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But, but, but…the Vatican exclaimed. Protests, however, were futile. This is because the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, a government agency, is the titular head of the official Catholic Church in China, not the Pope, which is why one will never hear a Chinese bishop utter a peep of protest on matters of interest to Catholics elsewhere, like abortion. It’s not just the Catholic Church, however, that the government picks on. There is also the Chinese Patriotic Islamic Association and the Three-Self Patriotic Association, which monitors the Protestants. For the Tibetan Buddhists, they’ve dispensed with associations altogether and simply settled on the People’s Liberation Army as the preferred means for keeping the followers of the Dalai Lama in line. Falun Gong has been assigned to the secret police. Clearly, the government has some issues with organized religion. And it is no wonder. In 1999, 10,000 members of Falun Gong silently surrounded Zhongnanhai, the walled compound of the Chinese Communist Party in central Beijing, to demand freedom to practice their beliefs. Communists don’t like that, this stealthlike organization by a group outside their control. A short while thereafter, the government unleashed the violent crackdown on Falun Gong that is now grimly documented by protesters outside nearly every Chinese embassy abroad.

I paid a small entrance fee and made my way inside. The cathedral had been thoroughly looted during the Cultural Revolution, but today it has been restored to a polished luster. I was the only visitor, and I stopped in front of a statue of Joseph. Very helpfully, signs had been put up to explain who exactly these people were, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. “Joseph is the legal paternity of Jesus, who played an important role in the salvation history.” Technically true.

Afterward, I had lunch at a modest restaurant on a side street with tables outside. In the corner, a man stood grilling seafood. The proprietor, an unusually burly man with a friendly disposition, indicated that he didn’t speak a word of English, which was just fine, because every meal I could see looked lip-smacking good. I pointed to a table where a waitress was setting down a bowl of small clams. “I’ll have one of those, please,” I said, pointing to the clams. “And some of that,” I said, pointing to a plate of braised cabbage. We must remember our greens. “And one of those,” I said, nodding toward an enormous mug of beer, which seemed to be the beverage of choice in Qingdao. I didn’t normally drink beer with lunch, but I had a when in Rome moment, and if I were to understand the essence of Chinese culture in Qingdao, it seemed important to drink the beer.

I am a master with chopsticks, I thought, plucking the clams out of their shells. This was fine food indeed. The clams came in a fragrant, sweet-and-spicy broth, and as I finished the clams I thought that this might be an excellent time to introduce the idea of bread to China. It seemed like a small crime to let that broth go without sweeping a crusty piece of bread through it. I finished my beer, a large half-liter mug of Tsingtao straight from the keg, and suddenly I felt very pleased to be here, right now, in Qingdao, that fine city on the sea, and then, as I was overcome by a deep yawn, I remembered why I don’t drink beer with lunch.

I felt an unshakable urge to nap. But the sun had finally burned through the early mist and now danced brightly across a blue sky, and the air smelled of the sea, and it seemed really so enormously wasteful, so disrespectful of the sunny day, that rarity in China, that I resisted the call of the pillow and set forth anew into old Qingdao.

Must have coffee, I thought as I walked, zombielike, toward the glimmering sea. I found Taiping Lu, the broad seaside avenue, and headed toward the Number 6 Bathing Beach. As I walked past the Oceanwide Elite Hotel, I noticed the familiar green and white logo of Starbucks and, pleased to have found a place that sold coffee, joined the