2018 Year of the Dog!

[pfarber]

So I finally got to spend New Years in China. What's CNY like when you are actually in China? BORING. AS. FUCK.

I was in Qingdao. Qingdao is a city of 9+ Million people. They ALL LEAVE THE CITY. No shit. I mean it. The city of Qingdao was a freaking ghost town. Almost NOTHING was open. Sure, some supermarkets were open, but 95-99% of the shops are closed for 7-14 days. I got there on 12 Feb and the city was empty even when I left on the 22nd. Driving to the apartment there were less than 20 cars on the road for the 15km drive. Normally its nut to butt traffic. Even my friend was constantly telling me how empty the place is. Her family was in Qingdao but her sister and mother DROVE from Xi'an to Qingdao for the two weeks. That's a 1000+km drive. Not a big deal but defiantly a two-three day trip.

I spent ¥1000 + ¥200 deposit for a 150m2 apartment. I was told the apartment was worth over ¥1.5MM. It was a typical Chinese shit construction concrete box in the sky. It took a day to get the VPN set up (had to enable fragmentation and adjust packet size as there were all sorts of internet fuckery going on). But d'ls were steady 80-100Mbps connections... torrented the fuck out of some t.v. shows.

Pretty much all I did was meet people, eat, drink and suffer through fireworks, nay, EXPLOSIONS, for 9 days. Shit got real boring real quick. Yeah, nice to meet people, and free food is free... but in general the food is low quality, oily, spiced the fuck out and just not good. The best meal I had was at the airport I got some KFC. Thank Mao for extra crispy chicken.

We did go to a temple, and did some other touristy stuff... but generally there was nothing to do during spring festival. I'd skip it. Autumn festival is just as boring.