Saturday, June 2

We went out to purchase oatmeal at about 8 am, and encountered a meat market at the bottom of the hill.  No camera; what I wish you could see is the total lack of modern sanitary conditions!  The proximity of the customers crowding up to the meat, the bare, aged tables some scarred plastic, the lack of gloves, the single knife reused from piece to piece, the open air, the clean but aged containers holding whole animal carcasses and/or fish, the children reaching up to touch a carcass hanging on a bar.  It was a study in contrasts with an American grocery and even with an American farmer’s market. Are we overly preoccupied with the trappings of cleanliness?  Do we get the protection we are working hard to obtain?  Obviously these people don’t get sick from their meat, or they’d stop purchasing it, right? Maybe they get used to the attendant germs; tougher guts, different cooking methods to kill anything present?  And, it was a communal experience; lots of people talking and laughing, possibly discussing what they’ll cook with the meat they are buying. 

Talk about communal experiences—Julia and I had a major communal experience today when we went to Tai Dong, with aide Mia, to shop for fabric and yarn (one of my favorite things to do while traveling is buy yarn I can later knit up for a memory).  Tai Dong is the district in which fabric and yarn tend to be available for sale.  There is a pedestrian street in the heart of the district—Wei Hai Lu—and lots and lots and lots of shopping which was filled, on this sunny warm but not hot day, by many, many shoppers.  It was fun! But Mia was right:  I couldn’t have done it by myself.  The crowds weren’t overwhelming, but they were extensive, and the distances between the shops recommended by aide Sabrina (whose mother knits), and the vehicular traffic all united to make it hectic, especially with Julia’s scooter.  But, more to the point, I couldn’t have figured out what I wanted and negotiated a sale with the clerks, let alone bargained the prices down.  I bought a yarn with several kinds of wool in it—llama, goat and an unidentified type—information which would have been barred from me.  I bought a cotton with some silk in it, again something I couldn’t have figured out, except that it feels so wonderful!

On the bus heading off for our adventurous day!

The bus street scene from above

Cars, carts, people, and goods, all sharing the street.

Mia was a tremendous help, cheerful as always, and a good negotiator.  One of the first things we did was get a balloon for Julia; listening to the tone of Mia’s voice as she discussed price with the vendor, I saw a different side of her!  Maybe partly because Chinese can sound sharp and a bit abrupt in some circumstances.  I know there was a lot of conversation exchanged about who we are and what the connection is between me and Julia.  Mia mentioned that one fabric saleswoman asked a dozen questions about Julia!  And the yarn sales ladies were impressed that I ‘knew what I was doing’ even though I couldn’t technically speak Chinese.  A nice compliment.  Mia also told me that I am ‘a patient parent’—she said Chinese parents would have 1) made Julia choose the fabric the parent wanted; 2) insisted that the scooter stay home; and 3) nagged at her for stopping and starting as we traveled through the district.  Was there a hidden barb in there—maybe Mia wished I had left the scooter home!  She’s too nice to ever say so. 

Julia and her myriad of balloons!

Julia and Mia, with her cheerful smile!

Some of the gorgeous fabric we found

Isn't it all beautifully colorful?

Mia helping Mama select yarn

There were overpasses for crossing the busy streets—on one we saw a cage full of tiny bunnies.  Julia clamored; they are adorable.  Bright red grilled prawns for sale on the street, among the 100s of cherry vendors.  There was durian for sale on the street, as well.  I’d love to watch someone open that ungainly fruit; I don’t personally want to touch it!  It’s mind boggling that something can stink almost beyond belief and taste heavenly at the same time!  Notice that among the shops is a Walmart, probably check and jowl with a McDonald’s!  And the painted buildings—they were cool-looking, among the gaudy ads and throbbing commercialism.

Tiny bunnies - alas, Julia won't be bringing one home

Very RED prawns!

And, inevitably, Walmart.

Aren't the paintings great??

We’ve taken a lot of photos of shoes recently; the Chinese women wear fabulous shoes, sometimes throwing coordination to the wind!  All the pumps have embellishments, usually bows.  Many of the shoes are very high, platforms or spiky heels.  And the shoes are often vivid colors! Not necessarily matching the color of the outfit!

We rode a new bus—307—to Tai Dong, which is in a section of the city that we haven’t been in.  The ride, which delighted Julia, was about 40 minutes and 17 stops!  It reminded me just how big Qingdao is—so many sections of a dozen high rises, and cluster after cluster after cluster of apartment buildings.  Qingdao is primarily housing; is that true of all big cities?  And Qingdao is, undeniably, filthy.  This photo of the walk path for the blind, taken at the Tai Dong bus stop, illustrates the feel of the city. There is decoration, and there are holes and chips in the tiles.

Over all, there is dirt—how old?  The city is modern, so there was a set of old structures (with their own dirt!) now gone.  I don’t know how old modern Qingdao is, but it is both cutting edge and dilapidated.  I noticed more forcefully today, too, that a feature of Qingdao is the advertising, of which there is so much.  I haven’t been to New York in a long time; does it or LA or even Chicago look like this?  The ads are everywhere, they are brightly colored and often moving in some way; they are huge in proportion to the size of the building on which they have been posted.  They add a garish, even tawdry, element that somewhat repels me.  This city, like American cities but unlike European cities, has a lot of litter, which surprised me a bit.  I expected the Chinese to be intense about clean up, a heritage of the past.  Mia even mentioned the filth today, so I am not being overly finicky (well, I may be, but others are too!)

I have a tiny little trash can in my kitchen; it amuses me.  I am always perplexed by ideas that don’t seem to spread—the 13 gallon trash can seems a no-brainer!  But not in China.  And one buys a roll of thin, easily torn trash bags that have to be changed at least once a day.  Everyone sticks his full trash in the hallway to be deposited in a communal trash can in the morning as one leaves the building.  In shops, products are bagged in equally thin, disposable trash bags that aren’t meant to last more than one use.  I bought this lovely length of traditional fabric—and didn’t get a bag for it.  At each purchase, the sales person asks you if you have a bag, charges you a mite for a bag if you need it, and allows you to bag your own purchases.  There was no careful treatment of my beautiful fabric, as would have happened in Germany for instance, where the wrapping of the package might have taken as long as the sale.  After we bargained for it, and got the price down by about 1/3, I pointed out several spots on the fabric.  So the sales clerk unwound the roll and gave me the interior, unstained, length of fabric. Because it had been tightly wrapped, it needed to be steam-ironed.  They offered to steam it to complete the sale; after the sale, they whined and complained about having to steam the whole length!  It was very funny.  Even I could tell what was going on, without the language.  I kept nodding in sympathy and indicating further areas that needed ironing.

Quite the process!

17 stops later, we returned home to rest for a short while and deposit our purchases. 

Julia's dream-come-true - hanging from a strap on the bus!

Happy girl!

On the way out to dinner, I took Julia’s photo by the rose arbor where, today, the honeysuckle came into full and very fragrant bloom.  The perfume is apparent even through the city air.  I gave her a taste of the honey liquor; she loved it!  We decided to go western food tonight, and headed back to The Diner for a hamburger and shake for Julia.  I continued to bend the diet a bit and had pasta with salmon, which tasted pretty good!  Down by the sea it was foggy and cooler, at 6 pm.  We popped down to the May 4 Monument so that Julia could drive a battery-operated car; funny how satisfying that is to her!

Lovely flowers and girl!

She loved it (again)!

We were both exhausted as we rode the bus home; it was tempting to say, ‘it’s late, let’s get a taxi.’ But we were blessed by the bus gods; the 314 pulled up as we stepped into the bus shelter.  The city was in dusk, and lots of bright lights everywhere.  One building had a light show going across the whole building, using every window and changing colors rapidly.  Bright lights, big city, our home away from home.