Apparently alot of other people were on their way to Kaifeng, only about an hour away. We waited as two extra large buses filled up, including standing room only. The Chinese are still just learning to queue and even the metal gates designed to keep people in lines didn't do much other than create a giant swelling mass, enclosed by metal gates. I stood with my arms outstretched, holding on to each side of the bars to keep people from getting ahead of me, but amazingly, it didn't stop them from trying. The moment when we were almost at the front of the line, an old man lept over the gates right where my dad was standing. Well, he tried to leap over the gates, but got my dad's elbow to the face instead. The three of us managed to get seats near the back of the bus, holding all our stuff on our laps. Shortly after we sat down, the queue-jumping little man appeared in the bus, apparently undeterred by my dad's elbow. He arrived to the back of the bus and had the choice between the vacant seat beside my dad, or a seat in the very back. He gave a long hard look at my dad, then sat down beside him.


The next morning we hit the streets before sunrise to catch our Qingdao bound train. With actual berths in hard sleeper class, the 14 hours flew by and we were in Qingdao by late evening, well rested. At least we were pretty sure we were in Qingdao. The main Qingdao train station was closed for Olympics renovations and we could only buy tickets to 'Sifang', which we knew was close to Qingdao, but just how close, that we weren't sure of. Up until we left the station, and realised that the platforms were planks of plywood, and that we were standing in an industrial park, I did finally concede defeat to Yann and admit that maybe we hadn't pulled into the train station, a century old German colonial building in Qingdao's Old Town.
At most train and bus stations in China you have the legitimate taxis queued up at a taxi stand, somewhere nearby you have the less legitimate drivers trying to usher you into their taxis. Due to its temporary status as the main Qingdao station, Sifang was a complete mess, with taxis everywhere, no visible queue and drivers shouting at us from every direction. As we didn't know where we were, we didn't have much choice other than to get into one. All we wanted was someone who was willing to use his meter on, even if he circled us around town for a while, it wouldn't cost us too much. We finally found someone willing to take us, loaded the trunk with our bags and pulled off. He stopped about 10 meters ahead where his associate who spoke a bit of English quoted us a new non-metered price of 30yuan/person. Furious, I opened the door, told the driver to open the trunk and we began getting out. A group of taxi drivers were yelling various things at us, while the driver was trying to get us back into the car. I just kept repeating "meter meter" and they kept repeating "no meter no meter". The tone was becoming more aggressive and my dad was now a bit ahead of me up the road repeatedly giving the double middle finger plus verbal fuck yous to the drivers. Meanwhile (I only heard about this later), poor Yann was watching the scene unfold from the back of the taxi, where he remained locked in, trying to get our attention. He was finally freed by the driver only to be greeted by a chorus of "fack yuu, fack yuu" (these guys were fast learners). The three of us now continued walking up the road, into the darkness, realising that we might have burned our bridges with the taxi cartel. Then a driver pulled up, nodded when I pointed at the meter and had us at our hostel within minutes for 25 yuan (we thanked him profusely, but our gratitude couldn't really express our gratitude in Chinese).
The next day, with the taxi madness behind us, we spent the day visiting Qingdao's Old Town. Being under German administration for a few years has done wonders for the city's architecture (note, that we don't love white tiles and neon lights). From our hostel room window we had views of the red roof tiles, the Catholic church spires and the ocean behind. Around our hotel the old streets were filled with activity, food vendors (lots of live seafood), restaurants and general mayhem. For lunch we lined up with the locals to get our hands on the deliciously fresh, fried fish with cornbread.





1 comment:
I like the romantic picture.
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