Our Trip to Qingdao, Shandong

1. A View of the City of Qingdao

A view of the City of Qingdao taken in 1982. The architecture is very much European due to the occupation by the Germans during the period of the "Unequal Treaties" when the European and Western powers carved up China like a melon. One good thing came out of it though, the world famous Tsingtao Brewery is still going strong and doing well. "Pinyin" has replaced the old English system of spelling out Chinese place names and now Tsingtao (which no one could pronounce so any Chinese knew what you were talking about) is now Qingdao properly pronounced (Ching dow).