i love china!

One disconcerting situation about being in China is that I am allowed to write my blog on blogger, but viewing my (or any other for that matter) blog on blogspot is not allowed. So that means this better be good the first time, because there will be no checking and editing.

Censorship aside, China is fitting quite well with my personality and demeanor. All ramped up for extreme grease, spitting and rudeness, I have been nothing but happy with what I have found so far in this new land. Granted, it is a giant country, and I have spent less than 24 hours in what is considered a kind of exception to the rest of China, but it is awesome!

A little context: we managed to catch the boat the second time, and we are now in Qingdao (pronounced ching-dow), which is essentially a German style town in architecture, and also home of the Tsingtao brewery. The architecture is quite interesting, the people are friendly, if a little bit uncouth, and the streets have a real feel to them. I can't put my finger on it, but there is something on the streets and in the air that makes this place feel comfortable and real. It's not the ubiqutous old men sitting on their stools (apparently everyone carries one everywhere with them) on every street corner smoking copious amounts of cigarettes and playing assorted card or board games; it's not the small children with the assless pants for easy public waste disposal; it's not the stares that are (amazingly) more blatant and widespread than in Korea; but I'm not sure exactly what it is. Taylor keeps pointing out quite correctly that there is a very Latin American feel to the place. That is true, from the fashion sense ranging from 1992 to none at all, to the multitudes of people louting about on the streets with seemingly nothing to do, to the habit of men tucking their tee shirts up over their bellies for cooling, it has that kind of feel.

Of course, we have had our problems here, most notably that I drank heavily on the boat last night with our new British friends, and was not in tip-top shape for disembarkation (Taylor and I wondered if that is actually an English word), but more importantly the fact that we cannot get our ATM cards to work. When the machine swallowed Taylor's card after she gave the "wrong" password too many times, I thought things were really going to go downhill, permanently. As it turned out, all we had to do was talk to the incredibly kind English speaking lady at the bank and wait for about 20 minutes in the VIP room for the maintenance guy to come back from his lunch break and open the machine. They didn't even ask for any kind of proof that she was the lady named on the card. I think we'll do just fine in China.