Chinese Menus!!

Chinese Menus
Spiced Duck’s Stomach
Spiced Pig’s Tongues
Spiced Pig’s Intestines
Spiced Goose’s Head
Spiced Goose’s Wing and Foot
Fried ant with eggs
Slices pigs ears in hot oil
Deep Fried Pigeon
Boiled fat cow with sauce in hot pot
Boiled turtle in hot pot
Boiled piece snake in hot pot
Fried shred pig’s kidney
Boiled pig brains and medicine with vegetable in hot pot
Braised duck paw with pickled chili
Braised toad’s loin with ice sugar
Soup with alga and 3 kinds of shred
Soup with young pigeon and winter melon

According to one of our guides, the Chinese eat most every part of an animal. Except: eyes, gall bladder (too bitter), lungs. Some of the best parts are the arms and legs and the intestines. The intestines, however, need to be cleaned very well and they still smell- so they’re drenched in spicy sauce.

Back to Boston

Off to Tokyo. We got our plane (a 747 filled partly filled with passengers and mostly filled with cargo) and arrived in Tokyo. We headed immediately to Continental to see if we could get out on the 5:40 flight. We got a wonderful counter agent who managed to get us on the flight and we headed to the gate. We took off on a packed 777 for our 11.5-hour flight to Newark. We got into Newark and found that all the early flights were full. Fortunately, our Tokyo agent had wait-listed us for the 7:00 flight and we made it on. Then, we waited on the runway for an hour waiting for some Continental flight attendants to arrive – only to find ourselves behind 21 international flights waiting on the runway. We finally got in to Boston at 10:00 p.m., exhausted, but happy to be home.

Our last day in China

Our last full day in China. We were actually regretting the departure. Our hostility and flash temper with the Chinese was subsiding. We took a taxi to the Bangchuidao Guesthouse, an area of the city set aside for the Communist party elite to relax. The ride to the park was flanked by landscaped grounds filled with cheap plaster statues of cows and insects. We got to the guesthouse and told our cab driver to wait.. It was a typical Communist hotel- huge empty marble lobby – cold and uninviting. We got the hotel staff to let us into a room to get a view of the ocean- and promptly left.

Back in Dalian, we headed to the New Orient Restaurant for a fish lunch. The restaurant, highly recommended by Gordon and Jean, had tanks of fresh fish. The concept is pick your fish, they bring it (still alive) to your table before they cook it. We had some kimchi (Chinese white cabbage) and a steamed grouper.
After a great lunch, we headed to pick up my new blouses. Our dressmaker proudly showed us her handiwork and we gave her an English name- Lila. She was pleased.
Another CNN/TV evening…

Dalian days

With too many days and not much to see in Dalian, we were taking it pretty easy. We did a bit of walking on the main pedestrian street and got a bit of shopping done. We spent the evening watching a bad Western followed by “Fargo” and eating room service.

Qingdao to Dalian

Off to Dalian. We checked out without event and headed to the airport. We got to Dalian and found a whole row of hotel booths in the airport. We decided that a US chain hotel was better than our Chinese run selection and settled on the Holiday Inn.. It was the right decision- English speaking staff, CNN and HBO, working A/C and a western restaurant.

We grabbed some lunch and headed to the “tailoring” part of town. Jean had told us about getting clothing made very cheaply in Dalian, so we found the buildings and wandered our way through aisles of stuff until we found a huge area filled with fabric. Fortunately we had the Chinese-English dictionary, because English speakers were not to be found. We found a “dressmaker” and tried to explain what we were looking for. She tracked down a girl who could speak a bit of English and we managed to find some fabric and negotiate the price and the 2-day time window.

With the tailoring behind us, we set out to explore Dalian. It was another modern Chinese city so we started by checking out all the western hotels. The Shangrila was filled with an Asian Amway convention. The Hilton was just opening and most of its facilities were in progress. We stopped at King Pizza for dinner and had a wonderful waiter who had only been working for 4 days. He knew enough English to bring us cold wine and a plate of spags. We asked what his name was- and got this long Chinese name. We asked him if he had an English name and he said no. So, we gave him his new name- Martin. He was so thrilled. When we tried to tip him, he refused the money and said that we gave him the best gift of all- his English name.

The Quingdao International Beer Festival!

What a hangover. The only cure was a trip to McDonalds for a greasy Big Mac and a walk along the waterfront.

We finally decided to head to the Qingdao International Beer Festival. The site is evidently only used for the festival once a year, but is a huge area with pavilions and an amusement park. It was a complete throwback to the 50’s with huge plaster statues of cartoon characters and lots of photo-taking Chinese.

We were starting to seriously question the “international” part of the festival. We appeared to be the only Caucasians in the entire park- and then, we ran into Gordon and Jean, the British couple we met at the Holiday Inn, having a beer in the Budweiser section.

We sat down with them and shared more stories and drank more beer. Meanwhile, we had to contend with the worst karaoke singers in the world. The Chinese male has no sense of rhythm and absolutely cannot sing. But it doesn’t stop them from belting out songs at full volume. After the karaoke, we got the Carlsberg go-go girls. What an afternoon!
At the Budweiser “tent”, they required a down payment on the beer glasses. When John said to the waitress, “That’s so we don’t steal the glasses”, she smiled and said, “Yes”. Gordon and Jean had us howling with more Chinese stories.
According to Gordon:
* The 40+ Chinese have been told what to think for their entire life- and as a result, don’t know how to think on their own.
* HIV is not a problem in China. If you’re diagnosed with HIV, you simply “disappear”.
* The older people all have bad teeth- from eating grass to survive during the Mao years.
* The Chinese turn on the heat in their apartment buildings on 11/15 and don’t turn it off until 3/15. The apartments blast out heat- so that they have to open their windows to cool down. There are no thermostats.
* If we think the hawkering is bad now, just stay through a Chinese winter.

We came up with our list of Chinese “memories”:
* Spitting
* Belching
* Peeing anywhere
* M&M’s
* Kenny G music everywhere
* Staring
* No newspapers
* Disinformation and missing information
* “Rail think”
* Cell phones and the 40 year old male
* Noise pollution
We finished off our evening with another dinner of lasagna at the Holiday Inn.

The Holiday Inn in Quingdao

A sleep in today. We continued our exploration of the city.
The paper announced that the Chinese government had spent 370 Billion dollars in urbanization last year alone. We still haven’t figured out where all the money is coming from, but it definitely is a field of dreams mentality…build it and they will come..

Based on the recommendation of the expats from the "Shang" the night before, we headed to the new Holiday Inn (HI) for dinner. After a brief run-in with the HI currency exchange folks, we headed to the new Italian restaurant and had wonderful lasagna. After dinner, we went to their “Safari Pub” and found a woman from Cameroon as the hostess. She was hysterical. Within a few minutes, we were getting her complete life story- from her dead husband and multiple children to her talks with God and her move to China. The West Africans are so accessible, extremely verbal. The women dominate both socially and economically and they are completely hair-brained.

Our discussions with her led to our meeting the only other people in the bar- an expat couple from Britain, Gordon and Jean. They had lived in Dalian for some time and just moved to Qingdao. We drank wine (lots of it!!) and had a wonderful time-sharing stories about China and the Chinese.

Quingdao

We spent most of the morning getting our exit planned. The coordination was interesting- trying to coordinate flights from Qingdao to Dalian to time with our FF tickets back home. There were a few stressful moments when we didn’t know if it would all work, but we got everything arranged for a departure for Boston next Friday.

We hit the streets after our admin tasks were completed and walked to the Catholic Church It was interesting to have to pay to get into the church (the Chinese have even themed Christianity!) and even more interesting to read the descriptions of Jesus and Mary. The church was filled with plaster statues of solemn saints. The Virgin Mary was described as “an ordinary Jewish girl” who was visited by God and asked to be the mother of God. “She agreed and pregnant Jesus”. According to the plaque by the Jesus statue, he was born in 4 BC and Joseph got billing as Jesus’ father. You had to wonder what the Chinese would make of this strange religion.

From there, we headed through parks and streets lined with old German buildings. The city was beautiful and for some reason, the Chinese haven’t knocked down the old German buildings, but have simply taken them over and used them as apartments. It must be that fine German construction. We went to the Xinhao Hill Guesthouse (which had been converted to a museum). It was a huge Richardsonian Romanesque building where the German Governor lived. Mao also stayed there, so they’ve preserved his rooms exactly as they were.

At that point, we were hot and sweaty and ready for a break, so we headed to the Dynasty hotel and their revolving rooftop restaurant. John got them to start the revolver (his 3rd successful revolving restaurant startup in China) and we watched the city while the sun set. Since all of China is on Beijing time, this city being on the far eastern edge has a very early sunset...about 6:15. After a full revolve, we decided that some greasy German food was in order, so we headed to the Shangrila’s German pub. The Chinese chef had never heard of schnitzel, but the meal was passable (and not kung pao chicken!).

We stayed on at the bar and met some of the 300 expats in Qingdao. They evidently hang out either at the Shangrila (the “Shang”) or the new Holiday Inn. Over the karaoke sounds of the Filipino band, we tried to carry on a few conversations with them. One of the Belgians echoed our puzzlement at what’s going on economically here in China. No one seems to be able to figure out where all the money is coming from to build these huge offices and hotels.
Note
* The focus of the daily life of the Chinese seems to be on routine and meeting the expectations of their immediate supervisors. Information in and of itself has no inherent value.
* They also have no ability to anticipate or to problem solve. When trying to get anything done, you need to do the thinking for them. They will respond to requests, but don’t take the initiative to figure out what you’re trying to do and make it happen.