Linyi Town

Yesterday morning after doing some shopping I bumped into some more foreign teachers that were heading out for a day on town. They didn’t have an idea where they were going but just wanted to do something. This is my kind of traveling and sight-seeing!! You usually see things that others won’t see because you just drift around aimlessly and every now and again you end up at a place you would otherwise not have seen if you had a schedule. I quickly ran up to my apartment and chucked my groceries in my room forgetting about my washing and with a quick jog caught up with the other teachers.

We got on the bus and made our way towards town and the big “People’s Square” which is also the center of Linyi City. This is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions. We arrived in the center of the city at around 13:00 I think. I am on holiday so I am not keeping time or date! Most of us have been at the square already, so today we were just in the mood to discover town. We went from shop to shop, mall to mall and street to street. It is then that you realize the city you living in is much bigger than you expected. The central city is about 15min drive in taxi from where we live.

On this expedition with me was Al who is a 30year old black African American whose speaks very good Mandarin, his wife whose name is Lilian who is an Asian American whose family are from Pilipino and Japanese descent can also speak some Mandarin and Spanish, another Michael who is older and from Australia (Brisbane) and speaks fluent French and Pygmy, and there was George who is from Australia but actually from the Middle East and speaks fluent Arabic and some French. It felt like a UN meeting. And this was just 5 of the teachers together. Imagine what it is when all 50 teachers are present.

What you experience in this city is that during night it goes through some kind of metamorphoses. During day the city looks like an old run-down Communist country, but at night it gets a facelift and the grey buildings get exchanged for the most beautiful city lights that you have seen. It becomes this place that you have never before experienced. Nighttime is definitely the way to do sight-seeing in this City. The day was spent jumping from taxi to taxi going from restaurant to shop to restaurant to taxi. We ended up in Macdonald’s which is on one of the corners of the road facing the "People's Square". There we had some great coffee, discussed different languages, countries we’ve been, and politics. We sat there until around 00:00 and then decided it was probably a good time to go home. New sites, new friends, all in a day’s work.

(Linyi City, Shandong Province, China)