Small fish mountain park
First full day in China and I was woken up by housekeeping at 12PM. I got dressed and headed to the Crowne Plaza to wake my Mum up at about 12:45.
As it was already quite late, we caught a taxi to xiaoyushangongyuan (xiao = small, yu = fish, shan = mountain, gong yuan = park) but were not terribly impressed with the pagodas. We picked up four pairs of earmuffs, which cost us just over 25p/pair.
We’d planned to visit a big park nearby, but as it was already getting late (and cold!) we instead walked along the no. 1 bathing beach which was very enjoyable. Due to season it was very quiet, but we saw some athletic training going on and surprisingly quite a few young couples on the beach (today being Valentine’s Day).
I wanted to pick up some small pads for making notes of newly-learned Chinese words, or to remind myself to check some grammar/phrases out so we headed to the Carrefour where I was utterly amazed to discover that a fold-up bike sells for as little as 350RMB (about 25 pounds). We both enjoyed the massage chairs, which again were at give-away prices (it looked like around 1000RMB for the top-of-the-line model… roughly 60 pounds!)
There are many nice touches to be found in China… when things get busy in KFC, walkabout sales people come up to you in the queue and take your order. There’s no fancy electronic stuff going on here… she just wrote it down onto a piece of paper and handed it to us. This did make things quicker when we were at the front as we just handed it over. I guess this is what happens in a country where labour is a commodity.
Today I got a chance to flex my Chinese… on the whole it went very well. I was glad to find that most people could understand my basic questions… my work on learning the tones and pronounciation is paying off, as past experiences did not go so well. Only one ‘big’ mistake today was ordering in KFC… I asked for a red tea (as opposed to green tea) and a Coke with no ice. I then pointed at the characters the girl had written for the tea and said ‘and milk’. Somehow we ended up with three drinks: a red tea (no milk), a Coke (no ice) and a cup of hot milk! Easily solved and next time I will remember to ask for red tea /with/ milk and not red tea /and/ milk!
Fatema Indian for dinner… a very very hot chicken vindaloo for me and the jalfrezi for my Mum. Not the best Indian food I’ve ever had, but still good. The naan was a little different to what I am used to, but this may just be because I’m set in my ‘English Indian’ ways.
We met a number of other Clipper people at the New York Club (more of an expat bar) after the meal, but as it was noisy and we’d only met three people before, this wasn’t an ideal location.
In many bars they play a skill/chance game that involves ten dice and two cups. Each person gets five dice and a cup to shake them up. Number one is a wildcard and can count for 1 through 6. You make educated guesses at the total number of any given number (i.e. I think there are three fours in total) until eventually somebody calls their opponent and you reveal your dice. If the number you came up with is less than or equal to the actual number then the person who called you up loses. But if you said there were five fours and you said three… you lose. The loser takes a swig of their drink and a new game begins. Tough to explain without demonstration, but very good fun.
We were introduced to this game by two brothers, one of whom was called Angelo. Angela is studying in Shanghai and hopes to visit either Australia or England to study marketing.
Due to worsening weather conditions the race was ended before the boats reached Qingdao. The result is that Hull & Humber/Quentin came in forth, which is a good position. H&H are due to arrive around 9AM on Saturday, so we’ll be on the pier with our St George’s flag to welcome them in.
Xiaoxiao should finally receive her Korean visa tomorrow morning, so she’s now booked onto a flight from Hangzhou to Qingdao in the afternoon. She’ll have to get from her city (Taizhou) to Hangzhou, but this only takes around two hours by car.
It’s 3:30AM now and having caught up with my blog I think I should really try and get to sleep. Need to be up at 9:30 tomorrow morning so we can head to the marina for a tour and certain other events. New York (leg winners) are due to sail in at 2PM.
Tags: China, chinese, clipper, hullandhumber, Life, qingdao, quentin, Travel, xiaoxiao