Location: Qingdao, Shandong
Travel Notes: My impression of Qingdao, Shandong. Qingdao was once a German concession, so my first impression was the century-old German-style train station. From there, in 1903, Germans brought European beer brewing techniques, giving rise to today's world's fifth-largest brewery—Tsingtao Beer. At the beer museum, I tried fresh unpasteurized beer, and even as someone who rarely drinks beer, I found it pleasantly smooth. Beer is truly Qingdao's international calling card; many foreigners first learned of Qingdao through Tsingtao Beer ads. The Qingdao International Beer Festival is now in its 29th year, held by the Golden Sand Beach in Huangdao District, across the Jiaozhou Bay Subsea Tunnel—the architecture is stunning. Beyond beer, Qingdao also has a wine museum and wine street, as China's first European-style winery, Huadong-Baili Winery (1985), is located here. Nearby Yantai is also one of the world's seven major coastal wine regions (alongside France, Italy, the U.S., Chile, South Africa, Australia), so its ties to wine run deep. Besides drinks, Qingdao, like Dalian, has a Polar Ocean World, and to the east lies Laoshan Mountain (5A), a Taoist Quanz…
