Tsingtaoktoberfest

(Note: pictures courtesy Ben Piven, www.benpiven.com)
(There will be more pictures later, I'm just going to post this now, too much lag-time between posts)

Tsingtao Beer can give you Passion and Happiness.

Every year, from August 15th to 30th, the city of Qingdao, Shandong Province (alternatively spelled "Tsingtao") hosts a beer festival. It takes place in the aptly named "Beer City" which is a large square in the development center, about a 20-minute cab ride outside of the old city.

After a successful trip to North Korea, Ben and Kelly trusted us enough for us to lead them on another trip to beach-and-beer Qingdao. We would be there for Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday until mid-afternoon.

We began tastefully on Friday - stopping by "Beer Street" which had more varieties of seafood than they did beer. Tiger-prawns, crab, clams, and sea snails came to the large round open-air table, followed by a few different pitchers of Qingdao draughts - a standard pilsner, a wheat beer, and then a "green beer" which had a strange green tint to it, probably mixed with seaweed or something of equal nastiness.

By this point we were joined by Grishma and Palak, two British girls (of Indian descent), who had met Ben at his hostel in Shanghai, who he had convinced to come to Qingdao for the Beer Festival with him.

As we were enjoying our clams and snails, we were approached by several girls, no older than 10, who tried to sell us roses. Each girl had her own approach to this lucrative business. The first one pulled a rose out of her bouquet, pulled all the petals off, and handed them to Ben with a sad look. Was that supposed to get him to buy another to make up for it? I'm not sure and I never will be. The second one was more forceful and direct - asking him to buy it for the pretty Indian girl sitting to his left. When Ben said he didn't want any, the girl responded "你有病！(pronounced: nee yo bing!)" translated: "You suck!" but translated more literally: "You have a sickness!" When I told Ben that she claimed he had some sort of sickness he asked me to ask her what sort of sickness. "他有什么病？” to which she responded "艾滋病！(ai zi bing)," "He has AIDS!" We bought no flowers from these girls.

After dinner we walked to another restaurant on beer street and sat down to just chill and get some beers. It was just Ben, Kelly, and I until this point, but we were joined shortly after by Waz, another friend of Ben's that he met in a hostel that he convinced to come to Qingdao.

It was a bit chilly that night; Qingdao is colder due to it's proximity to the ocean. The waiters noticed our nippyness and provided us with Hello Kitty towels to wrap ourselves in (I got a keroppi). One of the waiters sat down next to us while his two friends chided him and called him "fatface" (in chinese); His face was particularly round - but he was a nice guy who tried to relate to us Americans by telling us how he was affected by the death of Michael Jackson.

{fatface}

A man with an Erhu （二胡）, a traditional Chinese two-stringed instrument, came up to us and offered to play us a song as he so wisely noted that "Music is the universal language." He played us his favorite tune for 10rmb ($1.47)

{erhu}

The next day was rainy, but that was okay because we'd be spending that day in the Tsingdao BEEEER factory! Chinese people get the short end of the stick for getting "Asian glow" when they drink, but in reality, when these guys glow it's like glowing from the nuclear radiation that is radiating from their bodies because they are superheros and their super-powers are drinking lots and lots of alcohol.

The beer factory museum was boring and uninformative with some unorganized pictures and descriptions of the original factory owned by a German company blah blah when do we get free samples? They came eventually after we saw the production line with conveyor belts.

Afterwards they let us into the "drunk room" which was just a room with a slanted floor. After some time in the drunk room, we all began to suspect that it was more than a room with a slanted floor. Some were convinced that the room was moving ever so slightly, because they were feeling pretty drunk. The tour guides all claimed that the room is just a plain unmoving room.

That night was the penultimate night of the Beer Festival, and we were ready to enjoy. Now I had never been to any sort of beer festival before but I can only assume that this is some sort of strange bastardization of one. Kelly and I bought scalped tickets at 15RMB as opposed to the list price of 20 and met up with the rest of the gang already inside.

As you enter the Beer City, you are immediately bombarded by lights and signs and several men dressed up as Mickey Mouse mascots.

We started the night appropriately with the purchase of a light-up Viking Hat

Followed by our bumping into China's most powerful mullet.

Seeing mullets and buying hats is all well and good, but the nicest thing about drinking in China is that kebab sellers are always on the lookout for drunk people. If you were to walk into the Beer City not knowing what event was taking place, you'd probably assume that it was a Beer and Chuar, meat-on-a-stick, festival. The meat sellers were each trying to outmeat the other vendors next to them by wearing more outlandish meatfits and dancing more meatily.

Grishma and Palak used their 50RMB pitcher vouchers to purchase two 100RMB pitchers of watered-down Erdinger. The drinks disappointed, but the entertainment did not. Their was a cute girl on stage rocking out, singing, and dancing for the multitudes of drunken Chinese families. After a song, one man came up and gave her a rose. After another song, one man came up and gave her a chuar.

After another song, an excited father gave his son a bit to drink.

"Save some for me, son!" he says, as his son passes out next to him.

"Here! Add some orange soda to the beer, it's an ancient Chinese tradition!" Says his drunk peasant cousin.

When the girl's set was over, a Meatloaf(the singer, not the meat)-shaped man appeared to take her place. He wasn't as sexy, even when he did a backflip off stage and then whipped his glorious hair back.

The carnival games section of the festival was not as busy, but proved to be just as entertaining. Hearing the slightly muted synthesis of karaoked music in the distance, an old lady in her pj's began to dance. She was probably senile and let out of the old folk's home for this one festive night, but she brought moves the likes of which I had only imagined were possible in the most fantastic of my dreams. Ben, Kelly, and I danced with her while the limeys were riding some carnival ride.

The night was nearing it's end and we were pretty sober. The legit beer turned out to be less-than-drinkable, and we resorted to those classic big-bottles of local beer for 5RMB a pop. Drinking and walking, we found ourselves at a table of boozy Mongolians.

There were three of them; one of them had a beard and was very quiet, another was of medium stature and would not stop singing to us, and the third one - was short and chunky and could not help but profess his undying love for Kelly. The singing one was less singing and more showing off his vocal range, bellowing the lowest of the low notes while the higher notes operatically exploded from his face. Fat one told Kelly in English: "AI uh-LAAHHVF yuuouu," and switching to Chinese "我永远爱你." He, without warning or a second thought, hugged Kelly and kissed her on the cheek. Saddened, I asked him "what about me?" and he hugged me and marked my neck with a Mongolian hickey. I told fat one that Kelly and Ben were married and that he couldn't have her. We moved on, serenaded by Mongolians, sad to see us go.

The PBR and Budweiser signs passed us by as we stumbled towards our last destination of the night - another stage with more singing people. This time they graced us with some accented versions of "What's Up?," by 4 Non Blondes, and "Hotel California," by The Eagles. A new fat guy treated us to drink as he took the ladies one by one to go dance with him. He was wearing some freaky mask featured in the film "Eyes Wide Shut." His skinny companion made Ben dance with him on the table as a fierce lineup of policemen right outside the tent looked on with trepidation and certain disgust. The show ended and we went home full of beer, meat and memories.

The next day Ben, Waz and I biked along the Qingdao coastline until we got to Beach #3. The shore was littered with people getting married and crab fishermen. We bought pseudo-speedos and attacked the beach with our western ideals and eastern trunks. A group of Chinese men challenged us to feats-of-strength or something equally barbaric, I think we lost, but we had a good time.

{feats of strength}

There was a fat guy who got buried by his friends in sand and we took pictures of him.

{buddha}

We biked back to the hostel, packed our bags, and took the train back to Beijing. It is not the case that most things I do in China revolve around drinking, just most of the bloggable things. I'm off to Pakistan soon, a completely Muslim nation, where drinking is culturally forbidden but exciting stories should be abundant. Until then, goodbye Tsingdao, land of passion and happiness.