Nanking fell to Japanese troops on December 13th, 1937. For the next seven weeks, the Japanese conducted countless atrocities against the Chinese population of the city. It is something that people in Europe and America, who have lived in comfort and relative peace for the past 60 years, can’t fully appreciate.

Princeton has a photo gallery about the crimes. Some Japanese still deny that anything happened here, but, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words. A warning: Many of these images are extremely violent and disturbing. Proceed at your own risk.

I hope that people will understand that wars, no matter where and for what cause, always cause great suffering to people who have done nothing to deserve it. That was the case hundreds of years ago, it was the case in 1937, and it is still the case today.

### Qingdao Departure ###

Qingdao has a central station that hails from colonial times; it was built by the Germans. However, the station is being renovated in anticipation of the Olympic games 2008, where Qingdao will host a number of maritime events. So it was closed, and all the trains departed and arrived at another station – in the bad part of town. It’s as bad as you get in Qingdao – There’s some factories there, but mostly it’s just simply rundown buildings, poor people, and dirt everywhere. The traffic is atrocious too; mostly because the area wasn’t designed to handle the traffic it has to while it serves as the main train station. Within second of arriving, an old shriveled up female beggar had spotted us and wanted money. Since she didn’t speak English she resorted to a lot of prodding. Unpleasant. I was warned to take care of my wallet and my pouch and my luggage, as there would be pick-pockets about. I had already surmised so much.

The station itself was crowded. I am not sure whether this was because it was early morning, or a normal condition. Reaching the platforms involved a lot of shoving and pushing. Interestingly, the platforms themselves were quiet and deserted, so I am not entirely sure where all the people were actually going.

### The Trains ###

The high-speed trains in China do deserve some notice for any travel geek. The Chinese seem to be employing a combination of technologies for their rail system, a [hodgepodge of foreign and domestic products](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China). The train we used was reminiscent of the [Shinkansen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen). I’ll have to use the original some time, as the whole experience was decidedly anticlimactic. I had imagined something a little less basic. If you’ve ever been on one of the newer high speed trains, you’ll know they’re usually fairly comfortable. Not that our first class seats were really bad, but, it really didn’t feel “special” either. Of course we only paid something like 15 Euro per person for a 2.5h journey.

One fascinating thing I noticed was that the seats got turned around to face in the other direction after the train had arrived in Jinan. Most people prefer to face in the direction of travel, and I guess this reduces “unpopular” seats.

### Sights of the Country ###

Out beyond the city limits were a lot of tiny settlements in a large wide open landscape. It didn’t really look all that different. But the settlements were different. Some were downright ugly. There was a lot of construction, and many rundown buildings, especially in smaller towns we passed through. However, I do have to note that, like Qingdao, the country seems to be lacking garbage. In Indonesia, people would just illegally dump their waste wherever they felt like it. In China, this doesn’t seem to be the case – or at least not within sight of the train tracks. I am guessing China’s pollution is simply more industrial in nature.

There isn’t really much to see on the way from Qingdao to Jinan (nor to Beijing, for that matter). I guess if you don’t really care to take a train ride for the experience (the train stations are an experience different from what we have here in Europe!) or you’re going somewhere you got to take the train… well, you might as well fly.

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The Beer Festival was a marketing gimmick invented by the Tsingtao brewery. Tsingtao beer, if you’ve never heard about it, traces its origins back to the time Qingdao was a German colony. The Germans built a brewery, which continued to operate, and it seems that Tsingtao Beer is the closest China has to a national beer. Despite the name, the Beer Festival isn’t really all that International. They’re using a Bavarian theme for part of it, and selling German beer, and on the first day – I am told – Musicians from Bavaria play some music (for which they get paid very well).

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Despite the apparent popularity of the event, I can’t really say too much good about it. It’s horribly loud – very loud – the Bavarian theme is so superficial and fake that it is hard to even call it “a mockery of the real Bavaria”, there are some rusty rides, and, well, lots of beer. (I am guessing the later is why it’s popular at all.) I wonder if Chinese people would feel the same about China-themed events in Europe.

Much to my annoyance, the festival also featured a constant flow of salespeople: Every five minutes or so, some musician would come and offer to play music for money at our table. This, by the way, happened as the stage music was so loud I could hardly talk to my hosts.

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Overall I definitely hated the event, and I can only recommend that you stay as far away as possible from it. Don’t waste your time and/or money.

A century later, his great-grandson would be the first family member to “return” to China. But I carried a box of chocolates and not a rifle.

The Qingdao airport is a small, simple affair. It’s almost completely not noteworthy. If you know the Hamburg airport from before it was fixed and renovated: That is the impression the Qingdao airport left with me. Not that I really cared what the airport looked like: What mattered was that I had finally arrived at my destination. Total travel time: 15h from my doorstep.

I got picked up and didn’t have to worry about taxis or such. The airport turned out to be quite far from the city; maybe 30-40 minutes by car.

The first thing you’ll notice about Qingdao is that the pollution is much better than in Beijing. In fact, it’s so low that it’s not really visible. The second thing you’ll notice is the construction: There are hundreds of construction cranes between the airport and the city proper.

And the third thing you’ll notice… is the traffic.

Now, the car traffic in Qingdao is light when compared to Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur (and Beijingl, as I would later find out). But what makes it so scary is how bad the traffic is. Pedestrians generally have no rights over cars, and have to be careful not to be run over (I doubt most Chinese drivers would actually stop for them). Drivers are constanly lane jumping, driving in between two lanes, and so on. It’s an organized chaos, an eat-or-be-eaten world of motorized transportation. My poor mother, considerate driver that she is, would never get from point A to point B in China. Bless her for her good driving manners.

My first reaction was of course one of fear. I think it mst have seemed amusing, to a Chinese driver, to see me cower in fear when a bus cut in front of us. My expression must have been one of continued amazement.

But later, when I thought about it, I realized that it’s really not that surprising. A part of the problem are probably bad traffic rules, and those could be fixed. But the deeper problem will likely go away in due time: Most Chinese drivers are utterly inexperienced at driving. They haven’t had much time to learn “good traffic manners”. And in China’s emerging semi-capitalism, egoism is probably very fashionable.

We survived the traffic and got to our hotel. We survived all traffic, but I think I have not gotten used to it in any shape or form.

I already had a visa for China. But I still had to fill out an Arrival Card, a Customs Declaration Form, and a Health Declaration Form. None are really complicated, and my neighbor on the plane told me not to be overly honest on the customs form. In the end, the few gifts I had brought would not remain, as the form put it, “in the territory”, as they would be carried on to Japan: so I told my conscience to go to sleep.

I wasn’t so surprised to learn that it was illegal to bring “deadly poisons” into China. I guess I should also have expected that it’s illegal to bring any printed materials, pictures, videos, or digital media into China that would be ‘dangerous’ to the country’s economic, political, cultural or moral well-being. Can someone please explain what that encompasses? All my belongings, including books, were apolitical, but could someone get arrested who carried a magazine that included an article critical of, say, Mao?

I hate dictatorships.

Another item I was surprised to learn was illegal to import into China: Used clothes. All of mine were fresh and clean, but is a returning Chinese really supposed to hand in his dirty socks at the Quarantine desk? I rarely come back to Germany with a suitcase full of clean clothes.

Anyway. The plane landed, and thus equipped with my filled out forms I entered China. The queue at the immigration check was insane. But, as predicted, nobody cared about my health form (empty) or my customs declaration form. They didn’t even pay me a second look.

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I did have to pick up my luggage. And then check it in again. Beijing is not a transfer airport. It’s actually pretty easy to find all the required places, but it’s still a lot of hassle. I guess it saves them the customs / immigrations checks at other airports, but, well, it’s still very annoying, and I could imagine a big problem if you are in a hurry to catch a connecting flight. I seriously doubt the entire process can be done in less than 30 minutes (if there are no queues anywhere). Took me closer to an hour I think.

So I only had to catch the connecting flight to Qingdao. Waiting for it was interesting, because I was one of the very few European guys there. There were two or three people that looked like business travelers, and one small group of people consisting of a very fat guy with a really skinny Chinese girlfriend, and what appeared to be his two friends. Couldn’t help but wonder what she saw in him.

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Boarding the flight to Qingdao meant going out on the airfield (a bus brought us to the plane). As I had expected, there was a haze all over the airport. No, not fog; Good old pollution. Yes, the stories are true, and yes, it’s worse than Jakarta. I would be back in Beijing later

So the big day came. I went to the airport – almost too late, because I had remembered the departure time incorrectly by 30 minutes. My taxi driver then drove me to the wrong terminal (I had told him quite clearly to drop me off at “Terminal 1B”. Terminal 2 doesn’t have a “B” area; something which I would expect every Taxi driver in Frankfurt to know) but I managed to arrive well in time.

When I boarded the plane, I was surprised to learn thatthe flight was an Air China / Lufthansa Code-Share. Surprised, because the Lufthansa agent had told me the ticket would cost 1600 Euros (yes, in Economy class) and I eventually bought the ticket from Air China for 800. Goes to show you that you can never trust an airline, and that shopping around for tickets is very well worth it.

I was lucky in that I got a pretty good seat: First row in Economy class. Not only did I had a little more foot space, but there were also no morons in front of me who could lean back all the way. I’ve never understood that, by the way: Sleeping in an airplane is still uncomfortable as hell, and you torture the guy behind you by leaning back. Maybe that’s the purpose of it.

So compared to my KLM flights to Asia, Air China already had managed to secure a huge lead. Unfortunately, that ended right there. The food was just as bad as on the KLM flights, and the service, well, what service?

There is only one thing I want to mention quickly: The in-flight entertainment. The movie they showed was a movie about ancient China; I didn’t follow it from the beginning and I am not sure what the title is. I think the basic plot is that the Emperor is trying to poison his wife, and various people (their sons and two women) attempt to save her. One of the sons even stages a revolt to accomplish this. Anyway, the notable thing about the movie is the violence level. We’re talking about a flight that has “all ages” in the audience. But in the movie, people got impaled, beheaded, cut down by swords, slaughtered by barrages of arrows, and beaten to death. The entire thing was very well filmed but I can not help but wonder how this got past the airline censors.

>”The Yangtze river dolphin was a remarkable mammal that separated from all other species over 20 million years ago,” Dr Turvey explained.
>
>”This extinction represents the disappearance of a complete branch of the evolutionary tree of life and emphasises that we have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet.”

You may recall the Yangtze river dolphin was one of the animals that Douglas Adams sought out for his book “Last Chance to See”. Last Chance to See is a wonderful book, and I think it was Adam’s finest work. It certainly seemed to be one he cared about a great deal, and in some small way it’s maybe good for him that he doesn’t have to hear the sad news. If you haven’t read the book, you should do so. You won’t regret it – it has a strong ecological message, but it’s also a really great travelogue full of the trademark Adams humor.

While I am at it: He also has some [pretty photos from China](http://vadersfear.pandemonium.de/Pics/Photos/China/index.htm). Michael, you really should update your site more frequently. I’ll happily show you WordPress if you wish.