I had quite a day in Jinan yesterday. It started out as a pretty standard day. We visited the cold water Baotu Springs in the morning. The springs are famous in Chinese history for attracting influential
Chinese people. We toured an attraction dedicated to the female poet Li Qing Zhou.
For lunch we wandered through a very westernized looking downtown area. We ended up eating at a Burger King. It was the first western meal that I have had since I got here. We also walked though the stores looking for bargains. Compared to Edinburgh, things are relatively inexpensive here.
After lunch we toured the area around a spring fed lake known as the Daming Lake. It was obviously a tourist lake. There were attractions such a carnival rides, boat rentals, and tourist games that were supposed to bring their winners good luck. It also just happened to be a military holiday on the day we were visiting. As such there were uniformed military police everywhere. They were just enjoying the lake and did not seem to be on duty. Major Deeds, being the friendly guy that he is, decided to take a picture with one of their officers.
The Daming Lake was also the place were we met Lucy. Lucy is the favorite niece of the Secretary General of Shandong province. I have met her type before living in the halls at the University of Edinburgh. She was without a doubt the daughter of a Chinese official complete with her own personal vehicle and driver. The word 'no' was not something she was accustomed to hearing. She hung around with us throughout our tour of the Daming Lake. After the tour, she accompanied us back to the hotel and ate dinner with us. Over dinner she invited all of the cadets to go shopping with her that evening. That was when the night got a bit crazy. The cadets had finished dinner before the escorts and wanted to get permission to leave the hotel to go shopping with Lucy. As such, we started to gather outside the room that the escorts were dinning in to wait for them to finish their dinner. To be honest, we were being a bit noisy. But, we were not as bold as Lucy. She was not accustom to waiting. Impatient, Lucy had no qualms about walking into the escorts dining room. That triggered a scolding by the Canadian escort.
Once we got our permission to go out on the town things got a bit crazier. Including Lucy, there were eleven of us who wanted to go shopping. Lucy's personal vehicle could only accommodate 5 of us. The left over groups had to take taxies to our destination. I was one of the few to have the dubious privilege of riding in a taxi. It felt like we were getting kidnapped. Lucy told our taxi where to go and shoved us inside. We had no clue where we were going. The driver could have just taken us to a random part of town and we wouldn't have known the difference. Luckily, we ended up in the right place. Shopping with Lucy turned out be a ton of fun. The shopping area we visited was riddled with merchandise printed with very bad English translations. Michael (Britain), Andrea (Hong Kong), and I all bought matching sun glasses and hats. The shop we bought it at even threw in free icepacks that had 'remember this moment' printed on them. We got quite a few stares from the locals. After about an hour of shopping we rode the crazy taxies back to the hotel.
We wore our hats and sunglasses down to breakfast this morning for the enjoyment/discomfort of the escorts.
That's all for now.
Noah Gibbs
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