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So by now you're probably asking yourself "By golly, what am I
going to do with myself come Friday and Saturday night?
General Going Out Procedures
Before you get crazy and leave university premises, you have two
issues: #1: how am I going to tell the cabby where I want to go? and #2:
How am I going to tell the cabby to take me home? Well the answer to
question #1 is to find a Red-Star magazine. This is the foreigners social
guide to Qingdao and it can
be picked up at coffee shops or accessed at www.myredstar.com.cn. Secondly,
you'll need to get home. You should memorize the name of the university
and the street name in Chinese. Initially we stayed at the Yin Hai and
our return information was "Hai Da Yu Shon Luo" and later at
the Jin Hai it was "Hai Da Hung Dao Luo" - forgive the
inaccuracies in spelling but this should get you by. Just ask Hung Tao
and Hayley to say it for you a few times and commit it to memory because
if you get lost in China
without a cell phone and unable to pronounce where you want to go no one
can really help you.
Beer-in-a-Bag
This is a very foreign idea to most of us as beer is generally
dispensed in either cups, bottles, or cans. After hopping across the Pacific
Ocean and ending up on the other side of the planet though
things just aren't quite the same. The preferred method for the
distribution of beer in China
is the plastic bag. Now I know what you're saying "Beer in a plastic
bag? How do I even drink that? That's stupid!" WRONG. It's tasty,
it's economical, and you get to drink through a straw. Make sure you get
a straw from the local vendor as this is crucial for regular consum ption.
You have to jab the straw into the bag right above the beer - but not too
hard or you'll go through the other side of the bag and that spells
trouble (bags are entirely too thin). If this happens you'll be forced to
chug your entire beer which isn't necessarily a bad thing. This product
is available at just about any little street market you see. If you're
staying at the Yin Hai go out gate 1, walk down the hill just a bit and
look around. If you're lucky enough to be staying at the Jin Hai you can
just go downstairs and right outside of gate 4: BAM beer-in-a-bag.
The biggest selling point of this liquid nirvana - 1 RMB per
"beer". That's 12.5 U.S. cents!
Lastly, I want to point out that the beer of choice here is Tsingtao
(same as Qingdao) beer.
That's right, Qingdao brews
its own beer and it's famous throughout China.
Bottom line: if you like beer and you like it cheap you've just struck
gold. Here are some of the pictures of us enjoying this 8th wonder of the
world.
Useful Fact: The word for beer in Chinese is pronounced
phonetically PEE-JOO
Meat Sticks
Since you generally head out when the night is young and come
back late chances are you're going to get hungry at some point. To remedy
this you have but one option - meat sticks! They're delicious and can be
found all over the place. It was a hit with our group and maybe it'll be
a hit with yours too. Don't hesitate to eat them while sporting a
beer-in-a-bag in your other hand.
Germans and other folks of the European persuasion
If you're like me when you think Germany
you think of autobahns and Heineken. However, after spending a few weeks
with the German business students you'll only think the latter. These
kids drink and they do it like its their national sport. You'll probably
only see these characters for a few weeks and that's only if you're staying
at the Yin Hai (We moved to the Jin Hai after a few weeks because the Yin
Hai elects to have only cold water or scalding hot water). Make friends
with them ASAP. They threw a big ol' keg party right outside the hotel
the weekend before they left so that's a good time and you should
definitely attend that. Here's a picture of us partying it up at said keg
party. The crazed looking gentleman on the far left is Armine, one of our
German buddies.
The Corner Jazz Club
This joint was probably the most consistently fun place to go.
There's always tons of foreigners there and pretty good western music.
They do this thing where they transition to salsa music (the DJ was
Latino) in and out through the night so that's kind of annoying if you
can barely dance to regular music, much less to salsa. All
around a pretty good hangout you should enjoy yourself here.
The Feeling Club
If you're lookin' to get down to some Chinese techno/club/dance music
this is your place. It is almost exclusively Chinese so don't plan to try
to start many conversations although its kind of a dead issue since its
pretty loud. There are an inhuman amount of people crammed into this
place but it is massive so don't sweat it. Additionally this place is
pretty swank so that adds to the allure a bit. Perhaps the most
interesting aspect of the club is the hydraulic dance floor. It bounces
up and down and keeps you entertained for hours. One serious down side to
the Feeling Club is that as soon as you get into the main part of the
club they swarm you and try to force you to buy drinks and expensive
drinks at that.
Internet Cafe
Sometimes you're just not in the mood to go out, and that's
totally understandable. As a replacement for beer and debauchery there's
always the endless expanse of amazingness internet. To entertain
ourselves most of us (minus Jen and Erika) resorted to the time honored
tradition of playing Counter-Strike. Since most of us were terrible at
the game and got wrecked by the Asians it was an unspoken goal that we
must improve to give our Asian brethren a run for their money. After many
weekday nights worth of play and some on the weekends we honed our skills
to razor sharpness and showed Asia what North America is all about -
violent computer games. Our internet cafe battleground of choice was
right outside of gate 4 through the gate between the first ice cream
stand market and the first restaurant.
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