While I'm not exactly what you would call against the idea of a side trip—by car—to Qingdao, I'd been of the impression that this was a side trip to do things like show off and show off to the foreign internet influencer. Under those circumstances (even if I wasn't likely to be free enough to meet up with people I know in Qingdao like the art museum designer with the mountain getaway or the German student who had just made waves all over the Chinese internet for filing a complaint with Market Supervision and Control about counterfeit import products at the Qingdao Beer Festival) I'd be getting something out of going. 

I am not at all on board with the idea of my presence being used as an excuse for the mid-level media official to go on a chaperoned overnight trip to Qingdao with her affair partner. At least I have to assume that status on the basis of the smoldering relationship chemistry and almost¹ touchy-feelyness the two of them had² that she absolutely didn't have with her husband³.

Starting with a far too early departure to go sit in a car park for 90 some odd minutes while we waited for the mister and his son to finish up with some exam the son was taking, there were a handful of things that made the trip tolerable. Things like him being a fascinating conversationalist or her immediately going to sleep in the back seat⁴ and not bothering either of us until we got all the way into Qingdao and to the beach and "what do you mean you haven't booked the hotel rooms yet?" 

Also, in terms of small pleasures, I can't help but cruelly snigger behind my hand over my somehow being the only person who had a proper overnight bag's worth of things to change into after a huge rainstorm soaked us all.

Following a "this is Tuesday it must be Rome" approach of doing All The Things, and with the mister suggesting that we not drive to sites that were sure to have jam-packed parking lots, we rented and rode share bikes first to the stony beach where some outcropping of rock is supposed to look like an old man's head and then to an even more crowded bathing beach with the kind of gritty sand that reminds me why tropical islands (like the one I live on)⁵ are always advertising their "fine white beaches". 

Not having swim stuff to change into⁶, not having any interest in de-sanding myself, not being willing to pay the kind of money the mister dropped on trunks and sandals and an inflatable swim ring for the boys⁷, and having substantially better beaches at home (where I also don't go swimming), I used this time to sit on the seawall and edit videos.

This was followed by a really quite acceptable and not too absurdly priced seafood dinner from a random restaurant near the hotel⁸ and the aforementioned torrential downpour where, slightly less sober than I would have been if I had been allowed to drink at my own pace, I sat in the rain while they huddled under a canopy (eventually ending up just as wet as me) and mocked them over their fear of melting⁹.

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¹  In terms of public displays of affection, Chinese Boyfriend (who is of a similar sociopolitical - albeit much higher economic - class) doesn't even like it when I lean over and kiss his shoulder in the car at times where traffic cameras might see us. 

² At the beginning of the sudden rain storm that caught us out after dinner, when the respective 11 year old children (that I mercifully didn't have to interact with much because they had just as much interest in practicing English with me as I did with them) were ahead of us all, she snuggled up against him to stay dry. Other than that, though, and bearing in mind that girls shared one room and boys another, I never actually saw them being a couple.

³ In order to solve the risk of having the foreigner issue show up again, I'd stayed in their spare bedroom.

⁴ Despite rather lecturing me the night before at the Characteristic Local BBQ dinner that was well attended by a lot of district level people about how I shouldn't drink past my limits (a task that would be much easier if people would listen to me when I said "I cannot physically pour more beer into my body"), she was the one with the epic hangover from getting totally wasted.

⁵ Fine as in "small particles" rather than "nice"

⁶ I'd thought strongly about bringing the swimsuit Chinese Boyfriend bought me on a spontaneous hot springs trip shortly before this Tour but it's an absolutely hideous ruffled granny suit, and I've had enough Tours by now where I never go swimming that it seemed gratuitous and unnecessary weight.

⁷ Purchased, of course, from the shop just next to to beach entrance

⁸ Over 1,000 yuan of not my money to get us two bedrooms in a three bedroom apartment

⁹ Sober me is quite pleased with drunk me's wittiness in using a homonym for "Chinese" in going on and on and on about them being made of sugar.