A Dong Commercial Walk Street World Famous Street

Okay, the title of this post is the name of the Market Square. There is no typo. Like many things I see and read, it just doesn’t make sense. You’d think they’d invest in better English translators, but no. Anyhow, the following pictures are of the main shopping centre in Qingdao.

I was impressed by the painted apartment buildings and the outdoor escalator. The tailors were pretty neat. Available was every fabric you could think of and all clothing or linens were custom made. I’m such a non-shopper, I just couldn't bring myself to get anything made. Instead, I walked around taking pictures. I even found a store named after me, “Sanfu” and a Chinese Walmart.

Dinner & Show...Asian Style!

The Teacher Trainers were treated to a traditional Qingdao dinner and performance at a local restaurant. The food was fantastic! The show was...interesting. It consisted of a musical performance in which none of the lovely ladies pretended to play the instruments to a recorded music, a shadow puppet show, a poet, a fashion show and a balancing expert. The woman who balanced the spinning plates was by far the most interesting and talented of all the performers.

Swanky Shangrila‏

While at Vivi Club, the awesome threesome met some chefs from Hotel Shangrila. It is an upper-scale international chain with 75 locations. An Italian food-fan on the trip discovered it had an Italian restaurant called DaVinici’s so the group decided to treat ourselves to a nice evening out. We even talked to Chef Jonathan Shea, from New Zealand, whom we’d met at the club earlier in the week.

The food wasn’t the greatest. The crème brule I shared with Claudia tasted like egg and lemon. Apparently, there are many logistical issues with getting the right ingredients. For instance, importing strawberries is a problem because the trucks do not have refrigeration and the delivery ends up being jam instead of fresh fruit. Regardless, the hotel is stunning (minimum room fee per night is $366 CDN) and the western toilets are marvellous!

Beer Bonanza

Qingdao is famous for Tsingtao Beer (the name is a spelling variation of the city’s name). When occupied by the German’s the first time, breweries were setup. Surprise, surprise...German’s know how to live! When the Japanese occupied the area, they kept the breweries open to produce Sapporo. The breweries never really closed and now Tsingtao Beer is exported all over the world.

Our tour consisted of a mini-history lesson, an explanation of how beer is made, a tour of the brewery and, yes, you guessed it, a sampling!!! Now, I’m not a fan of beer but the canned ale was delicious!

Asian Nuptual

We visited one of the coastal areas in Qingdao and stumbled across an upper class wedding ceremony. The bride and groom were dressed in western wedding garb. Before entering a hotel, a traditional drumming and dragon dance ceremony was held for the solemn-looking couple.

Clubbing in China

Okay, so the awesome threesome (Preet, Claudia and I) picked our students brains for the best clubs in town. We went both Friday and Saturday night after buying a $10 bottle of vodka from the grocery store (we filled our water bottles for pre-drinking...I know, a little high school-ish!).

The first club, ViVi Club, was fantastic. The second club, Feeling Club, was literally a feel up session. They had a bouncing dance floor and very few women. The moment we stepped onto it, we were groped. We stuck to danincg on the stage...it was safe there. Music at both places was amazing. Twenty ended up being my lucky number. All the boys I ended up dancing with were twenty years old...can you say cougar!

ViVi

Feeling