Our Area of Qingdao

Qingdao is a huge city of over 7 million people. It is a fairly new city, as most of it has been built in the last 20 years. It is a coastal city that is on a peninsula, so there is a lot of beach. The area of Qingdao where we are staying and working is in the more affluent part of the city. There are many very tall buildings, many of which are apartment buildings. Our area has a Korean population of about 80,000. There are many expensive cars. Dr. Paul's Language School is on the 8th floor of one of the 24 floor buildings. There are businesses as well as apartments in the same building.
Every morning out in the parking lot we see hired drivers waiting for their employers to come out to their cars. (One of my Korean readers is a stay-at-home mom whose husband has a car and a hired driver.) In the mornings it is common to see those drivers outside drinking coffee and either washing the cars or dusting them off.


In order to prepare for the Olympics in Qingdao, there is much new construction. There is also a lot of painting and general clean-up.
In the next photo all of the tall buildings in the center and to the right are new construction. You can see at least four large cranes.

The weather has been nice----60's and low 70's during the daytime. We have worn light jackets a lot, because at any time the sun can go behind the clouds, the wind can blow, and it can get cool fast. It has been cool in the evenings in our apartment, because the heat was turned off a couple of weeks ago.

Ron and I are feel very safe walking around in our area, but we are not out walking after dark. I guess I should have said that we feel safe from the people, but not particularly safe from cars! Streets are dangerous places! It seems that drivers pay no attention to traffic lanes---they just honk and go where they wish! They may even do a u-turn in the middle of an intersection! There are few traffic lights, even at busy intersections. The cars go by whoever is the bravest and honks the loudest! There may be cars, bicycles, pedestrians, and men pushing carts all trying to navigate the same intersection at the same time! When walking across a street, you must look carefully, then walk to the middle of the street and wait until you can safely cross to the other side. It can be a little scary! At least the traffic does not move very fast.
Even though a lot of people speak varying levels of English, most workers in the stores and waiters in restaurants speak little English, and none of the taxi drivers do! We look for restaurants with pictures on the menu, and when we take a taxi, we have to have the address written in Chinese to show the taxi driver.

These are some photos taken on the streets between our apartment and Dr. Paul's Language School. The first photo shows a sign for our street. The street name is "MinJiang Er Lu" ("Er" means "two" or "second" and "Lu" means "street".) So this sign is for MinJiang Second Street.


You will normally see cars parked on the sidewalks. These are paid parking spots. Sometimes there are attendants outside helping with the parking and taking money.


Next is a Korean market.The next photo is from the window of Ron's classroom in Dr. Paul's Language School. There is frequent fog, which rolls in from the ocean.