After a great four days in Beijing, we took a short flight to the seaside city of Qingdao. Most Americans will have never heard of Qingdao, but might recognize another spelling/pronunciation of Tsingtao. Qingdao was controlled by Germany for several years prior to WWI, and they brought beer to China, which is now exported all over the world as Tsingtao beer.
And beer is of course the reason we came to Qingdao. I also thought it would be cool to see a "beach town" in China. Well, the beach was rocky, the water full of seaweed, not exactly Maui.And Qingdao is yet another massive city of three million, without much for a tourist to see. But it does have The International Beer Festival, an annual bash described as Chinese Oktoberfest. We had to see that.
The International Beer City consists of lots of neon lights (as does everything in China), and some big tents like you might see in Germany, and they do indeed serve real German imported beer.
It wasn't cheap either. These mugs were $7 a piece. The huge Hofbrauhaus size liter mugs were a stunning $14 each!There is also some interesting food choices at the IBF. Women walk through the tents with platters of fried bugs, assorted meats, and other unidentifiable objects. We chose Mongolian beef, cooked up by real Mongolians in traditional costume rocking out to Chinese pop. These guys were awesome, the highlight of the IBF. I ate here both nights. I felt slightly ill for the following week, but I hate to blame it on them.
I figured the "International" Beer Festival would attract tourist from all over the world. Nope. It was 99% Chinese. No worries though, after a few pints of Paulaner dark, we made friends. We could not communicate with these guys at all. But we spoke the international language of drinking beer while standing on tables and singing.Whoever created the technology to allow a video camera to fit in a pocket size digital camera deserves a medal. Josh actually cut his hand quite badly on this fall. The floor is covered in broken glass, and he came up with a hand and arm covered in blood. (Note my unrestrained schadenfreude at his fall)
Karaoke is everywhere here, and the IBF was no exception. Every tent had pop singers singing songs everyone knew and sang along to.
This particular guy was a big draw. Crowd went nuts for him. Apparently the best way to show your appreciation is to run up on stage and offer the singer a beer, which he/she will then chug .
Josh and I were the only non-Chinese standing on the tables and rockin out with this guy, and right after he finished this song, the singer handed me a beer and challenged me to a chug-off. He won.
Time after time we heard the chant of EE AH SO SA! Finally we asked a bilingual guy what that meant. It meant One-Two-Three-Four!
We had a blast at the IBF. One night we met up with a group of ex-pats living in Hong Kong. They were American, Brits, and Aussies. Between us we had about eight guys in the group and need to get transport back into town from the IBF. Taxis were scarce. Finally one guy hailed a Chinese family of four in a minivan. We offered them about $20 to drive us into town, and after warily looking us over, they took a chance and let eight large inebriated foreigners in their van. Best ride ever. Beer cans flying everywhere, and cursing like only an Aussie can curse. We had to scream get them to pull over at one point so the Brit could puke. Their ten year old kids thought we were aliens. We tipped them and they must have been thrilled both for the money and to get us out of their van.
