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Special Days...

So.. as our summer winds to a close, each of the girlies got to pick the activities for their own "Special Day" ...

EHJ - last Wednesday

Alfresco lunch @ the Diner where she ordered what she always orders... spaghetti bolonaise with a cold Coke. Then on to IBO Kids land where she and Bei Bei frolicked for two hours amongst the dressy ups, drum sets, ball pit, stacking blocks, sand tables and fishing pond. We were the only ones there. It was lovely.

Bei Bei - last Thursday

Bei Bei's original vote was for dinner at the Shangri La, but her plan was vetoed by the mommala as we were aiming for a $20 lunch, not a $20 per/person lunch! Instead we packed some snacks and headed for Hai Qing Hotel (indoor pool... since it was raining.) In the late afternoon all three girls had dental cleanings, which was not part of Bei Bei's special day, but did put us in proximity to new location of Lisa's which was her dinner choice. Where we once again dined alfresco (and EHJ again ordered spaghetti.)

Friday the Day belonged to MGJ

But... we started the day off with a EHJ's trip to the ortho where she was fitted for a retainer. MGJ's special day morphed into a special afternoon commencing with grabbing baba from work @ noontime, heading to the recently opened Papa John's pizza outlet... bread sticks, peppercinnis and a pitcher of cold Coke. We dropped Dad & the little girls off @ home (SWJ has about 20 vaca days left this year, which he's liberally spreading out in half days!) and MGJ headed out to her fave stationary shop where she expertly perused the sundry of paper goods, stickers and notebooks. We then headed to get some bubble tea and on to check out some small shops specializing in clothes-made-in-China-for-export-to -foreign-countries. She came away with two cute skirts and a pair of leggings and headed home for a movie in... replete with movie theatre popcorn, gummy nerds, gobstoppers and printed tix to add to the excitement.

Yu Yuan Gardens, Shanghai

The Mandarin Oriental Sanya

The Significance of the Qingzhou Buddhas

Click here for a wonderful presentation done by the Smithsonian on the 'Lost Buddhas of Qingzhou'

Again... I lament that there is little being done to preserve these relics in Qingzhou city.

Qingzhou Museum

The Qingzhou Museum was under construction. As in... there was scaffolding everywhere, clay tiles being pried from the traditional styled roof, and welding going on. But the Qingzhou Museum was not closed... and although patrons were sparse, the staff gave every indication it was perfectly normal to have the museum open despite full on renovation.

We waited @ the entrance with our twenty-something factory engineers cum tour guides, Candy and Lisa, neither of whom had ever been to the museum.

"Um, what are we waiting for?" I asked... the day had kind of gone like this... I wasn't sure what our schedule was and each previous question had been answered by a question. "Are we going to the museum?" I had asked as we left the train station. "Do you want to go to the museum?" they had queried in response. I assured them that we did. In fact, on the short list of things to do in Qingzhou, the museum was @ the top of my list. I had recently read a rather flattering piece about the antiquities housed within, and that they were some of the oldest, on record, in China.

But, as we waited, and I noted the clang of construction materials and the dust escaping many sections of the museum, I thought I had misremembered. Maybe that museum was somewhere else. But since my questions to this point had all seemed futile, I decided to stand and wait in the dusty foyer with my mother-in-law and three incredibly patient children.

"We are waiting for the transmitter." Lisa offered helpfully. Museums world wide offer small head seats that allow you to do a 'self guided' tour, often in your own language. But, I hardly felt that would be necessary. But I needn't have worried: our 'transmitter' showed up in human form. Translator, is what she had meant.

We entered into the courtyard of the museum flanked on all four sides by a structure, built in the early 1980s to resemble a traditional courtyard home. We headed into the calligraphy building, ducking under scaffolding as we went. I cast my mom-in-law a wary look .... and then put a stop to going further when I realized our 'transmitter' intended to lead our team of three adults and three children through a maze of iffy scaffolding that had been set up on the steps leading to the second floor. On said scaffolding were nimble constructions workers, shod in canvas shoes slopping a thin whitewash on the walls.

"Are the Buddhas here?" I asked. The article I had read had been about the ancient Buddhas.

"This is calligraphy."

"Can we just see the Buddhas?"

It was clear I was asking her to give the tour out of order. She was uncomfortable. We wouldn't be getting the full tour. She wouldn't be doing her job.

Nevertheless, off to the Buddha building we tramped. They had to turn the lights on. When the kids had to use the toilet it was upstairs. No scaffolding to navigate around, but no electricity on the second floor... which meant the girls had to toilet in the dark. The cleaning ayis and the second floor docents (all of whom must be accustomed to working in the darkness) gathered in the women's room to peek at the foreign children.

Back down to the Buddhas, and Steeles and tomb markers that predated the common era. Artifacts from 200 years before Christ hung in an unairconditioned dark museum, unguarded by anyone, or anything. There were no velvet ropes, motion detectors or protective glass. I reached out my hand and felt the smoothness of age on the carved stone steeles. We took pictures of the Buddhas, we asked questions that none of our guides could answer.

I could not wrap my head around the possibility that something so old seemed so neglected. We ventured to another Buddha building, with sculptures from the sixth century. These, did have ropes cordoning off the area, but the Buddhas (most of whom had been unearthed headless) seemed to be propped up precariously.

One source of comfort came in the heavy wooded crates. Some of the collection of Buddhas was going on a world tour, bound for some European destination, where they would certainly be well protected. The girls and I chatted with the workers, asking them how they packed them, how they sealed the crates. Where they nervous to be working with something so valuable? We had just watched Night at the Museum II, and so the girls were fascinated with the boxes of the exhibits, Bei Bei even joked that they would come alive at night.

Qingzhou ... a cultural lesson

Traditional Chinese Table

The first host sits opposite the door

The second host sits directly across the table

Guests of honor sit on either side of the first host

"Lesser" guests sit in the remaining seats

Scorpions for Lunch?

Arriving @ the Train Station

One of the tai tais @ my husband's company, when asked where her husband is that week, often responds, "Oh, you know, in one of the 'zhou's." China is full of 'zhou' (pronounced joe) cities: Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Jiaozhou and the one with which we're most familiar: Qingzhou.

To say its familiar is to say that it is the place where the guys disappear to several times a week or month, depending on their role in the company. This year, with the financials being what they are, Mr. Johnson is spending less time in Qingzhou and more time in the R & D center here in Qingdao, which is fine with all of us. But, when his parents were here, he thought it was high time we all joined him for a day trip to the city that hosts the factory that in some sense brought us to China in the first place.

We went by train. (Remember the pics a post or two ago?) We seemed to travel back in time on that 90 minute ride. Our modern city with imported cars and streamlined urban streets gave way to rural and whilst in Qingzhou we saw more bicycles, mo-peds, and three wheeled trucks than we usually see in QD.

We were met @ the train station by staff from the factory. Mr. Johnson and his dad were whisked off to the factory in one van (to sort the high pressure registering on a machine which had been the catalyst for the trip.) I headed off in another with my mom-in-law and the three girlies who had tucked their blond locks into hats to stand out a little less in a city unaccustomed to seeing foreigners.

We were put under the care of two twenty-something female engineers who were more than eager to spend a sweaty July day outside of the steamy factory. Our "tour guides" took us the Qingzhou Municipal Museum (more on this bo wu guan and it's significant archaeological artifacts in a separate post) for the morning, before we met up with the guys, and no less than three upper managers for a traditional round table Chinese lunch in which each of the three hosts, gave the requisite three toasts (each) and expected a true dry glass after each shout out of gan bei (a rough equivalent to "Cheers" in English!) Never mind that it was barely noon, and that several of them got back into their own cars to drive back to work afterwards.

The food options were interesting (locusts and scorpions were among the choices although we settled on the more tame: spicy pork, pork stuffed eggplant, and obligatory end-of-the-meal jiao zi - pork filled dumplings-- our Muslim friends have commented what a difficult culture this is to eat in... not only is beer not really considered alcohol, but almost everything contains pork!).

But despite the menu, the local beer free flowing, and the restaurant which was little more than a steamy greenhouse with bamboo plants swaying and small "streams" running along the walkways it felt right that we had come. The kids quickly and quietly excused themselves after politely fielding questions in Chinese and even coming up with some humorous quips that seemed to please our increasingly red faced hosts. There were genuine comments of thankfulness for the teaching Mr. Johnson had done in hydraulics, and they thoughtfully suggested that Mr. Johnson's father was a clever engineer in his own right, since he seemed to also understand all about the high pressure readings that had left them baffled. They sweetly offered gifts to Mr. Johnson's parents and we all posed together behind the unfurled 30 foot reproduction scroll that they have given their foreign guests.

Our afternoon included a nail-biting trip up a nearish-by mountain (which always seemed to be about 30 minutes away, every time we asked!) The mountain top proved cool and refreshing, but we all opted to hike back down rather than endure the risky ride. Our twenty-something tour guides gamely joined us, despite wearing high heeled sandals with anklets (for a great description on this Chinese fashion trend, visit the blog of my cyber friend global gal.)

When were deposited back at the train station, we endured another cultural phenomenon: being stared at like were perhaps the only Westerners some of the rural riders had ever seen. It wasn't the usual, pull out the camera and take pictures, or the childish squeals and flimsy English, "you so lovely," (when they clearly mean the children and not Mr. Johnson or myself!) It was uncomfortable, jaw dropping stares... terrified children hiding behind equally uncomfortable, dark skinned parents. "Now you know how Michael Jackson felt," Mr. Johnson quipped when we realized all eyes were trained on us. Only 90 minutes from here, but it felt a world away!