 2 older women, probably about my age.  They were dressed quite fanciful with tiaras and kitten mules.  They were, however, quite large women in stylish muu-muus.  They looked strangely out of place in a Pizza Hut.  When one went to the ladies room, I started to wonder if they were madams and there was a convention in the nearby hotel.  Then I thought they may be drag queens...  These two women had healthy appetites.  They ordered dish after dish and were still packing it in when Bill and I left.

We wandered to the waterfront to see what was going on.  There was the Olympic Sailing Venue from 2008 and lots of booths being set up, a lighthouse, a "beer street" and a fancy yacht club to which you could not enter onto the property at all, not even into a parking lot!

It was getting close to dusk and we were searching for some spots that were on the map.  But, we could not find them.  Bill was going crazy as he was sure that we were in Old Town.  Well, we figured out that we were not in old town, but the equivalent of Brooklyn, using NYC standards.  Bill felt really bad about that, since all this time he thought he had booked a hotel in Old Town and now we were in the burbs.  More on this later.  It is not a bad location, there are tons of restaurants and other diversions so it's not bad.

We went to the restaurant connected with the hotel for dinner that night and got some really weird stuff unintentionally.  The had a picture menu without English translation, and we choose and made decisions according to what we "thought" the dish looked like.  We got lots of surprises!  Bill ordered this thing that looked to me like abalone, baked oysters,  crystal dumplings, and I ordered what looked like Kung pao chicken.

What a surprise.  The abalone was actually a scotch egg kind of thing.  With a hard boiled egg inside a meat enclosure that had been fried and in a brown sauce. The oysters were identifiable  but they had a slice of what looked and tasted like velvetta cheese on top.  They were still attached to the lower shell so that made things a little difficult to remove from the shell into the mouth.  Kind of laughable!  My dish arrived first, and it was a peanut, sliced dried hot peppers and fried clams or mussels, I couldn't tell.  But it was really tasty.  How could it not be...fried salty crispy things.

 Velvetta Oysters

 Hidden Scotch Eggs

 Peanuts and Clams