During this festival, Chinese people travel en masse in order to return to their hometowns and celebrate with their families. They eat dumplings on the stroke of midnight and light fireworks outside their doorway to repel evil spirits. In the 2 weeks leading up to New Year's night, they light fireworks at random: any place and any time are candidates for an explosion. I ended up spending New Years in a small town called Gubeikou, some 120 km north-east of central Beijing, where regular punters could be seen in their frontyards lighting fireworks with the mechanised detachment of someone wearily throwing a stick for a dog.
I knew that railway tickets would become difficult to get at this time of year, but thought this would only be an issue in the week leading up to Spring Festival. As it was still 3 weeks from the big occasion, I was as unlikely to hurry as an Australian in a city famous for its beer. Everything in China happens on a Chinese scale however, and it is in fact the previous 5 or 6 weeks that are affected, so that night I set off for the English speaking window at Qingdao railway station. And I might have wandered into McDonalds on the way.
Hannah and I admitted to each other that fast food was "cheating," and that no one travels to China for a Big Mac, but there are occasions when it really comes in handy. We met at the counter, where I asked her if she could read Chinese, and she responded by saying no, but they were about to bring out the foreigner's menu for us. That's the one with big numbers that you point at.
Chinese McDonalds is mostly the same as the ones all around the rest of the world - that's one reason why travellers use it I suppose - but it might take a while for their patrons to catch up with the general atmosphere of the place. I never thought I would be discussing the "civilised" aspects of a fast food restaurant but as I exited the bathroom I noticed something happening that probably wouldn't occur in the Mittagong branch: there was an old man washing his underwear in the basin. The manager told him this was not allowed and asked him to leave. He just shouted back at her to go away and that was that. Or maybe he was saying that no he didn't want any fries, I'm not sure.
Hannah and I went exploring this place the next day - Lao Shan. It's rocky face rises out of the sea and makes for a tough hike. The mountain is important in the history of Chinese religion as a Buddhist pilgrim named Faxian set up camp there upon his return from India in 412 AD. The Buddhism mingled with Daoist and Confucian beliefs and morphed into the religious hybrid that reigns in east-Asia.
The highlight of the day for me was in stumbling across this village by the sea. From a distance the terracotta roofs leading down to the ocean made it look vaguely Mediterranean. We took the winding roads down through the terraces into the village and looked at it up close and it became unmistakably Chinese however. I don't think the townsfolk got too many Westerners in their village.
The ticket I purchased was not for Saturday, like I had planned, but for Monday. This squashed my schedule in Nanjing from a leisurely 3 days into just 1 night. It also meant that I had an extra 2 days to explore Qingdao. The next day I set out to see the German churches of the city. Qingdao was seized in 1897 by Germany, which had become hungry for a piece of the imperialist pie by then. Missionaries followed in the wake of this occupation and today Qingdao retains a Catholic church and a Protestant church in the old part of the city, as well as a few other "European" attractions around town such as Huashi Lou - a castle-like manor that was once the home of Chiang Kai-Shek.
Top: The Catholic church, which was closed for renovations on the day I visited. Below: The author freezes in front of the clock tower of the Protestant church. Qingdao was cold, really cold.
On my last night in Qingdao I was treated to dinner by one of the employees of the hostel. Xiao Zhang had taken the job at the hostel in order to talk with travellers and improve his English. He took me to his favourite restaurant and ordered up a few plates of dumplings and some jellyfish, as well as beer and some of the local speciality "lojiu" - a kind of wine that you drink heated - which is also very hard to find outside of Shandong. After several glasses of that and as much as we could eat he put me on the city bus and I sat in a haze reflecting on the kindness which had already been shown to me within my few short days in China. The next day I had to leave for Nanjing where I'd arranged to meet up with Michelle, an American traveller who was eventually heading south for Xiamen, and who had offered to buy my forwarding ticket to Suzhou.
No comments:
Post a Comment