Dear Family and Friends,

There is a slow boat to China. Did you know? Well, to be fair, it was about 15 hours from on the ferry from Korea to China... which isn't that slow and the hours were congenial.

I had been prepared for a more... intense... experience more in line with the ferry that an American friend and I took some months before from Korea to Japan. That ferry was chaos. Crowds pressing. Once people pushed and spilled on board our shabbily outfitted cruise ship, people hurried to their cabins. The majority of the cabins were carpeted with a sum of twelve cubbies lining two walls, adequately wide for a torso and each the with a neat stack of bedding. My friend and I greeted our male roommates, received the admonition to take our shoes off with apologies, and dropped our weekend bags with some trepidation. The trepidation grew into barely concealed culture shock as we walked amongst the swirling boat partiers: kids running, old women in ill-matching outfits nodding off in padded chairs, people our age investigating the noribang (aka karaoke) and video game rooms, and the smoking room packed with men. And the noise...! But what we found most interesting was that occupants of several other cabins covered their carpets with newspapers and pulled Korean picnics: cabbage kimchi, radish kimchi, ramen, hard boiled eggs, rice, green onion pancakes, rice cakes, fruit, and many round, green bottles of soju. But what was most striking, and a glaring exception to the rule of Korean hospitality, was that my very American self and friend were either invisible or even regarded with disdain. At one point, despite lacking towels, we decided to visit the on-board public bathes, and an old lady who had watched us stuff our clothes into a locker, followed us and began screaming at us because we had forgotten to shower before climbing into the pools of warm water (I had sighted the windows that appeared to display us to anyone walking the boat decks and forgotten bath rules). The lady was not at all pacified when I indicated I understood what she was saying and apologized, all in Korean. She didn't leave until we both had climbed out of the bathes - eyeing the windows warily. Two years in Korea and never had I or would I be treated that way again. Anyway, that crossing was cultural and made quite the travel story, but it made arriving in clean, orderly Japan rather a relief. And it made this crossing to China heavenly.

Because I preferred to skip the kimchi picnics, I upgraded to bunk beds - which on this ship were clean and curtained. The ship couldn't have been at half capacity passenger-wise and my one roommate was a lovely, bi-lingual Chinese lady, we communicated in minimal Korean and with lots of smiles. Our ship was not as shabby and lacked entertainment venues but more than made up for this lack by being equipped with a convenience store. I dropped my backpack near the cubby and hurried to the deck to watch as whole containers and lorries were driven through a lowered section of the boat's hull. It took over an hour to leave the bay at Incheon, we were lifted to sea by locks. The boat rocked me to sleep early and awoke me in plenty of time to watch us draw near the Chinese coast. Cirrus clouds feathered the sky, fog smudged the horizon, and we were an hour and a half from docking when we passed through a good 200 fishing boats, engines off, their hulls weathered dark, rocking, with one or two busy fisherman in each boat while a rippling triangular orange flags of plastic attached to their dwarfed masts announced their presence, like a headlight in the dark.

My bags were searched at the port of Qingdao. A friendly shipmate and ran a gauntlet of taxis and took one to the bus station - my map told me that I could walk to the train station from there. After 25 minutes of trudging through crowds and dusty sidewalks, enduring many unfriendly stares, and no sign of the train station, I gave in and hailed a taxi. And discovered I was on the wrong side of the city.

Unsuccessful in my quest to purchase a train ticket, instead I purchased an overnight bus ticket and caught another cab to my hostel. My world felt new and overwhelming... and even though I liked what I saw and was excited to explore, I missed familiarity.


The city of Qingdao sports its history in its architecture. Basically a fishing village 'til the late nineteenth century when the Qing Dynasty ceded the territory to the Germans, who made an indelible architectural mark on the city. But soon the colonizing Germans ran into problems of their own (notably World War I) and Qingdao fell under colonizing Japanese, followed by the Kuomintang, a stint of hosting the US Navy and finally, the Communist Red Army brought the city back to China in 1949. Today the city rated one of the most livable in China, it is famous for its beer (Tsingtao), and it hosted the sailing events for the Beijing Olympics.

My visit to Qingdao was brief. My first tourist visit was to walk to the reputedly beautiful Catholic church, whose black iron gates were adamantly secured. Disappointed, I turned my attention to other visitors of the church square. They were a good ten or so groups - each composed of a make-up artist/assistant, a photographer on his back shooting up, a photographer on his feet shooting out, a groom and a bride. Throughout my visit to Qingdao, I would find brides and their grooms, sometimes in rather unexpected poses, in front of churches, mansions, or waves from the sea. I loved watching the brides inelegantly dragging their dresses around, sometimes I caught glimpses of grubby sneakers or jeans under the dresses. I cannot rightly say, but I assumed from the condition of the dresses (often showing a history of being dragged across sandy beaches or dusty cobblestones) that their western-style dress was rented and that their wedding would be a separate occasion.

Finally, bored with the brides, I proceeded to other tourist sites: the famous Christan church (whose hospitality extended to admission into the church's clock tower), the former German Governor's mansion (beautifully preserved, threadbare carpets and deeply polished woods), the famous brewery, another two mansions (sad, sad neglected places - preservation not even a useful adjective for them), and ended up walking the beach near sunset. A few of the famous Qingdao kebabs for dinner... and I was content with time in Qingdao... and ready for Shanghai.

Cheers!
Laura

My cabin on the slow boat to China...
a very civilized way to travel!

The first of many portrait sessions
that I'd run across in Qingdao.

Reportedly the governor got fired for the
expense of building this mansion, but I say it was worth it!

Bottling Tsingtao beer in Qingdao...
although not a passionate beer drinker, I quite like this beer!