Orlan and Marcella Thomas Visit
Qingdao, Shandong, China - 2005

13. Sunset at Qingdao

A beautiful sunset over the hills surrounding Qingdao. Most of the world knows Qingdao from the world class beer brewed there. The Germans started that brewery back in the period of "Unequal treaties" when the Western powers carved up China like a melon. In the old romanization of Chinese place names known as the Wade-Giles system, Qingdao was spelled "Tsingtao." The beer brewery is now run by the Chinese but still known a Tsingtao Beer.In 1897, Kaiser Wilhelm annexed Qingdao for Germany and began constructing a European-style coastal city around its prodigious harbor. The German architecture was framed around the city's meandering bays, and there remain six public beaches fringed by parks and coves. The giant brewery and its Tsingtao (an early transliteration of Qingdao, pronounced 'Ching Dow') beer are further legacies of German rule.