ByGD
I don’t know what this building across the street from the beach in Qingdao is. Is it a fancy hotel? A fancy mall? A fancy government building? We were too sweaty and dirty from playing at the beach to check it out up close. But in my imagination, it’s the private villa of a Bond villain who spends his days scheming to turn the city’s best public beach into a private one.
ByGD
When my daughter and I were in Qingdao a few years ago, we saw these fences covered with Metro signs everywhere. The advantage of central planning is that you can build a whole system at once. While cities in the U.S. have to plan and budget public transit one rail line and painful public process at a time, Qingdao was building an entire citywide metro system at once. It was scheduled to open later in the year that we were there, and I would love to go back and see what a difference it makes. Qingdao really needed a subway system. The city sprawls over hills and around waterfronts. Subways are simpler than buses and taxi drivers in Qingdao are brats. It must be so easy to get around Qingdao now.
ByGD
Here in America, we have a hard time with sharing, even in public spaces. Americans have an idea of parks as passive recreation spaces, and beaches for swimming, and so on. We get mad when cyclists ride the trails we’re hiking, when people set up a sports game on the grass where we wanted to lie and read a book. We pass laws against bringing the family dog to a ball field or playground.
The Chinese have no such qualms. I guess that crowded conditions breed a certain flexibility. This man was fishing at Qingdao’s most popular beach, surrounded by swimmers and speedboats and kite-surfers and I was the only person who batted an eye.
ByGD
I posted about a birdcage that didn’t live up to the hype. I posted about some that did. Now, here is a collection of Chinese songbirds that looks just like they do in the movies. (Also, I used a filter! I never do that, so this post is secretly about filters.)
ByGD
Airports are so big that you usually only see them in pieces, just a sliver out the airplane window, or a looming entrance as you hop out of the car. But the shuttle from our “airport hotel” to Pudong near Shanghai followed a road that gave us a pretty good view. I had to take a picture because it is so odd to see a whole airport.