The port city of QINGDAO in the east of Shandong province makes a remarkable first impression. Emerging from the train station and walking north with your eyes fixed on the skyline, you could almost believe you had got off at the wrong continent - it’s like stepping into a replica of a nineteenth-cen- tury Bavarian village, nestling on the Yellow Sea. With its Teutonic shapes and angles - red roofs, cobbled streets, intricate iron balconies - this area, the old
German concession, provokes an eerie sense of dislocation. The marriage of German architecture and contemporary China has created bizarre juxtaposi- tions, with oriental stone lions sitting in discreet European gardens, and grand, pompous facades now fronting litde shops and laundries.

Qingdao’s distinctive Teutonic stamp dates back to 1897, a legacy of Kaiser
Wilhelm’s industrious attempts to extend a German sphere ofinfiuence in the East. The kaiser’s annexation of Qingdao, along with the surrounding Jiazhou peninsula, was justified in terms typical of the European actions of the time. It was prompted by concern for “safety”, following the murder of two German missionaries by the Boxer movement .The kaiser raised the inci dent to an international crisis, making a near-hysterical speech (which coined the phrase “yellow peril”) demanding action from the feeble Manchu govern ment. He got his concession, the Chinese ceding the territory for 99 years, along with the right to build the Shandong rail lines. Qingdao had previously been an insignificant fishing village, but the German choice was carefully calculated, the ubiquitous Baron yon Richtofen having carried out a survey and found it ideal for a deep-water naval base. The town was split into a European,
a Chinese and a business section, with a garrison of two thousand soldiers to protect its independence. A brewery was built in 1903, the rail line to Ji’nan (another concession town) was completed in 1904, and the town prospered. It was to remain German until 1914 when the Japanese, anxious to acquire a foothold in China, and emboldened by the support of their British allies, bom barded Qingdao. The town was taken on Novenaber 7, and five thousand pris
oners were carted off’ to Japan. In the Treaty of’Versailles, the city was ceded to Japan, which infuriated the Chinese, and led to demonstrations in Belting - the beginning of the May Fourth Movement .The port was eventually returned to China in 1922.

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