Quarantine in Qingdao

There are three meals a day, which are plentiful, you could expect to be fattened here. To compensate, I do sports, the room is so big that you can even jog - in a mini oval with a diameter of approx. 6-7 meters at the longest point - like in a hamster wheel. Otherwise, exercises with your own body weight and jumping rope. The weather is fantastic. It is like in Central European midsummer, about 28 degrees. You can spend the evenings on the balcony and listen to the sound of the sea. I can see the beach from my room and watch the tides. In the course of a day some bathers come there, but it cannot be said that it is an overcrowded beach. Behind the promenade there is a well-tended park that resembles a golf course. Many wedding couples can be photographed there. People often marry in white, i.e. in the western style, but since white is the color of death, of nothingness in Chinese culture, one often sees wedding dresses in beautiful pastel tones or red, the color of happiness. I would like to walk barefoot on the beach myself, run through the water, see people up close. But even when the quarantine is over, I will not get there, but will be picked up from my room, taken to the airport by a government bus and from there I will go directly to Shanghai.

But I will definitely visit Qingdao again at a later date. The city has a lot of historical buildings from the German colonial times and a corresponding old town. The historical buildings are so valued today that new development areas are built in the style of the old colonial buildings. There are the beaches and therefore opportunities for beach holidays, although the Chinese do not necessarily take beach holidays in the western sense. I don't see any Chinese lying on the beach to be fried. You tend to go for a walk on the beach. Europeans used to refer to Qingdao as the Naples of the East, and above all there is a lot of culinary delights from the sea. That is why there has been fish and seafood on the plate several times in quarantine. The Chinese like to rank everything and Qingdao is in the top 10 Chinese cities according to the Chinese Cities Brand Value Report, whatever that means, and it's the most livable city in China according to the Chinese Institute of City Competitiveness, as always is also measured. Qingdao has a good reputation. It's clean, pretty, innovative. The port is the third largest in China and the eighth largest in the world. You have ambitions and strive to become the greatest in the world. The port is part of the new Silk Road, the so-called Maritime Silk Road of the 21st century. The longest bridge in the world over water, the Haiwan Bridge, connects Qingdao and Huangdao with a length of 42.5 kilometers. (Oops, addendum, the Zhuhai Hong Kong Macau Bridge, which is 55 kilometers long, has existed since 2018.) But enough of visions and numbers, I'll leave the word to the likeable Youtuber Amy from Australia, who knows China well and introduces the city in her refreshing way. To see her video, click HERE There was just a knock here, breakfast is just around the corner. And I'm not even hungry yet.