Beach weekend

Pictures from the weekend.

08/10

I left work at 1 to meet up with Xie Fan and a bunch of his friends to drive out to Nandaihe for a weekend at the beach. Nandaihe is really close to Shanhaiguan, where I went to the Great Wall, but I wanted to go on this trip with Chinese speakers as a way to get some practice in. I think that worked to some extent, but I'm a much more boring person when I'm a bit shy about the language and can't be funny and witty.

I took notes of key words while there (thanks, Nate), thinking I'd remember what I'd cared about so I could write when I get back. I do remember, but I mostly don't care anymore. So I'm just going to move through some of them in a list and get this recorded.

-The car I rode in was a BMW 523, which doesn't exist outside of China. It's apparently slightly longer than some other BMW 5 series. I know his car was manufactured in China, but I'm a little bit disappointed if that's what a $60,000 car is like in the US. It was comfortable, and it seemed fast enough, but it wasn't actually very luxurious or how I'd choose to spend that much money.

-People on the highway are psychotic. Passing happens on all sides, people weave in and out of traffic, cars shoot by in the breakdown lane. From the People's Daily:

"It was a little ironic as the overall number of vehicles in China is far smaller than that in Western countries, while the death rate from road accidents is much higher," said an academic surnamed Wang who was quoted in the China Youth Daily.

"According to our research, the death toll and death rate per 10,000 automobiles here is eight times more than that in America," he said.

The most important factor was still the negligence of drivers. Statistics showed that last year some 78.5 per cent of the deaths, about 86,000 people, were caused by improper driving.

Last week when we went hiking I saw a truck (lorry, not pickup) in reverse on the highway, backing up to get onto the exit it had missed. Craziness.

-I got a sample of little emperor treatment of children. When I got into the car the driver's daughter was asleep in the passenger seat, and when she stirred she decided to recline the seat as far as it would go and push it all the way back. This kid is short enough that her feet don't touch the ground, but she has her seat pressed into the knees of the guy next to me. When she woke up we listened to the same song on repeat for the last hour of the drive, while she sang along (shouted, really), out of key. Well, key implies there was a melody, but I think she mostly hit the same note.

When we arrived I had my most expensive dinner so far in China. It was ok, but definitely not as good as Pure Lotus and I was sort of bummed about the total being so high. It was really only $11, but I hadn't planned on my weekend getting so expensive so fast. I tried jellyfish, which was disgusting and expensive, so I don't think I'll do that again. The mouth feel is just too strange and it's very bland.

After dinner we walked along the beach. There's sort of a carnival setup, with ATVs for rent to drive on the sand, minibikes and golfcarts to drive along the streets, amusement park games, etc. There were a couple of hot air balloons that went up in the distance, but they were lashed to the ground, so I'm not sure how much fun that would have been. I didn't get a picture of the cool lighthouse out in the haze, but here's a link. There was a group of performers that carried people around in a circle in sedan chairs, shaking them up and down along with the music played by a band. Apparently it's a traditional form of conveyance in weddings, here done for fun. There were also a bunch of candles in the shape of a heart over by a wall on the beach. Amazingly they stayed lit in the wind, and the people in our group stood around the fire and drank beer for a bit while making fun of the heart's absent creator.

08/11

We had lunch, which was cheaper than the night before, but still expensive, then went to the beach. The beach was crowded and heavily commercialized. We only paid to rent umbrellas and chairs, but people around us paid for motorboat rides or to have their pictures taken and such. I would have just sat in the sand and the sun, but I didn't want to be the one person opting out of paying their share of the rental, so the weekend expenses went up again. I waded out into the ocean a bit, but it was too crowded and I'm not a big swimmer, so I went back and sat down until we rented a volleyball (the only reasonably priced beach expense I saw there) and played for a bit. My only other comment about the place is the huge number of speedos worn. At least the Chinese don't have much body hair, but most of the wearers were overweight.

Oh, and I keep seeing people with these circular marks on their backs, so I asked one of the girls I was with what they were. She said that they're marks from a traditional Chinese medicine treatment in which glass cups are placed on your back and then paper is burnt in them. So the marks are burns, apparently good for what ails you. The cups suck out the bad stuff. Or something.

After the beach we went to a fish market in town. I told the organizer of this evening's cookout back at the guesthouse that I didn't want any seafood, that I wasn't used to the local stuff and was afraid I'd get sick if I kept eating it. So I spent a few RMB and bought some steamed buns and said I'd eat some of the vegetables they bought. I actually just didn't want to pony up the cash for another big, expensive dinner, but I think everyone bought my excuse.

Dinner was huge and lasted for a few hours as the guesthouse staff kept bringing out more dishes made from the food we'd bought for them to prepare. I had a bunch of the vegetables. Some were good, one was just strange: it was cabbage in a suanla (sour-spicy) sauce that seemed to have been flavored with baijiu, Chinese rice liquor. I tried it, but the floral. fruity baijiu flavor is off-putting. To be polite (and because I was hungry) I also tried some of the seafood that was forced on me. Some of the fish was great, the oysters were good, the shrimp weren't.

08/12

We had a simple lunch avoiding seafood, which was nice. Again, not cheap, but I was going to make it through the weekend with a few RMB left in my wallet after all. We ate at a place along a much nicer beach than the first. There were fewer people, fewer hawkers, and bigger waves. There were also these wooden boardwalks that led out to platforms maybe 40 feet into the water, with a sort of deck and seating. Some men stood on them and fished, I sat on the railing and let the waves hitting the platform splash me. As a wave came into shore it'd shoot up through the slats between the planks one-by-one, which for some reason didn't get old.

After some beach time we headed home, entertained (as we'd been all weekend while driving) by that same damn song on repeat. When the girl fell asleep and the dad/driver changed the track I breathed a huge sigh of relief, but then I realized that the CD was 18 tracks with different arrangements of the same 2 songs. God.

It was a good trip, if expensive.