I think everyone had another great weekend here in Qingdao! Although that’s pretty standard really 🙂
This Saturday was the opening day of the “21th” Qingdao International Beer Festival, so we felt obliged to attend, and it turned into such a funny day! At first we spent our time sampling expensive German Pauliner beers, which were really good but at Y30 for a small bottle, unlikely to keep us entertained for very long. The beer fest really came into its own when we entered the Tsingtao tent; Qingdao’s very own, it had about five different types for Y20 each, including a “wine beer” which is just about the weirdest thing I’ve ever had.
It was such a strange but hilarious scenario as we seemed to be the unofficial guests of the entire event, with randomers continually photographing us from all angles as the token foreigners. This carried on pretty much all day, only being interrupted once in the hours we were there by a “famous” former LA Lakers basketball star who shall remain anonymous, mainly because not one of us had a clue who he was. A crazy English-speaking Chinese guy took it upon himself to keep refilling our glasses with free beer and the “Gambei’s” began! Great fun, and at one point Benedict managed to get the whole crowd clapping away as he triumphantly added more empty pitchers to the giant stack on their table(he’s about 1000 foot tall.)
A few more beers followed in the Tiger tent where some Karaoke was going on, and Martin managed to get himself on stage in front of hundreds with a Chinese female singing duo…
After Martin had left the crowd stunned with his Beyonce-esque routine (yeah…) we finally settled in the Heineken tent, and I was literally dragged by another random Chinese guy to their table! Aside from “ni hao” and “xie xie” I don’t speak a word of Chinese and none of them any English, but “gambei” managed to get us through the situation as they filled my glass three or four times. Luckily everyone came over eventually and we all ended up drinking with them for at least an hour or so- crazy! Chinese people are so hospitable and loud when they’re drunk, it was a brilliant memory and I’m sure there are some classic pictures hanging about! And then we went to a club until 4, I ate street food under a motorway and we all lived happily ever after. The end =)
Ben