Wedding Photos

On the week-ends there are brides getting their wedding photos made everywhere---hundreds of brides! They are on the seashore, in front of the 5 church buildings ( in a city of 7 1/2 million people--and some of the 5 are not in use!), in parks, and at many other picturesque spots. (The actual weddings usually take place in hotels.)
On the day we made these photos, the weather was foggy, windy, and quite cool. Most people were in jackets. Many of the brides had jeans on under their fancy dresses!





In the following photo notice the contrast between the bride and the beggar.

Every place that the brides were getting their photos taken there were cars decorated with flowers. Sometimes there would be from 4-6 cars for each bridal group.

Boardwalk and Garden

There is a boardwalk, or seashore sidewalk, about 40km along the coast on the southern part of Qingdao (the locations of most beaches).The first photos show that boardwalk.



Next are photos of a pretty park beside the boardwalk.



In the next two pictures you will notice a girl in a wedding dress. There was also one in one of the boardwalk photos. I will write more about that in my next post.




Next are more beach scenes.


Following are photos of vendors along the seacoast. Two of the popular food items sold by vendors on the streets are corn on the cob and roasted sweet potatoes.

Beach 3----Fushan Bay and May 4th Square

Another beach, called Beach 3, is located on Fushan Bay. It is east of Beach 1 (on Qingdao Bay and Huiquan Bay) and Beach 2 (on Taiping Bay). Fushan Bay is the location for the sailing olympics in August of this year. Look for these scenes during the television broadcasting of the olympics this summer!

Notice the kites in the following picture. May 4 Square is a large public square on Fusion Bay that was named after a nationwide protest movement during World War I. The large sculpture, named "May Breeze", is a landmark structure and a symbol of Qingdao. There are some municipal government buildings located behind the sculpture. Also, on the 25th floor of one of the tall buildings is the meeting place of the International Church on Sundays.
.

The following short video is of a street musician and beggar. The instrument is an ancient Chinese one. I think that you will enjoy his music!

Zhanqiao Pier on Beach 1

One of Ron's readers took us on a tour of Qingdao on our first Saturday, which was during the Labor Day holidays in China. We really enjoyed seeing some interesting places in the city. Ron's reader is working on a master's degree in tourism in the University, so she was a good guide! She is a delightful person, and we really enjoyed our time with her. We felt that this was profitable time to not only get to know her better, but to help her to know us and to know more about the things that are most important in life.
We took taxis from place to place, but mostly we walked. Later we figured out that we rode for about 45 minutes and walked for about 6 hours that day! Needless to say, we were tired by Saturday evening!

Because Qingdao is a peninsula, there are several beaches---7 beaches to be exact. They commonly go by numbers rather than names. Beach 1, on Qingdao Bay, is the largest (580 meters long). On Beach 1 are several tourist spots, including Zhanqiao Pier, Underwater World (like Sea World), and the Navy Museum.
Zhanqiao Pier was built in 1892 and is 440 meters long. You can tell by the photos that the pier area is popular, especially on a holiday week-end!




At the end of the pier is Huilan Pavilion. That pavilion is the symbol on all of the world-famous Qingdao Beer products called Tsingtao. (The Tsingtao Brewery was begun during the German occupation of Qingdao, so the beer is of German origin.)









There were many people selling sea shells and sea shell products all around the Pavilion and pier. There were also quite a few beggars.


Hundreds of people were wading in the water and walking on the rocks at the water's edge looking for little crabs. I assume that they eat the crabs.






The following is a picture of the beach taken from the Pier. The quality of the picture is not very good because of the heavy fog that day.

Recycling

The following photos show the recycling that is done in Qingdao. It might look as if the people in the pictures are hauling away trash, but they are actually selling the plastic bottles, used cardboard boxes, etc.!
At our big apartment complex there were no separate bins for recycling trash---there was only one type of large trash can. So I think that these people must go through trash and take whatever they think they can sell.







Notice how the bicycle loaded with trash is in the middle of heavy traffic! (This is the street from our apartment to Dr. Paul's Language School. There is an intersection right in front of the bicycle---one with no traffic light!))

The types of carts in the following two pictures are very common. People will push them out in the middle of heavy traffic. The two men in the pictures buy and sell "trash" on the Pedestrian Mall every day.

More About Apartment Living

We have really enjoyed the washing machine in the apartment. It is located in the bathroom, and it is small but adequate for two people. Very few people have clothes dryers. Our clothes dryer consists of a clothes rack in one of the extra bedrooms---we turn on the fan to help the clothes to dry, but with the high humidity, it takes at least 2 days. There are clothes hanging outside of most apartments every day. Our apartment has bars to hang clothes outside of our bedroom windows, but being on the first floor, it seems unwise to hang clothes out where they could easily be stolen. It has been interesting to us that many of our readers wear the same clothes for two or three days in a row. The college students wash their clothes by hand and hang them up to dry---so no wonder they do not want to change often!
Here are some pictures of apartments with clothes hanging out to dry. Notice in the first picture that many apartments have enclosed porches that make great "laundry rooms".




The TV in our apartment does not work, so we only get news from the Internet. ( We are very grateful to have a computer!) David and Sandi loaned us some old movies(Elizabeth Taylor collection, Cary Grant collection) to watch on the DVD player, so we have been watching them in the evenings.

We have a 5-gallon bottle of water with a dispenser. When the water runs out, Serena calls a man to come and bring new one (costs 15 yuan, or about $2.50). The delivery man comes by bicycle with 3 or 4 of the 5-gallon bottles with him. One of my readers told me that this is one of the worst jobs to have in Qingdao, because many of the apartment buildings (ours included) have no elevators, so the delivery man may have to carry the water bottles (40 pounds each) up to the 24th floor!

One interesting thing about the bathroom is that the shower is a section of the room that is partially closed off. The toilet is in the shower area, so every time you shower, the toilet gets wet! This arrangement seems to be very common here.

Ducks and Dogs in Qingdao

Ducks:
Several vendors at the Pedestrian Mall sell baby ducks. They have 20-30 of them in cardboard boxes. We couldn't figure out who would buy them since everyone lives in apartments--- then we saw some of our neighbors outside letting their two baby ducks swim in a puddle of water on the driveway. We are still not quite sure what the people do with the ducks in their apartments, but our guess is that the ducks will become dinner some night!




Dogs:
There are lots of dogs in Qingdao, and there are vendors selling puppies almost every day. Most are clean and very pretty, and most are small because of apartment living. The overwhelming majority of the dogs are Pomeranians. (Does that mean Lilly is part Chinese??) There are quite a few poodles, but we have only seen a couple of Bichons. We have seen only one really huge dog---some kind of big white one, whose owner walks him on the Pedestrian Mall quite often. I can't imagine that one in an apartment! Evidently there are no leash laws, and it is really scary to see off-leash dogs crossing the high-traffic streets that had no traffic lights! People even take their dogs into restaurants or stores. The people do pretty well picking up after the dogs. I still don't know how the dogs have learned the Chinese commands!