Qingdao

Going to Qingdao and back in 48 hours (photos here):

Step 1: Take the overnight train Friday night. After the first couple hours, this was no fun at all and I don’t recommend it – especially since we had seats and not bunks, the lights never went off and despite it being an eight-hour overnight trip it was still standing room only. The hours between 3 and 5 a.m. were especially tough.

Step 2: Check into the hostel and crash for a few hours, then meet up with the rest of your group. There were eight of us total: me, Brian, Niall, three teachers from Zhengzhou that Brian and I met in Shanghai (Anna, David and Edmund) and two Japanese teachers at their school (Yuko and Kaoru).

Step 3: Walk through the market, where you can not only find scorpion, but choose which live scorpions you want skewered in particular. There are bowls crawling with them.

Step 4: Eat.

Step 5: Visit the Tsingtao Brewery. Qingdao, which was under German control from 1898 to 1914, is known for three things: seafood, Taoism and Tsingtao Beer.

Step 6. Since Tsingtao runs so freely, purchase individual one-liter plastic bags filled directly from kegs. Insert straw.

Step 7: Hike up to the Qingdao TV tower, which changes color but isn’t really worth paying for the view from the top when it’s just as good from the base.

Step 8. Eat.

Step 9. Upgrade to 2.5-liter bags.

Step 10. Wake up and enjoy an American breakfast with eggs, toast, ham, bacon and hash browns, which is astonishingly cheap compared to Beijing prices.

Step 11. Follow that up with sushi.

Step 12. Say goodbye to Zhengzhou friends, who are leaving on an earlier train; walk along the beach and visit the Qingdao aquarium.

Step 13. Eat.

Step 14. Skip the overnight train in favor of the vastly more expensive (but worth it just this once) six-hour bullet train, which is amazing: there’s room to stretch out, the seats recline and staff serve you bottled water from Tibet. Seriously, Amtrak could learn a thing or two. The Western-style toilet is still gross, but that’s train travel everywhere in the world.

China Fun Fact: In 2006, Tsingtao Beer brewed 460 million tons, yielding $4 billion in revenue and $84.5 million in profit.