Beijing-Qingdao-Shanghai

The Great Wall was awesome, I climbed all the way up and along the top a pretty good distance. I'm getting pretty good at taking pictures of myself places, but also had other people offer to take some pictures of me. Also if I was walking along with some chinese person/people for a while at some point theyd ask to take a picture with me. And in general, every where I've gone, I've had people watch me and kind of follow me and then ask for a picture, or have their kids come up to me for one. Each time, I make them take one with my camera also, so now I have all these pictures of me and random chinese people. Awesome!

So that was a good morning. We spent the rest of the weekend at the villa and I had a great time with Icy and her family. On Sunday we drove back to Beijing and I checked into a new hostel and said good-bye and a million thank yous to Icy and her family. I spent the next two days checking out a few other sites around Beijing, seeing an acrobatics show, and meeting cool people in the hostel, a few guys in particular, all expats from America who now live around China but were meeting up to hang out in Bejing for a few days. I went out with them one night for some good food and saw some cool bars and nightlife, we had a good time.

Then Tuesday late afternoon I took a train to Qingdao, a beach town, home of Tsingdao Brewery. I took the speed train, and although there were many stops along the way, the train was moving at 200 km for most of the trip and we made it there in 5.5 hours, 888 km. I checked into a hotel I had made a reservation at based on a recommendation from one of Bennetts friends, found a deal online and got 2 nights for the price of one. The room they put me in first kind of sucked and at like 5 am, unable to sleep and fed up with a broken air conditioner I managed to communicate to the night staff my problem and got moved to a waaay better room. So I had a kind of rough night, with no sleep really, but the next two days made up for it. I relaxed and walked around the shore, checked out the beaches and the bavarian architecture of the German Concession. The Germans were granted rule of Qingdao and the Shandong province for 99 years starting in 1897 when two German priests were killed there in some rebellion, and there was a lot of evidence of that all around. Beautiful buildings and houses, a huge two-steeple church and castle-y buildings, and signs outside many of the little shops saying things like 'GAUSTEHAUS' or 'METALLWAREN GESCHAFT.' Since it is on the water Qingdao is known for its great seafood, and there were tons of little shops along the streets by the beaches that had turtles of all sizes, fish, shellfish, sea cucumbers, etc. all swimming and squirming around in buckets. I treated myself to a really good dinner and then was thinking of hitting up the bar area since I read that there were a lot of very unique and cool spots, a lot of expat hangouts too. I was feeling pretty tired though so I only made it to Lennon Bar, a Beatles tribute bar! Run by this chinese dude who loved the Beatles hehe. I took some pictures and talked with him for a while and with two other Americans who happened to be travelling on business. It was a nice evening and I was exhausted from walking around all day, it was super hot and super muggy. Visibility was incredibly poor, there was so much haze in the air. Although Qingdao is on the coast, there is unfortunately absolutely no wind :(

The next day I flew to Shanghai and met up with Benny and Bennett and two other friends from Great Neck, Joe and Dave Kwon (we all went to high school together). Joe and Dave were staying in a hotel, and, ironically, in room 516 (great neck area code) ! We all found that pretty funny, that 5 people from the 516 happened to all find themselves in Shanghai, China, all on different business, but together for an evening. We had a good time!

The next day, yesterday, Friday 7/2, Benny and I explored the Jewish section of Shanghai. Shanghai was essentially the only place in the world that opened its doors to Jewish refugees during WWII. Several thousands came but were kept contained in a walled ghetto area as Japan had some control/involvement here during that time. It was obvious where the neighborhood was as the buildings they lived in still stood, blue and red brick structures. We walked around and met an old Chinese man who had lived there for 50 years, and used to be friends with the Jews that lived there. There was a memorial park for the 'stateless refugees' and also an old synagogue that was also a museum. The museum took about an hour to go through and had a lot of art, artifacts, and testimonials from Jews who had sought refuge there or grown up there, left, and returned, or married Chinese people, etc. A lot of really incredible stories. We went around with a Jewish couple from Manhattan, and just as we were leaving a busload of Israelies showed up! That was cool, I chatted with them for a few minutes.

Benny and I then went and explored an artsy little maze of pedestrian streets and alleys, filled with restaurants/bars and little curios shops and other cool stuff. A lot of it was pretty expensive, touristy stuff, but it was all very cool and beautiful, there was a lot of very cool art. I am waiting to check out the big markets, with bulk fabrics and silks and such. I know it will be expensive anyway but..it'll be good!

We came back and hung out at Bennetts, watched the Brazil-Netherlands game (who saw that coming) hung out for a while with Bennetts new roommates and some other friends and then called it a night.

So that brings us to today. There was some crazy talk last night of spontaneously dropping everything and travelling west for a while, see how far we could go..for a number of reasons we realized that leaving today, tomorrow, or even this week would not be ideal and we could get a lot more out of it if we waited until next week and did some planning. So thats where I'm at now. I plan on checking out the expo this week and seeing some Shanghai sights while planning out a train trip to Nanjing, Xi'an, Kaifeng, and Chengdu and Guilin if possible. I reallllly want to go to Guilin (check out a picture: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~liad/pics/html/china/guilin.jpg). I did not pick the best time of year to come to China, its super hot and humid...meh.

I am considering getting an apartment for the month as it might be cheaper than stayin in a hostel..but, it depends. Mostly on air conditioning...we'll see. I'm going to check it out today or tomorrow.

So thats all I got for now! I have about 3 and a half weeks left in my trip. A lot of things are going to happen.