Yantai and Qingdao
Trip Start
Aug 13, 2009
1
5
7
Trip End
Sep 08, 2009
Yantai, Shandong, China
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Being a port city, it's unsurprising that there is quite a collection of Western-influenced architecture here; and, as is my wont, I assiduously tried to see it all. I became more self-conscious of this habit when I read this week of one of Tolstoy's protagonists: "Looking at places of interest, not to mention that they had already seen everything, did not have for him, a Russian and an intelligent man, the inexplicable importance that Englishmen are able to ascribe to it". Most of the Western-style buildings are ex-consulates contained within a park. The signs are extremely repetitive and predicatably (and understandably) anti-Imperialist. The major detraction from the park was the Richard Clayderman blasting out on the speakers: so you see that music imperialism is fine! The buildings now house museums. There was even a museum about locks, which with delicious irony, was locked up when I tried to visit.
Other palimpsests of Imperialism in Yantai include a wine factory (which produces a Riesling and a "Cabernet", both of which taste of nothing), and a small, active Catholic church. Perhaps the most memorable sights, though, were natural: a (dead) leatherback turtle which was perhaps 6ft long, and the jawbones of a whale which perhaps measured 5m in length; both of these were housed in a temple to the Goddess of the Sea.
It's a well-known phenomenon that when you are happy, you see everything in a good light, or notice only the positive things; and when you are unhappy, you can feel that fate is conspiring against you in everything. I began to move from the former state to the latter as I arrived in Qingdao. This was undoubtedly catalysed by the state of the hostel I checked into. A section of the carpet was so wet it squelched underfoot; the plaster on the neighbouring wall fell off in large chunks at the slightest touch; the light didn't work; and there was a stench of mold. I assumed there had been a leak from upstairs, but as the receptionist pointed out, this was the top floor. "We've had a lot of rain recently", she remarked nonchantly. I demanded another room, and she announced with ostentatious magnanimity that she would give me a more expensive room for no extra cost. How generous! This replacement room (into which they'd simply squeezed another bed; it wasn't any more luxurious) was in a completely different part of the hotel, and another floor, yet it also had damp problems. I kept the window open all night to ameliorate the stench, and moved to another hotel early the next morning.
Qingdao is a pretty seaside town popular with both Chinese and foreign tourists. I think this makes me averse to it. There are surges of half-dead tourists everywhere, and seemingly a rather weary response from much of the service industry. Whereas in Yantai I felt like a traveller, here I feel like a tourist. Perhaps this dichotomy is illusory (and even pretentious). In Qingdao you are supposed to enjoy yourself because everyone knows how beautiful it is. And being a contrarian, this elicits the opposite response in me! The prominent visibility of tourists also lends the place a somewhat artificial feel. The domestic busyness of Yantai is here replaced by persistent hawkers and megaphone-wielding tourist guides.
And finally, mention must also be made of the ubiquity of brides and bridegrooms. They are everywhere you look: in the parks, outside the churches, on the beaches, on the cliffs. They all wear identical costumes (bride: western bridal dress, in white, with veil and white trainers!; bridegroom: white suit with white bowtie) and are being photographed. The sheer number of couples each day is staggering. You can stand on a cliff and look down at the rocks by the sea and count a dozen such couples all being photographed in a small space. It is corny in the extreme. And the forced expressions on their faces somehow manages to be both nauseating and comical. I can't work out what is most objectionable about this phenomenon: the mawkish sentimentality, the artificiality, or the completely unimaginitive repetitiveness of it all: I'm just willing one of the men to perhaps wear a light grey suit.
