Hmmm… it would seem that my Qingdao post has been lost. I don’t know what happened to it, but I can’t remember what I’ve written… so until I do remember, I will not make an attempt at it’s recreation. Hopefully the photos will suffice in their description of my time there.

Home to the 2008 Olympic Sailing competitions. Home to Tsingtao beer and the largest beer festival in China — which happened to coincide with my visit.

Here are the photos:

Some images of Shanghai for you all. This isn’t all of them, as the only place that I could find internet access with USB suppot is at a business center at a very expensive hotel in Qingdao… it’s costing me an arm and a leg… but I want the important ones backed up remotely… so enjoy!!!

shanghai transitive verb - to put by trickery into an undesirable position.

The origin of the term, “to be shanghaied,” came from the mid-nineteenth century when strong looking men were kidnapped from a bar or other place of such social gathering after either enbibing too much, or being slipped a mickey. They would pass out, and wake up on a ship, a day or two into a voyage accross the Pacific, and not wanting to be thrown overboard (as it would be a rather long swim), they were forced into labor aboard the said ship. Typical destinations for these vacation cruises included the French trading colonies in Shanghai, China… hence the term, shanghai.

I’ve been in Shanghai for six days now… longer than I think I’ve ever stayed in any single major city without day excursions to outlying areas in all of my backpacking travels. This city is at once a nightmare and a dream for travellers. It is most certainly not your typical Chinese city… I’d say it’s on par with Hong Kong in that most consider it to be an auxillary, or an outsider among the rest of China. And while it’s more expensive than the rest of China, it has the selection of Hong Kong with discount prices… you can find anything here, and it’s all up for bargaining.

Several scams, however, take place here in this city; preying on friendly and unsuspecting English speaking travellers. Of course there’s the ever popular ‘Rolex’ watches that you can get ‘really cheap,’ or short-changing the white tourist because they probably aren’t paying attention anyway, or even bold-faced dual prices, where outsiders are asked to pay double and sometimes quadruple normal prices. But that happens pretty much everywhere.

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My class registration is still set up on a phone system. You get your appointment time to call in, and then you can call in anytime after that. I’ve got quite a few units, and I’ve been a student at this school for a couple years now, so my seniority allows me to register earlier than most. The bummer about this semester’s registration was that my appointed time was during my flight to Hong Kong. The classes that I’m taking this semester are usually pretty impacted, and I’d prefer the day classes, so spaces fill up fast. I needed to call as soon as possible, and I’ve been told there are no phones on international flights… so I had to call from Hong Kong’s airport — twelve hours late.

Luckily, I got all the classes I wanted, and my student loans have apparently kicked in, as it only cost me $40 for everything. The downside? I just checked my bank balance and noticed a rather large charge… it cost me $60 to make the call!

If I hadn’t have been in such a hurry to get myself registered, I would have been more discretionary about how I made the call. Phone cards are the only way to fly!

I splurged several days ago on a cruise down the Yangtze river from Chongqing to Yichang. In 2009 the Chinese government will be flooding it in order to bring the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam on-line. This will raise the water lever by at least thirty meters (~100 feet), effectively hiding most of the terrain and many of the ancient sites that make the area so sought after by tourists. I wanted to see it all before this happens.

Four days, on a five-star cruiser in a first-class berth with the possibility of another sharing my berth with me. I had no problem with that. It’s been hard for me to actually meet people here in China. Normally I meet other travelers in the hostels and tourist hangouts, but here there doesn’t seem to be any dormitory style hostels (or at least none that I’ve come across) and the only tourists that I’ve seen are vacationing Chinese! Until this cruise I’d gone several days without seeing another Westerner, and I was getting lonely.

Both luckily and sadly, no one booked a first-class berth to share, so I had the whole thing to myself at a much better price than what others paid for it.

Despite that, I had the distinct pleasure of sharing my meal time with a Dutch and a German family, as we all were seated at the same table. They all seemed far more impressed with the scenery than I was. I think the garbage that was strewn across the landscape and the river itself was distracting my appreciation of anything natural. Being a huge ‘leave no trace’ advocate, all I could see was the trash!

During the shore excursions we were again, all placed together along with a large French family, as we were the only ones aboard that could understand the English guide. During one such excursion, a street vendor trying to sell flutes to tourists, began a rather entertaining bout of Star-Spangled Banner. I about died laughing. It’s too bad that out of our group of seventeen English speakers, I was the only American (and the only native English speaker!), and had no intention of buying anything that I’d have to cart around for another twenty-three days.

I’m interested to see what happens to the tourist industry after the dam is fully operational. I have a feeling, what’s left of it will simply disappear.

– Pictures (there’s a lot) will follow when I can find an internet cafe that will allow me to jack my camera in.

[20070805] — Pictures have been added.