Qingdao

Qingdao is a port city in Shandong province in eastern China, on the Yellow Sea at the mouth of Jiaozhou Bay. It gave its name, in the old spelling Tsingtao, to the beer brewed there since the German years.

The Qing court chose the fishing villages on the bay for a naval garrison in the early 1890s, and the long Zhanqiao Pier was built for its supplies. Germany leased the bay in 1898 and laid out a town of red-tiled villas, churches and wide streets on the hills above the shore. Qingdao returned to Chinese rule in the 1920s and grew as a port and a resort on the sea. The sailing races of the Beijing Olympics were held off its coast in 2008.

Tsingtao Brewery, founded by German and British settlers, still makes its lager in the old brick brewery, now also a beer museum. Haier, based in the city, makes refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners, and Hisense, also from Qingdao, makes televisions and kitchen appliances. CRRC Sifang builds high-speed trains at its works in the north of the city.

St. Michael's Cathedral, a Romanesque church of the 1930s with twin spires, stands on a hill in the old German quarter. Badaguan, a district of villas near the beaches, has streets named after mountain passes of the Great Wall, each lined with its own kind of tree. Mount Lao, east of the city, rises straight from the sea, and Taoist monks have lived in its temples, such as the Taiqing Palace, since the Han dynasty. The Qingdao International Beer Festival fills a park on the coast every August with stalls of brewers from China and abroad.