A Trip to Qingdao: The Amble

The actual time I spent in Qingdao wasn't too memorable. For those not in the know, Qingdao is the city where Tsingtao beer was originally brewed. There's a different spelling because the phonetic systems used to express the Chinese language in English have been changed about 543.6 times. It was occupied by the Germans at some point, who gave it streets, electricity, a sewer system, and a safe drinking water supply (according to Wikipedia anyway), not to mention the brewery. This was all before the Germans realized that they had absoutely no business running a colony in China and coughed it up. If you ask me, they left it better than they found it, but say that to a Chinese person and the threat level measuring the odds of your being hit upside the head with a wok changes from a rosy orange to more of a menacing magenta.

Anyway, history aside, the city is a pleasant enough place to walk around. I would say that I spent the majority of my time there walking, actually. The best place I went was the Naval Musuem, which had an old Chinese sub and several ships. The highlights:

One of the boats bore marks from an engagement with the KMT (phonetics strike again!), in which it broke through a line somewhere, “leaving the GMD boats at a loss what to do,” according to the inscription. Judging by the number of rounds the boat took (more than 100), the GMD boats didn't seem to have had too much trouble figuring out what to do after all.
The other highlight of the Naval Museum involved a plane that was manufactured, “in the Soviet Union” that still very clearly had “US Air Force” on its side. It was thinly repainted by workers who were apparently not familiar with the purpose of repainting the plane in the first place.
I also got to walk by a bunch of old ordnance including mines and torpedoes. I hoped that they had all been defused, but I began to have my doubts when one of the workers walked by me kicking a “used” pressurized gas tank along the cobblestones. I think I tripped over my dignity on my way to the back side of the nearest solid object.
Possibly the best part was the unusually large number of Chinglish signs dotting the museum. My favorites by far were the “No Striding” signs. Guess I'll have to restrict myself to an “amble,” a “shuffle,” or perhaps a “mosey” as I peruse the various curiosities of the Naval Museum.

My other experiences in Qingdao mostly involved me looking for places that I couldn't find. I looked for the Qingdao Museum for a while and couldn't find the place, so I had to settle for the Qingdao Art Museum. Most of the paintings looked like they had been started with great detail, but that the painter had gotten lazy at the end and sort of splashed a bunch of vaguely appropriate-looking colors in the corners to finish them. I was not amused. On the other hand, I don't exactly have a discerning eye when it comes to art. I'm one of those classless slobs that walks into the museum, looks at one of the pieces of abstract art and scoffs, “That's just a streak on a white canvas! The artist probably spilled his coffee on the thing, missed his deadline, and handed it in like that. I could have done that!” This is why I don't really go to art museums any more... or ever really went in the first place.

Oh, and two different taxi drivers cheated me out of money. “Irate” doesn't really do justice to my mood at the time. It was one step above, “screaming at the taxi driver in Chinese” and about two steps from “violent.” The third taxi driver looked genuinely alarmed when I got in his taxi, probably due to the topographical map standing out on my forehead. However, I decided that it would be a good idea to say where I needed to go instead of, “Hulk smash!” which was much closer to what was really going through my head at the time. I'm officially changing China's subtitle to: Land of Rice, Girls Who Look 5-10 Years Younger Than They Really Are, and Frustration that Leads to Becoming the Incredible Hulk. Unfortunately, while it would be fun to take on thieving taxi drivers, sluggish supermarket shoppers, and the Chinese military as a big green monster, I'd rather not end up on the side of a Chinese road with my thumb out while sad music plays in the background.

I'd be run over by a bus in about three seconds.