and it’s good to be back

We got back from Qingdao last night, arriving at Beijing South Station about 8:30ish. We found Qingdao underwhelming and disappointing and it’s good to be back in Beijing. It wasn’t all bad, but Qingdao certainly didn’t live up to its reputation. To be fair, we had bad luck with the weather. To continue being fair, we were shocked by the amount of litter on the beaches and the filth in the sea, and a hustler plying his trade along May 4th Square telling my mother in law to just throw her empty water bottle in the sea, it doesn’t matter, really didn’t help. I hope for Qingdao’s sake that hustler’s not a local, cos that kind of nonsense is a great way for a city to lose face. Still, there’s a lot of good stuff there, and it’s not a bad little city, just one that, based on our short four days there, certainly does not deserve the reputation it has.

Anyways, I kept a diary while I was there, and after some heavy editing, excerpting, excising and re-writing, I’ll be putting up a more detailed write-up or two of the trip soon.