The Qingdao 5K

There is a 3 mile trail which I run from my apartment in Qingdao some mornings around 7am. I generally wake up about 6:20, switch on the BBC World Service for the latest news and sport, shave, then don my shorts and Westies vest and do my warm up running down the 5 flights of steps to the front of the apartment block.

When in Qingdao, I live in “Silver Gardens”, a block of “luxury ” flats full of Europeans, Koreans, Americans and anyone else who will put up with paying £100,000 for a 3 bedroom flat complete with leaky ceilings, ill-fitting doors and draughty windows. The kitchen comes complete with a single electricity outlet and a wall storage unit is placed at easy reach only for anyone six foot high or over! So far there are some eight hundred foreign mugs in Silver Gardens.

Once out the main door of the apartment, I turn right and run round the bend for 200 metres before cutting through the main gate to the estate. After a quick “Ni Hao!” to the security guard I turn left followed by right and after deftly avoiding the dead rat which has lain at the bottom of the slope for about three months, I end up on a small coastal path.

This path runs for about half a mile along a rocky bay frequented early in the morning by local fishermen. Sometimes there are scores of women sitting huddled together gathering in the seafood from the nets which have been hauled in from the night before. A line of villas hug the coast at the back of the path. From here, the area seems like a small fishing village. It’s hard to imagine that I am smack in the middle of a city of 1 million inhabitants with the equivalent of the population of Scotland living within a 30 mile radius. It’s also the third largest seaport in China and part of the crazy economic explosion currently careering out of control along it’s eastern seaboard. Away from the coast, the skyline is a mass of half-built skyscrapers and construction cranes.

Still, this part of the run is very pleasant. After avoiding the rats the only other hazards are the thousands of cockroaches scurrying about! After a while you can concentrate on the scenery. The tide can be in or out, the waves calm or rough. After a while, the path fades away into a small sandy beach. One Sunday, still only half awake, I was admiring the scenery when suddenly I became aware of a man sitting down with his back to me only 10 metres ahead of me. He must have become aware of me around the same instant because he turned his head round to face me. Almost as I reached him I realised that his breeks were at his ankles and he was squatting down doing his morning constitutional No.2!! Not that he was bothered of course! Too late to do a detour, I managed a 90 degree turn just as I was right up to him!

From the small beach, there is a steep path up to the top of the sea-cliffs. This is a good spot for showing off. At the top of the path , there are always several locals out for a morning stroll, so Whangie training really pays off here. Head down, digging deep, I always sprint up that 100 metre section imagining the locals thinking “Wow, what a man!”. Unfortunately the perplexed look on their faces at the top betrays a different interpretation.

At the top of the cliff, there is a rough track which follows the western part of the bay for another half mile. Or rather there was a rough track when I first ran there several months ago. In June, the track was being excavated for the laying of a new sewage main. Even at 7 in the morning, a few hundred workers were busy digging away. There is nothing quite so impressive as a Chinese labourer working. Even at 5 foot tall and weighing about 8 or 9 stones they are incredibly strong and once started they just keep going, and all for an average wage of maybe £30 to £40 a month. As I ran alongside the 2 metre deep trench, the object of the exercise became avoiding the clods of clay being punted up from below!

By August the sewer was complete and the dirt track was quickly evolving into a 4-lane highway. Now the damage is done and the fishing village atmosphere has gone for ever. Still, it’s all in the name of progress and what right do us big-nosed foreign devils have to criticise?

At the end of the bay, I turn right up a road leading away from the coast. This rises gently for about half a mile and is the setting for much physical exercise in the early mornings. Chinese men and women of all ages perform Tai Chi, play badminton, stroll or sometimes even run. Often I see a woman cantering up the street on all fours. So why is it that everyone stares at me???

At the top of the hill,after passing a small shop where a cockerel crows every morning, there is a junction with a main road at the Grand Regency Hotel, the city’s only 5-star establishment .For $100 dollars a night you can sleep in a luxury air-conditioned room, and enjoy the facilities which include five International Restaurants, several bars ( £4 for a single shot of whisky), souvenir shops (Chinese rugs at £2000+) and a luxury sports complex. Or you can take in the panoramic view over the shanty town on the other side of the street!

If you watch out of your room window from the Regency for long enough (perhaps 20 minutes), you will undoubtedly see a road traffic accident. The hotel architects obviously had this in mind when they decided to position the building at one of the most notorious junctions in the city. The combination of no Give-Way signs (they would probably be ignored anyway) and lack of driving discipline makes the inevitability of accidents unavoidable. There are only a very few rules associated with Chinese Roads. These are basically as follows:

He who sounds his horn first has right of way. Don’t give way to anyone voluntarily; this is a sign of weakness and you will only lose face. Don’t use your mirrors. The horn is sufficient warning of your intentions. Don’t use the outside lane in a dual carriageway less you are travelling slower than the vehicle on your inside. Always drive in neutral unless you wish to accelerate. In this case always use a higher gear than necessary; first gear is quite acceptable at 60MPH. Finally, if you are a pedestrian or cyclist, don’t look where you are going when crossing the road; this is another sign of weakness and means that you are aware of the 10 Tonne truck rumbling towards you. If you don’t look, the truck will have to stop.

Running along the main street at this time is particularly hazardous. The pavement is packed with children heading for school, so running on the road is inevitable. High speed and extreme foolhardiness is required to complete this section. The road starts to rise again at this points which makes it a good section in which to inject a bit of speed to overtake the multitude of cyclists winding towards the top ( just me showing off again!).

At the top of the hill, there is a junction with a road leading off to the right which heads rapidly downhill back to “Silver Gardens”. At this point any cyclist who takes the same turnoff inevitable gains revenge as he steams past me (usually within inches), but I don’t usually care as my attention has moved elsewhere. By this time, people are on their way to work in the offices, shops and hotels in the area and talent spotting can be good fun. It always amazes me how good some Chinese girls look. Even on only sixty dollars a month, some girls can look a Million Dollars every day!

The road winds back down to the coast and the steep slope provides a good means of impressing passers-by with a display of speed. Once the sea is reached, two left turns take me back to the entrance to the “compound”. At this time the atmosphere becomes slightly surreal as the sound of a solo saxophone comes wafting through the air! There, just behind the Gatehouse, the saxophonist strolls up and down, sometimes practicing scales, at other times launching into a virtuoso solo. I always wonder why he is there; does he just enjoy playing outdoors at this time in the morning or is he exiled there by the rest of his family and neighbours?

A quick sprint back to the main entrance to my building is followed by a feeling of extreme nausea as the humidity finally gets to me. It takes a few minutes before I can even face climbing the stairs again. Sometimes I cheat and take the lift. Eventually I get back into the flat where I have left the air-conditioning on full blast. What a feeling! Sheer Bliss!

The quality of my running may not have improved while out in China, but for anyone who loves people-watching, there is plenty of raw material about. With 1.3 billion of them, there’s never a dull moment!