From Shanghai: Sea Fishing, Blue Waters—Qingdao Is Worth a 5-Hour Drive

🔧📸 Images tweaked with Magic Image — resize, watermark, blur, convert. Nothing fancy, but it works.

Today I saw the news that a sister and brother were stung by jellyfish one after another at a beach scenic spot in Tianjin. The girl was even given a critical illness notice—so heart-wrenching! I hope they recover soon, after all, school is about to start.

It reminded me of last September when I was swimming at Qingdao’s First Bathing Beach (Qingdao City, Shandong Province, China). A kind man loudly warned me while I was backstroking, “Watch out for jellyfish! Watch out for jellyfish…” So lucky! Thank you, kind stranger!

Last early September in Qingdao, the weather was neither too cold nor too hot—perfect for swimming. So I bought another train ticket and headed over.

I happened to hear about an internet-famous photo spot. On the map, it’s roughly in this area?

After searching, the best option was the Manxin Hotel there. Got lucky again—another free room upgrade!

You can take photos right from the rooftop.

You can only get nice partial shots from up there, because looking down at the whole thing, it’s like this…

The wind was strong and the light was blinding. Next to us, a beautiful woman had hired a photographer who stood on a ladder to take her photos. In such harsh sun, she could still keep her eyes wide open—truly, beautiful women who produce great photos have something special about them!

I looked at that ladder—it was about as tall as the railing. Being afraid of heights, I just settled for some scenery shots~

I heard that in the past, people who weren’t hotel guests would always go up to take photos, so later they restricted rooftop access to hotel guests only. Great~

About 10 meters diagonally across from the hotel, there’s a Haiping Wonton shop. Said to be a delicious old establishment—so we definitely had to try it!

Turns out it was founded in 1997. Let’s order the “Assorted Wonton” (one of every filling)!

Fish roe wontons—so fragrant and tasty!

After eating, we went back to brew some tea. The hotel had free afternoon snacks, but we were out fishing at the time, so we skipped them.

More than half an hour later when we came out, the sun had come out—what luck, incredible!

This time we switched to a different boat, because the captain we’d originally contacted said the wind was too strong to go out to sea.

I took seasickness pills and was fine when we first boarded. But I went down to the bathroom in the hold, and the violent tossing made me bang into things several times. By the time I came back up, I was seasick! This boat was really rocking badly! I don’t remember the waves being this violent before!

Even my most effective seasickness medication failed! Oh well, I’ll just treat it as enjoying the sea breeze. No fishing this time.

Hilarious—out of over a dozen people on the boat, we only caught this many fish.

This boat was particularly small, the hooks were wrong, and the bait turned out to be fake plastic fish! On top of that, the type of plastic fish was also wrong. The sea fishing price was even higher than the previous boat. This time was really a dud!

But the more you travel, the more likely you are to hit a bad experience eventually. Never mind all that—we’re off to eat something delicious~

Back to the familiar Tuandao Market ✌

We walked around, bought some lively fresh seafood, and headed to the same “Hexiangchun” restaurant as before to have it cooked!

I remember the first time we came, we followed a woman soliciting customers on the street and went to some shop up on the hill. As a result, part of the fresh ribbonfish we’d caught ourselves was stolen. So, don’t listen to street solicitors—doing your own research on restaurants beforehand is important!

First up were super plump razor clams! So fat and long! Only 16 yuan per jin (500g).

This time we got smart and had them cooked together with the other shellfish.

Last time we lost out—same cooking method, but they cooked the two ingredients separately and charged us an extra processing fee.

By the way, the 1-yuan tissue packet is an extra charge. If you don’t need it, you can return it or mention it in advance. Don’t be shy—one yuan is still money, haha!

The oil-braised prawns are here too!

Truly delicious! Each one was huge—I watched carefully and only picked the live, big ones!

And these scallops—the purple shells are so beautiful! Only 6 yuan per jin, insanely cheap!

The meat on these scallops was plump and round, so much better than what you buy in Shanghai supermarkets (those are starved—buy 3 jin and you get maybe 3 liang of meat).

These three dishes had huge portions. The photos might not do them justice. Anyway, we were stuffed and almost couldn’t finish everything.

And yet—the ingredients were only 60 yuan, processing fee 55 yuan, 4 yuan tableware for two people, totaling just 119 yuan!

Even though it wasn’t my first time settling the bill here, I’m still shocked by these prices…

I enjoy slow-paced travel and never do rushed, check-the-box sightseeing. If you also like this style of traveling, feel free to follow, like, save, comment, and share. Thank you for reading this far~