Qingdao - Sailing, Beaches, and Beer

Three things today made me appreciate the appreciatory nature of the Chinese.

The first was on my run this morning along the coast. Qingdao is the host of the 2008 Olympic Sailing events, and I ran across a festival celebrating just that. Kites filled the sky, bubbles clouded the air and kids and adults ran around a giant tent labeled "Sing for the Olympics". The combination of erratic and inexplicable excitement and the derivation of a legitimate holiday from this an arbitrary Monday morning humored me. This is their big chance to leap onto the world stage and it seems that even the smallest children understand this on some visceral level. They noticably appreciate this chance, and overflow.

The city of Qingdao is a costal city along the Pacific. It has six main beaches, and as I walked along the coast I found every one of them crowded to capacity. I'm not sure if it was the fact that it was a dreary Monday morning, or that the beaches were small, rocky and possibly the opposite of Malibu standards, but I couldn't believe how many people were there. Even their little beaches, not compairing to other countries' on any scale, are hailed and used with great joy.

Qingdao has a history of German occupation, giving birth naturally to the famous Qingdao Beer. Touring the factory, I was amazed at how well it was all done (I later found out that around 40 million RMB had been spent on the museum). Spending a month last summer in Bavaria, a place prided on their beer, Qingdao's display beat out everything I had seen there, even at Hofbrauhaus. The Chinese aren't known for their beer, but they hail Qingdao nevertheless. Germans seem to take their beer throne for granted, while the Chinese appreciate this little factory to its full extent.

These synthesized in my mind, combining to cast the Chinese in a very appreciatory light. We've had the Olympics enough times to where we don't see it as special, just as Germany doesn't find anything extraordinary at its individual little factories, and furthermore how any given Californian only treasures their beaches on sunny, 80+ degree Saturday afternoons. Just as the migrant children I worked with two weeks ago take every bit and appreciate it because it's all they can do, I'm finding Chinese do this on a much greater scale.