The biggest city of Shangdong Province, China, Qingdao was the venue of the 2008 Olympics Sailing Competition. I'm sure you know what Sailing is, and one major thing it needs is the sea.
Yes, Qingdao is a coastal city. And along with the fine beaches are amazing mountains with huge rock formations (Laoshan), German architectures in some of its edifices (long time ago, Qingdao was once occupied by Germans), dazzling modern buildings, lovely art, dining and entertainment area (Tianmu) and the museum of one of China's most popular beers - Tsingtao Beer Museum.
Me and friends went to Qingdao, which also means the blue/green island, on April 3-5, 2009. It was a short but event-filled trip with lots of laughter, picture-taking, story-telling and creative story-telling (I mean the jokes are creative, haha!).
The temperature in Qingdao was colder than the city where I'm based - Tianjin. I guess the main reason to it was because of the coast. At mid-day, Qingdao was cool and sunny, but at night, it gets really cold.
Perhaps what I enjoyed the most in Qingdao was the zigzag-driving on our way to the mountain Laoshan. Can you just imagine me and my friends squashed amidst hundreds of Chinese inside the bus? You need not be afraid of falling off somewhere inside the bus because there wasn't space to fall to. I call it a total human sardines! Anyway, as the bus swerves, many of us held our breath as some turns are a bit abrupt and sharp, really hair-raising, if I may say so myself. Then we all sounded sighs of relief as the abrupt turn ended safely. It was a sort of roller-coaster and I enjoyed, and felt nerveous, to every bits of it.
On our way to Laoshan, we saw some flowering trees, perhaps a kind of Cherry Blossoms. They looked gorgeous!
And another favorite of mine was the visit to the Tsingtao Beer Museum. Aside from the fact that it was my first time to drink beer (and I never liked it, sorry), it was also my first time to play in a question and answer contest where everything written on screen was Chinese. It was only for fun but I was proud to say that I won. Not because I knew the answer but because I know exactly when to press the button and just made wild guesses.
And there was "that room" in the Beer museum which would make you a bit dizzy when you enter. Until now, I'm trying to understand what they have in there but man, I loved it. Never had I laughed so hard in the trip than those times I had inside "that dizzying room" with f
ri
ends.
So every once in a while, we all deserve some time-out to travel to another place, another environment. A place we totally don't know except its name. It's great that before I went to Qingdao, I only know that it's a coastal city and it should be nice.
As I came home after my Qingdao trip, I have with me experiences, laughter, memories, fun...all in my head and heart...much more than the money I spent, or the time I spared. Things like that can help me become a better person with a wider scope of understanding God and His creations.
x
Cathy
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