Well, I made it!
My flights were relatively uneventful… however it did kind of freak me out that the pilot on my flight from Atlanta to Seoul, Korea had to reassure everyone that while our flight path came close to Tokyo, we wouldn’t have any problems with the radiation from the nuclear power plant. Good.
I met up with my travel companion, Grace, at the Seoul airport. We had a couple of hours to relax, and then we were on our next flight bound for Qingdao, China.
Flying here is a lot different than in the US. Instead of calling boarding zones, everyone just runs to the gate to try to be the first one to board. Also, they actually serve you meals. Even on this 1.5 hour flight into China I was served a salad, fresh fruit and a hot chicken dish… which seemed a little odd seeing as it was only 8:30 AM, but I’ve never been one to turn down a meal.
Once we arrived in Qingdao, we were greeted by Cindy Hahn, the president of the plush design house we use. For those of you who read my e-mail last time I was here, this is the woman who broke my camera after I had been in the country for two hours. Mrs. Hahn knows very little English, but she managed to ask, “Miss Sarah, you buy new camera??”
The driver loaded up our things and we were off to the hotel. After a little freshening up, we headed to the factory to review pre-production samples for one of our products. Once the work was out of the way, it was lunch time.
I consider myself to be pretty adventurous when it comes to food, but the food here can really freak me out. We walked into the restaurant to find the pretty standard set-up. There are lots of dishes pre-made, and you walk around with the waitress and point to the items you want and then explain how you would like them cooked. A lot of the items are pretty standard; veggies, Chinese breads and chicken dishes. However, the giant snake I saw in a cage on the floor kind of sent me over the edge. Luckily, it didn’t end up on our table.
After lunch we were taken back to the hotel. It was 6 PM and Grace and I had been up since about 3 AM. Needless to say, we sat down on our beds and within minutes we were asleep… in our clothes.
Sunday morning came bright and early for us. Since we had passed out so early, we were both bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by 4AM. We headed down to breakfast around 6, and began to feast. If I’ve learned one thing in traveling to China, it’s to stuff your face whenever you find familiar food. This morning brought me scrambled eggs, pancakes, fruit and lots of bread and butter.
Since factories are closed on Sundays, Mrs. Hahn insisted we do some sightseeing. She brought along one of the factory office workers and the young girls finance. After about a 30 minute drive we pulled into a parking lot filled with tourists. We were at a “polar aquarium.” We watched Chinese clowns perform, dolphins and seals do tricks and ended our day walking through the shark exhibit. By far the weirdest thing we encountered was a pond full of quoi that for a couple RMB you could feed a bottle of milk. Bizarre.
Since all these people want to do is feed us, our next stop was a Szechwan restaurant. A big vat of oil and peppers sat in the middle of the table. Mrs. Hahn ordered lamb, beef, mushrooms and some kind of seafood (I’m still not totally sure what it was…). As the meats and veggies arrived, they were plunged into the oil to cook. Once ready, Mrs. Hahn ladled various items onto my plate. Now, I like spicy food… but this was absurd. I was basically eating food cooked in lava. In fact, I actually sat there crying as I ate. Ever the polite guest, I pushed through the tears and tried to enjoy the meal.
The last activity of the day was a group foot massage. Massages are kind of a social thing here. We were escorted into a room with 4 giant chairs, each one fully reclined and removing a cushion revealed a large foot bath. I’d had a foot massage in China before, and while it sounds great, it’s actually 80 minutes of abuse with some intermittent enjoyable moments. This one was particularly abusive as it featured “cupping.” For those of you who are not familiar with cupping – the masseuse puts alcohol into a glass “cup” and then lights it on fire. The cups are then immediately placed on the skin, and turned to create good suction. After a few moments, the cups are pulled from the skin leaving big red welts. Even two days later, I still have bruises on my body. Apparently it is supposed to help with digestion… which was welcomed after my dinner of fire food.
The next morning brought one of the more interesting days of my life…
So, Grace convinced me that we should go for a swim to work off our fiery dinner. I was game, so we headed down to the pool. First of all, you must always wear a swim cap when swimming in Chinese pools. Awesome. After we swam a few laps we decided to go in search of the spa and sauna. We paid a small fee and were each handed a pair of silk PJ like things. Grace is Korean and totally used to these spas. She told me to strip down and put the PJs on. Strip down? Like get naked? WHAAAAT?
Next thing I knew I was in a bath house staring at lots of naked Chinese women. After this point things kind of went blank… but… I believe that over the next few minutes I may have been skinny dipping in a hotter than hell shallow pool with several Chinese women.
Welcome to China!
