Wednesday, February 5, 2014

First Snow, Shandong




Snow is finally here.  My family and I have been waiting till February 5, of this year to finally experience nieve.  But Qingdao is at the front end of a blizzard, apparently and it is lovely to finally see.  While we’d all love to confront a 毛大雪[1], this is so far big fat wet flakes that melt as soon as they hit the concrete.  But who’s complaining?  I was beginning to wonder if we’d get through the entire year without seeing the white stuff fall.  I wonder and since I’m on line I checked, and sure enough, back in Beijing, the precipitation is “zero.” 

As suggested I followed the thread on from Henry Threadgill to the guitarist who appeared on the album I mentioned yesterday, one Liberty Ellman, from the U.K.  I am mid way through “You Have Ears,” and I sent the link over to may step son whose a fine guitar player residing in Japan.  But Rdio isn’t yet available there.  What a drag.  How’d they figure it out in China first?  Fortunately he must have found something on Youtube.  His IM comments to me on Skype, concerning Mssr. Ellman: “lol that's tight.  These guys are definitely on something tho.”

Settled in the car now taking on Qingdao.  We’ve entered out on to the only exit which affords us an egress on to Xuzhou St, and . . . it ain’t moving.  We’ve shifted on from Liberty Ellman to Duke Ellington out here in the car, on the album wherein he “meets” Coleman Hawkins.  This swings a big more accessibly then Mssr. Ellman, but then Duke swings more accessibly than anyone who ever walked the earth.  Different times, different tunes.  Well, at least the traffic has, eventually, let through.

We’ve been put out on to a back alley area that won’t let us turn the direction we want to go. Well, this is the backside of the city then.  I keep telling my wife to turn left and she isn’t taking to my backseat driving well.  Shift then.  We’re playing the “license plat game” with my younger one, wherein you get a point for any car upon which you spot a neighboring province license plate from.  You find a province farther from one adjoining and its two points or more.  

On the drive out here the license plate game was pretty boring stuff with Beijing, and Tianjin and Hebei all not really counting since they all adjoined to closely as we drove through them each.  But driving around this city we’ve just noticed a gaggle of “out of state” plates.   Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui . . . there must be story there somehow.  Perhaps it is all property owners who are participating in the great property game we referenced yesterday.  But that’s unlikely.  Other-province-people all have great property extravaganzas of their own to exploit.  Probably just folks home for New Year’s.  Nice!  I just got a Jiangsu. 

We’re heading over to the Badaguan area that apparently has lots of extant German architecture.  I’d like to see the Governor’s House, constructed in the style of a proper palace, that the German Governor had built in 1903.  When Kaiser Wilhelm II got the bill for the facility he fired the Guv, on the spot. 



The physical stock of people in Shandong is quite noticeably different from nearly anywhere else in China.  As the saying goes “Shandong Da Han,” which means, essentially, the local people tend to be taller, bigger than your average Chinese person.  I’m biased, but I also think they’re a rather handsome part of the population as well.  People are comparatively more statuesque across former kingdoms of Qi and Lu.  One unavoidable confrontation here, whether in Weifang, or Qingdao is that I’m engaging people more regularly are at or above my 6.2’ height.  And ‘tis a good thing, for my older daughter who just turned thirteen yesterday.  She is nearly 5.8’ and will invariably rise for a while.  There are no dearth of people here in Qingdao that she can still stare up at.   My younger one is asleep, which is a drag because we just noticed a Guizhou province license plate.  That is a mighty long drive from Qingdao.  For sure, that’s a four pointer. 

Driving around and you realize the build out of this neighborhood, once upon a time, was enormous.  We just drove past the Mayor’s residence.  It was a “European” style.  There are plenty of buildings that speak to a Japanese Imperial style of aggressive Nazi-like Deco.  The Germans were only here so long.  They certainly covered a lot of ground in their short tenure.  The building frenzy must have been not unlike a smaller version of what I witnessed yesterday down the coast.   Build, build and build some more as there is no logical reason for the boom to end.  Everything is a sure thing, except for something utterly unexpected, like World War I.  A frenetic build out of modernity that continued beyond European terms into something forcefully modern and Japanese that similarly had no obvious way to end, other than more prosperity . . . or implosion. 

OK.  Car’s finally parked.  We’ll get out and have a wet, snowy look.
  
Reporting back that, as might be expected, the coast in the wet snow fall, was wet and cold.  The colors were beautiful.  But the kids wanted to bale pretty quickly.  We’re back in the car and this may be the preferred way to see things today.  We’ve covering a lot of ground, even though there are fifteen one-way streets in a row all heading the same direction.  I’ve just learned the high billboards to my left on this street, Wen Deng Lu, is the city’s subway construction now in progress, underneath.  More and then more to come, for sure. 

I’m pushing the squad to head to the tip of the craggy peninsula today, where I hope to find more old architecture that we could walk around within.  Right this way . . . You want to go left!   But it was not to be.  Our driver’s made an executive decision and we’re at the “Underwater World” instead.  OK . We’ll make the best of it.

Closing facilities in a mere fifteen minutes.  No luck.  Turned away.  A few photos of wet old trees.  Use of the facilities.  Back to the car. 

One thing you notice driving here, certainly on the coastal roads is that the cab drivers have a habit of coming up fast behind you and ramming the horn.  That, because half the traffic, like us, is merely day-tripping, enjoying the winding seafront view.  Driving isn’t a bad way to take on this city of hills in the winter.  We just drove up to old railway station and then wound around up into the top of the old city hill.  What a change!  Suddenly it is an utterly fascinating setting.  Deco Buildings, buildings that look like Vienna or someone’s idea of Tudor living.   What a beautiful extant urban environment.  I somehow don’t remember Qingdao being quite this exceptional.  Perhaps I’m just in the mood to appreciate art deco things that remain in China, so many years on from first footfall.  I’m so glad to see that there is this much that still stands.



I’m now pitching my wife on seeing if there is a way to buy one of the broken down old store fronts on this hill and fixing it over in anticipation of the great reclamation of these neighborhoods that is bound to come.  I’m no better than folks with stars in their eyes down the coast in Huangdao.  But it speaks to a different kind of urban expertise, perhaps less of a “sure thing” but with the added preservationist buzz that inflates you a bit, striving for something vintage.  My particular preference as an old foreigner predictably enough, is to protect the old European flavor, I suppose.  Still, it is now part of the city’s tradition more than it is the tradition of one race or another.   Qingdao’s China now.  That’s irrefutable.  With a bit of courage, China will do some remarkable and aesthetically potent things here.  It seems foretold.   

They can start, by trearing that wretched hotel down, that stands on the seaside bluff, just south of Badaguan. Bo Xilai get’s bad press but you need someone with that sort of juice to identify the ten most offensive eyesores in Qingdao, and, since this is a dictatorship, make a philosopher king-like decision to eradicate the ten most prominent and ugly buildings constructed in the last thirty five years.  Sorry.  No vote.  Remove them.  Then, bring in Shui On who built XinTianDi or someone of taste to create some multi-use, livable space that grows on that hill.  If you did that, you’d attract an international environment and, just maybe, some genuine innovation. 

For now, wet snow still parades earthward.  To actually see snow gather and accumulate on the Chinese yellow earth, the wait continues.  Till now, everything melted as it fell.   The evening’s freeze may yet yield a morning snowball fight.  

My wife is looking out the window.  From the 19th floor, the car is, finally, covered in snow!















[1] émáodàxuě:  goose feather snow (idiom) / big heavy snow fall

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