干杯!

I think today totally exemplifies my new maxim that nothing works the first time you try it in China. I had organised Ghassan, Daisy and Becka to catch a bus to go and check out 崂山Mount Lao. This is a famous mountain here in Shandong and apparently it is the tallest mountain on China's coastline. It was once covered in many temples and monasteries but a lot of these have since been destroyed. I don't know when but I suspect the Cultural Revolution... Anyway Becka and I were feeling a little tired as had been to a birthday party last night. It was the birthday of Pierre who is a French Canadian. He calls me Nicole as he thinks I look like Nicole Kidman and I make fun of him for being a French Canadian. Last night was the first time we met but we seem to have happily settled into insults. We met quite a few new people last night which was great fun.

Although there were only a couple of Chinese people there, several Chinese traditions were still in use:P There is a exhortation here called 干杯, ganbei, which means finish your glass. When someone says this you have to down your drink and heaven help you if it's 白酒-baijiu-basically paintstripper. Chinese businessmen love getting Western businessmen very drunk on it. Luckily we only had beer- and suspiciously watery beer at that. Which was good as the tradition at birthdays is that the birthday boy has to down a glass with everyone there one by one. This can result in a lot of alcohol being ingested... Luckily Pierre managed it without throwing up. Another fun tradition was throwing bits of his cake at him at the end. That is a real one apparently but I might check before I do that myself... Anyway I had a great time squashed up with lovely interesting new people (the table was way to too small for 20 people...) and the Chinese way of dining is very conducive to parties as you order dishes and then take what you want rather than have your own meal alone. We had the classic 糖醋肌理, sweet and sour pork, as well as some sort of honey glazed pork (was delicious). There was some vegetable in a gravy sauce that was lovely as well as grated potato-not sure about that one. There were also great big bowls of a fantastically tasty fish stew. Normally fish isnt my thing but I was digging into that. And a lot of beer.

A moment that had me nearly crying with laughter was when Pierre, drunk, was shouting "服务员!!!", fuwuyuan, waiter, at the top of his voice and getting exactly no answer.

Then we shipped off to LPG. I met Kash's boss by accident. He started talking to me and said he worked in real estate and I asked if he knew Kash, a real shot in the dark, and he said he did and then pulled a face. I didn't delve any further as I know Kash doesn't work there any more... He was very nice although for some reason I said something a bit more angrily than I meant to and he wondered why I was being aggressive. I felt a bit mortified and then spent the next few minutes of conversation trying to be extra nice. He was from Texas. Perhaps that was why.

Anthony also introduced me to Tommy who is a student of his. The idea was we could practise English/Chinese and we had a good time chatting about this and that in various languages. I gave him my phone number and when I had left to go home, he texted me saying 好梦, which means sweet dreams. Aahhhh.

There is a pole at LPG and there was also a pole dancer. She was Chinese, wearing a lot of leather (well not a lot...she was in fact wearing very little. It was just all leather) and waving a red leather flail. She was very confident. The very opposite of your average Chinese girl- who tends to be coy, giggly, and wearing a Hello Kitty sweater. Most of the guys there were too embarrassed to watch but Becka and I just stood there staring in awe :P

Most of my class appeared to be in the bar and I found myself playing some dice game with some Russians and Ukranians. I played it a bit but still have no idea of the rules.

So back to this morning. We caught the bus and headed out. It was a way away but I rather enjoyed seeing more of Qingdao. The skyscrapers eventually turned into low brick housing with red tiled roofs and yellow painted walls. There were fields of this and that as well as a group of bee hives. Which were placed right next to a bus stop... On one side of the road was the ocean, which was very sparkly and inviting in the sun, and on the other were rocky mountains covered in sparse shrubs. Annoyingly at first were a group of Americans on the bus who continued to prove my theory that Americans talk louder than everyone else. There was one guy whose drawl about his sexual exploits sounded throughout the entire bus. I didn't miss them when they got off. We passed a sign about "China Sport Lottery". I see a lot of signs for this but am not sure what it is. I am, however, reminded inexorably of the Lottery in 1984... We also passed a river full of wooden Chinese junks which was scenic to see.

Eventually we arrived at Laoshan, or rather the carpark. There was the usual greeting party of randomers offering taxi rides for a million pounds. However we found out that tickets were 100元 to get in to 崂山 and while this was a fair price we decided it would be a waste as it was very smoggy today. You could not see very far at all. So as we had been enjoying the bus ride we hopped back on, much to the bewilderment of the conductor at 4 laowais getting a bus to 崂山 but not staying..., and travelled a bit further to the end of the line. So our first attempt at going to 崂山 had ended in failure- as do so many first attempts in China...

We got out at some bus station, watched a woman sweep our bus and then we got back on in the same seats. We decided to buy tickets to 石老人, shilaoren, old stone man, but when we reached that stop we realised it wasn't what we wanted as it was basically the side of the road. However the conductor shouted at us that it was our stop and we declined. Then the rest of the bus, thinking we didn't understand, started eagerly telling us it was our stop. After a while we convinced them we knew what we were doing and then we got off at the next stop. There was a row of shops/restaurants and as Ghassan was starving we went to get food. Normally little restaurants are a bit dirty and the furniture is all mismatched and covered in sticky stuff but this one had shiny fake wood tables and chairs and was spotless. I had lamb kebabs and roast slices of potato on a skewer and they were the first things I have eaten in China that were actually truly delicious. They were all covered in rosemary and tasted soooo goooood. The 老板, laoban, owner, was a bit of a character and was loving having four laowai in. He was making little jokes and happily saying any English words he knew. He had a newspaper with a picture of Obama and brought it out thinking we were American and was a bit disappointed when we weren't.

Damn those lamb kebabs were good.

The food was so tasty and the laoban so entertaining we think getting the bus out there just to go to the restaurant might be worth it:P

Then Daisy and I headed to 书城 Book City, as I wanted a copy of a book called 聊斋志异, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. It is a book of folk tales written by a civil servant around 200ish years ago. Bizarrely, they had books such as Lady Chatterly's Lover, Plato's Republic, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and Barchester Towers.. the first seems a bit steamy for the Chinese, who like to keep such things under wraps, and the rest... well... Plato's Republic??? I confidently bet that there is not a single person in the whole of China, out of 1.3billion, who has read that, or will...

I also found a book written by a Chinese man who had travelled in Britain in the 1940s. There were several different ones, one on Oxford, one on London, one on "Lakeland"(I'm thinking Lake District) and one on Edinburgh. Naturally I grabbed the Edinburgh one. It was full of sketches and paintings he'd done of Edinburgh that were very true to life. I could recognise the places instantly and he had captured the gloomy Scottish rain very well :P He had done one of a panda outside the Balmoral though... I am very much looking forward to working my way through that. I miss Edinburgh- I love that place way too much.