Thousand Island Lake

It was a planned university excursion for the foreign teachers and students to Qindao Lake and other parts of the province. We were to meet the bus in the school gournds at 8 am - an early start for some!!!

There were senior members of staff, foreign teachers, and students and we set off for our first stop at Tonglu. I had been to Tonglu some 2 years ago - but it seemed such a changed place. So many new buildings, and wonderful landscape. But we left the main highway and set off for the first of our activities.

It was listed as "drifting" - on Bamboo Boats along the "stream". You can read about that here.

After safely making it down the stream, out bus took us to a restaurant for lunch, and we were soon back on board the bus to go to Quindao Hu (Thousand Island Lake).

It was one of the many times that I was frustrated at not being able to take photos easily. From a moving bus is not ideal, so I watched as we whizzed by amazing scenery that would look great in my collection of photos of China.

We eventually arrived at the township of Quindao, which now has a population of some 45,000 people, so small by Chinese standards, but the amount of development - residential and tourist resorts was such that it will no doubt soon be very busy. Tourist buses were everywhere. There's no doubt the tourists have found this place as we were to learn the following day.

There was a mountain peak to scale to get a view of the lake, but I declined. (Remember I've retired from mountain climbing!!!!) and with a planned Expo visit in a few days I was taking care of my legs and feet! However, there was no where to rest and I slowly wandered along the roadway.

The lake is enormous and is man-made. You can read all about it at Wikipedia, but it was a major project after the cultural revolution in China.

Sadly we were not given any information about it. The tour guide did not speak English and those staff on board did little to inform us. In fact the important information about times, when/where to meet the bus/boat were not given to us and there resulted some confusion and anger. One of the challenges sometimes when travelling in China.

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