Like I mentioned during the long weekend post, my friend and I had wanted to go to the century year old 时光印记活字印刷 to go and attempt letterpress printing, which was closed when we initially had gone, so we went back again, except this time, we took my roommate, too. The workshop wasn't that far from our hotel, so we walked there after being unable to find the bus that dropped us off in front of it. When we walked towards it and the door was open, we were all so excited.
Doesn't the entrance look really cool, too?
This was the work area in the back of the workshop. All of the small silver "things" lined up in rows and columns across the wall in the first picture are stamps for a different Chinese character.
Doesn't it look amazing?
We asked about what we could do here, and the owner said that we could pay 90 Yuan (or about 13 USD) and make as many letters we wanted, which in my opinion, was a good deal. First, we sat down and wrote out our letters. My friend and I both wrote one to our moms for their birthday because my friend's mom's birthday had just passed, and my mom's birthday was just around the corner. After writing out our letter, we went to the computer that had all of the Chinese characters organized on an Excel spreadsheet. We searched each of the characters in our letters to find the location of the characters. After writing down all the locations, we scanned the walls to find and collect all the characters we needed.
After collecting all the characters, we arranged them in our wooden plates making sure to put the character stamps in backwards. You know why, right?
After putting in the characters, we rubbed ink on the stamps in the wooden plate. We then placed a piece of paper over the wooden plate and used a roller to make sure we got all the ink on the stamps onto the piece of paper. My explanation may not make complete sense, but I'm pretty sure you can get the general process of the letterpress printing we did by looking at our pictures.
We had a lot of fun, and the owner was extremely nice, so he pulled out other "stamps" that we rubbed with black ink and stamped onto a thin piece of paper (100% cotton paper!). Below are two of the pictures we printed out!
Letterpress printing was definitely fun, but our hands got really messy, and it looked like our whole hand was black, especially because my friend and I both had gotten our nails painted black!
Before leaving, the owner also let us pick out a letterpress card and bookmark that he made for us to take home. I definitely didn't regret paying 90 Yuan for such an amazing experience with China's ancient (and very famous) movable type.
We were all in a good mood after leaving this workshop because we had so much fun, but we got lost on our way back to the hotel where we found out that we were riding a bus going in the opposite direction. After asking directions, riding more buses, and also riding a cab, we got back to the hotel. During our struggle to get back, we went to get a drink from CoCo, which we predicted would be our last CoCo drink for awhile because my friend was leaving China tomorrow, I was leaving the next day, and my roommate was leaving the day after me.
We got back to the hotel just in time for our Chinese tea demonstration lesson, where our professor planned for us to learn about the basic types of Chinese tea (black tea, green tea, red tea, etc.) and the traditional way of preparing tea.
Before our instructor came, our professor sat in the main chair and posed for my camera. Isn't she awesome?
Our instructor, like our professor had planned, showed us the different types of tea, showed us how to prepare each type of tea (ex. where black tea and red tea need to be prepared in a different type of material in terms of the container because both need to be prepared at higher temperatures), and poured us multiple cups of tea.
All of our teacups were really pretty, and all of us practiced inhaling the scent of the tea and slowly drinking the tea afterwards. The instructor made us so much tea that I was so full, and at one point, I hid my teacup so that he couldn't pour me more tea. Like the calligraphy workshop, this tea demonstration was another way to learn about Chinese culture, which I really liked.
Although two of our classmates had to leave last week due to different scheduling conflicts, today was our official last day of class, and some of my classmates were planning to leave Qingdao tomorrow (Friday), so our professors planned to have our Qingdao Final Banquet tonight. We headed to another hotel that wasn't too far away, and we got to eat at a buffet, which was great.
I honestly feel like I ate too much, but everything looked so good that I just couldn't stop getting up to get more food!
After dinner, one of our professors said that she had planned for us to go to karaoke, so my friend, roommate, other classmate, and I walked from the hotel to the oceanfront to go to KTV. Before going to karaoke, we stopped by to buy a cup from Starbucks (I wanted to buy one, but I knew I didn't have room in my suitcase or any of my bags, so I resisted the urge to buy one), and I took some more pictures of the area. I realized that except for the first week, I really didn't visit the oceanfront as much as I had been planning to, so I was slightly sad.
We got to KTV, and some of our classmates, our professor, and two of our tutors were there already singing and having fun. I was tired but definitely enjoyed karaoke (I wasn't planning to go, but my friend and roommate dragged me to KTV, so I guess I'm pretty thankful that they did!).
Today was definitely a long day, but I enjoyed every second of it. Tomorrow is my last full day in Qingdao, and I honestly can't believe that my 9 weeks in China is nearly over.
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