Cricket museum

A visit to the Cricket museum in Qibao sounded like a winner. Here's picture of one of the two rooms in the museum. This one had the lights switched on:

Here's part of the other room that wasn't lit up:

Here's some sort of capturing net for the crickets

I think this a tiny cricket arena where the little fellas do battle. Or play tennis. The labels on the exhibits were not in English, so I'm guessing.

This was by far the shittiest museum I have every visited. Including the one I made as a child

Qibao: Crap watertown

Qibao is a small watertown about 20 minutes subway ride from my hotel. There are two canals that cross one another, and a cricket museum.

Here's me with a Chinese lad. His parents made him speak English to me. He was 14 years old and embarrassed:

This bell is a holy relic that apparantly floated down the river. The villagers fished it out and put it in a tower. 

Here is the guard, guarding the bell. No on has tried to steal it in the last 400 years. Why stress?

Duck tongues and bullfrog for lunch

I wish they'd stop telling me what I had just eaten after I'd eaten it.

The sprinkling of sesame seeds really complimented the tonguey-ness of the dish.

Everything shouts at you here

This is the first ten seconds of entering a cash machine booth in China.

The sound is not distorted in the video. That's what it actually sounds like. They put a distort filter on absolutely everything here.

The traffic noise in the background is pretty spot on too. 

Please turn your sound up to 11 for an authentic experience.

Making belts

6:30 rolls around at work and loud banging starts a few cubes down. One of the riggers goes over to see what's occurring.

It's one of the modellers crouched down banging holes into a belt with a steel pipe and nail.

Marching children

This is the view I have every morning of a school playground. They march them all out, they raise the flag, and do exercises while a man shouts at them with a megaphone.

Dog Sex Doll

Went to a bar last night with Mike, John and Dom. There was a do sitting quietly in the window, gazing at the passers-by. Eventually, he came to check us out. Coffee, as he was called enjoyed being pet. Here he is sniffing John's chest.

Between petting he would try to hump us, much to the amusement of the waitresses. How they laughed. They then brought over an iPad and showed us a video of coffee and his sex doll. Yes, a dog sex doll is actually a thing:

http://www.hotdoll.fr/contenu.php?id_contenu=8&lang=2

The video was the first of about twelve videos showing the same white floppy doll being manically humped by little Coffee the dog. She seemed very proud of his technique and tenacity.

Oh China!

Beating a fish to death with a broom

These are more photos from lunch in Qingdao. 

My fellow travelers picked out this lovely aquatic specimen. The indoor-fisherman walked towards the kitchen to dispatch it, but was stopped when one of my co-workers said something in Chinese*. 

Indoor-fisherman turned around, and came back into the middle of the restaurant. 

Wrestling the fish out of the net, he held it high above his head and slammed it downward with all his might onto the white-tiled floor. 

The poor fish still had a bit of fight left in him. Luckily, indoor-fisherman had a broom handle close by, with which he used to finish off the job. 

The fish beating escalated rather quickly, so this is the only photo.

Here's the same fish ten minutes later

*which must of been along the lines of "Please beat it to death in front us"

Taxis taxis everywhere...

...but none of them wanted to take any passengers.

"Can you take us to the Catholic church?" (yes: that's an actual tourist spot in Qingdao)

"No, it's closed and so are all the streets around it" replied eight taxi drivers like they'd all been to some sort of group rehearsal the night before.

Luckily, all of my peeps could speak Chinese. Which ensured there were no misunderstandings: the taxi drivers were just being arse holes. Later on we managed to get to the Church: it being Sunday "quelle-fucking-suprise": it was open. That's how churches work China. And everywhere else.

My companions using the internet to solve problems:

Look: churches are open for business on Sunday.

People on a beer bottle

At the end of the beer factory, you could have your picture taken and a one-off bottle created. Here I am striking a pretty bad revolutionary pose:

And here's all my travelling companions:

Qingdao. It's not just a beer, but they do make beer there

Here's the brewery, complete with 20ft beer cans on the roof. It looks a lot like Willy Wonkas chocolate factory.

They have a fountain (just water :( )

And a dodgy looking beer label. The swastika is fine here as it was in Asia before the Nazis muddied those waters. The Japanese did run the brewery for a while, but stopped after they lost a war.
"ABSOLUTELY PURE" really doesn't help the swastika confusion.

Looking into a giant copper kettle:

The first of two complimentary half glasses of Qingdao beer

Lunch afterwards was accompanied by green beer. Not sure what that was about

Me Bag of Beer and me squid on a stick

Qingdao has pioneered drinking beer through a straw out of a bag. The bag actually has the beer's logo on it, so it's not just any old plastic bag.

It hasn't caught on because it's a stupid idea. Squid on a stick on the other hand is a very good idea.

German Concession

There is a german concession in Qingdao where all the Germans lived when they ran the place in the early 1900s. Here's a house they built.

Here's a picture on the wall. Two photos taken maybe 5 years apart. British on the right. People's army on the left.

Here's a lion picking his nose:

And as usual if it doesn't look Chinese, there will be lots of wedding photo opportunities. There were dozens of these couples, usually accompanied by a make-up van:

Best cable car operator man

Still in Qingdao. Climbed up a small mountain. This is the view about half way up. Looks a bit like Dubrovnik, except it's probably full of Chinese people and no Croatians.

At the top is a temple with Taoist monks. Here's a monk doing monk stuff.

This was some sort of worker of the month. We were in good hands.

Cable car down. You can just make out the Chinese flag at the bottom.

Qingdao. It's not just a beer

Took the plane a few weeks ago to Qingdao where they make beer. It was Autumn festival when they eat moon cakes and have Monday off. Her we are in a restaurant eating about half the food that was brought. I had chicken necks and jelly fish as well as a bunch of other stuff that I really couldn't identify.

Walked along the beach which had loads of art dotted around. Here's some chrome people popping out of the grass

Poker

Poker with a bunch of white guys. Gambling is illegal in China

Lunch at the temple

Couple of weeks ago we popped out for lunch to the local temple. We had vegetarian  lunch there.

Here's me pointing at a pagoda:

And here's a room full of Buddhas.

Peeing on a TV

"Do you know what our urinals are missing?"

"No"

"A Television"

Judging from what I saw in a shanghai bar toilet, that's a conversation that must have actually taken place.

Finally!

Been keeping my eye out for odd foods. Finally in Xitang water town yesterday I saw this:

Gave the lady 20 Yuen. Then I saw this:

And then I ate this:

It was very nice that they gave me a little napkin. Manners and all.

A Happening

A door fell of on one of the shops in the mall below work. It was quite the event. Here a large crowd surrounds the fallen door discussing the event.

Mind pinching

This was on the side of the lift at the bank at which we changed money. Entering the bank I thought it was a poor translation warning of the lift door's pinching abilities. 

Exiting the bank, it seemed a pretty accurate translation.

Money laundering is hard

"D", one of the chappies that works here, wanted to change some local money into US dollars as his Chinese credit card probably wouldn't work for his trip to America. 
This took a few days.

Day 1:

Popped into the bank after lunch and asked about changing money.

"$500 dollars a day is the maximum per person" we were informed by the lady at the front desk. "And you need your passport"

"I need more than $500", D replied, every so slightly agitated.

The lady leaned towards and said that we should "bring some friends". She was telling is a way to get around the "per person" part of the rule.

Day 2:

Lunch. D and two of his friends, of which I was one, rolled up to the bank, passports in hands.

D withdrew 9000 Yuen in Chinese currency, gave us each 3000 Yuen, which we passed straight back to the teller.

Passports were copied.
Forms were filled.
Money was counted.
Forms were signed.
Computer was typed into.
Forms were copied.
Money was counted again.
Computer was typed into.
Forms were given back.

Dollars were counted
Dollars were counted again.

Dollars were given.

This all took an hour and a half.

Day3:

Same bank as yesterday, and passports were copied. We waited for a teller to become available which took about 20 minutes, at which point we were told that the "a day" in "$500 dollars a day" was actually one day a month.

D started to splutter a bit. He does that when he gets frustrated.

The lady leaned into us again and said "but you can go to a different bank". She picked up a leaflet, opened it and pointed to the address of another bank.

D then lost it. 

"It's the same fucking bank" he squealed in frustration.

"All you're doing is sending me to a different branch" he continued to squeal, stabbing the leaflet with his finger.

An hour and a half in the bank next door and we had another $1500

Total time spent (3 people) 9 hours

Total money changed:$3000

TLDR:

$500 per day max (unless you bring friends)

One transaction per month (unless you go to a different branch) 

Much like everything else, breathing is hard here

Most people check this app everyday. It tells you how shit the air is. On a really bad day LA is still below 50 ppm. 

Today is a pretty good day in Shanghai at 207 ppm. They don't bother measuring after 500ppm which happens now and then during the winter. 

Basically, the pollution molecules push out the air molecules and everyone chokes.

I made curry

Chinese food is all well and good, but I miss my curry. Luckily, there's a few Indian lads here who knew where to get some proper spices. A few stops on the metro and this is what I got:

Several hours later I'd cooked up a pretty good chicken korma.

And here's the crowd I fed. Chicken korma on a shanghai rooftop.

The voice

oh. They have that here too. Picture from the hotel telly

Getting a taxi

Trying to get a taxi around 10:30 outside work and people kept jumping in front of me and grabbing taxis.

After three taxis were snatched I decided to be more assertive.

What I saw:
A couple moved towards the taxi that I had waved down. I made it to the rear passenger door just ahead of the interlopers,  opening the door and slid into the back seat bound for home.

What a co-worker saw:
A couple moved towards the taxi that I had waved down. I grabbed the rear passenger door handle, stared the couple square in the eye and yelled
"NOOOO!"
"MY TAXI!"
They stared back at me slightly wide eyed and backing away.
Then I slid into the the back seat bound for home.

Shopping in your pyjamas

The phrase shopping in your pyjamas brings forth images of surfing Amazon at home.
In China people actually go shopping in their pyjamas.
There was a campaign to stop the whole pyjama thing for the 2010 expo.

These two pictures were taken within 5 minutes of one another in the mall below work: