Qingdao China Qingdao Tour info

History Qingdao

The original name of Qingdao area was Jiao'ao. As early as the New Stone Age, there were primitive people who lived here and created flourishing culture by their hard work. In 1891 (the 17th year of Emperor Guangxu), the government of the Qing Dynasty set up defenses in Jiao'ao, which signified the establishment of Qingdao as an administrative division.

In the next year, the Qing government assigned the General-commander of Dengzhou Town, Gao Yuan, to be stationed with his troops in Jiao'ao. In November 1897, Germany took the area by force with the excuse of "Juye Jiao Case", and made the Qing government sign the "Jiao'ao Concession Treaty" on March 6, 1898. From then on, Jiao'ao was humiliated to be a colony and Shandong Province was put within the sphere of influence of Germany as well. Germany set up the Residence of Governor to force iron-hand colonial ruling upon the locals and attached great importance to the building of the military facilities and the infrastructures such as ports and railways in hope of expanding its invasion of china with Jiao'ao as the bridge head of its political ruling, economic aggression and culture enslavement. In 1914, the Japanese troops attacked Qingdao and in 1922 China took back this area: in 1937 Japan invaded Qingdao for the second time, but on June 2, 1949 Qingdao was liberated at last. Nowadays Qingdao is one of the important opening-up coastal cities in China and is a well-known historical and cultural city with trade, light industry, tourism and oceanography research as its main industries.

Geography Qingdao

Qingdao is located in the south of Shandong Peninsula, between 119o30´ and 121o00´east longitude, 35o35´to 37o09´north latitude, with the Yellow Sea to its east and south, Yantai to its northeast, Weifang to its west, and Rizhao on its southwest. The total area of the city is 10,654 square kilometers,with the downtown area (consisting of 7 districts, namely City South, City North, Sifang, Licang, Laoshan, Chengyang, and Huangdao)

covering 1,102 square kilometers, and the area of the 5 cities of Jiaozhou, Jimo, Pingdu, Jiaonan, and Laixi taking up 9,552 square kilometers.

Climate Qingdao

Qingdao is located in the monsoon area of the nor them temperate zone and is under the influence of the ocean environment and current, therefore the climate has the typical features with moist air, rich rainfall, moderate temperature, distinct four seasons, which indicate the northern temperate monsoon climate with oceanic features. The temperature in spring goes up very slowly, lagging one month behind the land-locked area; the summer is damp and hot,

but without unbearable heat; the fall has little rainfall and clear climate for most of the time; and it is windy and cold in the long winter. The average temperature within the city is 12.2?. the hottest month throughout the year is August, with the average temperature of 25.1?; the coldest month throughout the year is January, with the average temperature of -1.2?. The average rainfall is 775.6 millimeters; the heavily foggy days account for 51.3 days and slightly foggy days account for 108.2 days per year.

Natural Ecological Environment Qingdao

Qingdao is a coastal and hilly city, high in the east and low in the west, bulging in the north and south, with lower land in the middle. The mountainous area accounts for 15.5% of the total area of the city, the hilly area 25.1%, the plain 37.8%, and the lower land 21.7%. There are mainly three mountain ranges in the city: Mount Laoshan in the southeast, the Daze Mountain in the north, and the Jiaonan Mountains in the south. In Qingdao, there are 32 rivers with river reaches of over 100 square kilometers, among which 5 have the river reaches exceeding 500 square kilometers. Dagu River is the largest one and the main source of the underground and runoff water of the city.

The total coastline of Qingdao is 730.64 kilometers, with 49 bays, 52 islands, 54 reefs and 14 beaches. The coastal area of Qingdao, zigzagging with abundant bays and beaches, and high quality seawater, is an ideal habitation place for many kinds of marine plants and animals of high economic value.
The wind resources of Qingdao are very rich with the effective wind resource utilization of 6,485 hours per year. Qingdao is also rich in light resources, with the radiation volume of sunlight reaching 120 kilowatt/square centimeters per year. The annual average sunshine time is up to 2,550.7 hours, with the sunshine percentage of 58%.

Economy Qingdao

The economy of Qingdao has been developing in a sustained, fast and healthy way. Its GDP reached 79.7 billion CNY in 1997, representing an increase of 20.97 times over the 3.8 billion in 1978. in the same period, the local financial revenue increased by 3.65 times, from 1.295 to 4.276 billion CNY. Grain output amounted to 3.39 million tons in the peak year of 1996,

up from 1.901 million tons; the inflation rate is much lower than the economic growth rate.
Qingdao has speeded up the industrialization of its agriculture. As a result the agricultural industrial structure has been improved. By 1997, the percentage of animal husbandry and fishery in agriculture has come up to 55.2%. The whole economy operates in a very sound order. The total industrial output value increased from 5.66 billion CNY in 1978 to 173.04 billion CNY in 1997. The third industry is developing vigorously with its percentage in GDP reaching 37.4% in 1997. The total volume of consumer goods retail sales went up from 957 million CNY in 1978 to 21.6 billion CNY in 1997, with an increase of 22.57 times.
Qingdao became one of the 14 open coastal cities in 1984, which provided an opportunity with historical significance for further opening to the outside world. By the end of 1997, the utilization of foreign investment in Qingdao had been accumulated to an amount of 5.01 billion US dollars. In 1998, the foreign exchange income from exports reached 3.39 billion US dollars.

Culture Qingdao

Qingdao is designated as an important historical and cultural city by the State Council. Many former residences of famous

m odem scholars such as Kang Youwei, Laoshe, Wen Yiduo, Wang Tongzhao are located here. Steles through ages have been preserved well. There has been a long tradition of music and paintings. Meanwhile, it is also a center of science, technology and art. Famous for its study of oceanology, Qingdao has a galaxy of 70 percent of China's oceanologists. The well-known Ocean University and many other universities are located in Qingdao, which provide opportunities not only for study and research on language and literature, oceanology,

Chinese history, traditional medicine and arts, but also for academic exchanges with famous scholars.
The Ocean University of Qingdao was initially founded in 1924. in 1988, it was renamed the Ocean University of Qingdao. The main campus of the university is located right beside the beautiful Xiaoyu Hill and Huiquan Bay. The new campus was built in the Hi-tech Industrial Park.
Founded in 1950, the Oceanology Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences is the largest multidisciplinary comprehensive research institution on oceanology in China.

Qingdao has made significant progress in developing tourism since the implementation of the reform and opening up policy, especially in the 1990s. A complete product system and industrial structure have taken shape in the tourist in dusty, which has hence become a new increase pole of the national economy. In 1998, Qingdao hosted 199.5 thousand foreign tourists, earning foreign exchange of 0.102 billion US dollars. Domestic tourists received amounted to 10.13 million with the total revenue of 6 billion CNY. The total income from tourism accounted for 7.8 percent of the city's GDP.

Qingdao is famous for its beautiful natural sceneries, rich cultural attractions, multi-national architectures in distinctive styles, long religious culture, colorful festivals and celebrations.
Qingdao's tourist industry has already developed into a standardized service system, covering the six major elements of "transportation, accommodation, dinning, shopping, sightseeing, and entertainment", and integrated with the international practice. There are 136 travel agencies, with 12 conducting international business. There are 38 star rated hotels in Qingdao, of which 2 are five-star ones. The number of people directly employed in tourist industry is more than 40 thousand, that of those indirectly employed is 240 thousand. The fixed assets amounts to 10 billion.
The infrastructure of the tourist industry of Qingdao is very good, especially transportation. Qingdao Port is a first-class national port. Qingdao Airport flies 7 international and regional routes to Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hongkong, and Macao, and over 30 routes to domestic cities throughout China. The land transportation is featured by the high-quality expressways and a highway network to various tourist attractions in the province, such as Mount Tai, Qufu, Penglai and so on.
In terms of the development of the tourist industry, Qingdao municipal government attaches great importance to the long-tem growth. The goal for the year 2010 is to build Qingdao into a world-famous beach resort with beautiful environment, sound infrastructure, unique tourist products, and first-class service quality for sightseeing, vacation, business, cultural events and sports, while preserving the historical and cultural features and natural sceneries of the city in light of reasonable exploration of the resources and the coordinated development of the tourism and the social economy.

Logo of the City Tourism Qingdao

The tourism logo is in a square shape with round corners, resembling a seal. The round design comes from the English letter "Q" in capital; the three wave shaped lines stand for Qingdao's status as a tourist city, a seaside city and a harbor city; the corresponding wave-shaped lines on Qingdao strengthen the romantic beauty of the whole design. The main colors of the badge are gold and green because gold has the meaning of brightness and hope,which is the color of sun-rising on the sea, and green, meaning Qing in Chinese,

implies the meaning of "Qingdao" (Green Island). Green also symbolizes life, vigor, and the spring.