Hello and ni hao everyone!

I’m Stefan, the new intern at Internchina’s office in Qingdao. First, I’d like to share my first impressions and thoughts as well as my knowledge about the city with you. Welcome to my short excursion 🙂

As you might know, Qingdao is a city located at the east coast of China. It’s harbour is the third biggest all over Mainland China (right after the mega cities Hong Kong and Shanghai). This cosmopolitan city has experienced a lot of changes during the last century. Therefore its impact in history is quite interesting – especially for me as a German.

In response to a German delegate’s murder and the Boxer Rebellion in the late Qing-Dynasty (1616-1911) which primarily was against any foreign influences, the prior German emperor ‘Kaiser Wilhelm II’ declared Qingdao in his famous ‘Hunnenrede’ (Huns speech) to be a German flagship colony in 1900. Hence, you still can see some German-style architecture here (at least it’s supposed to be western-style). The architecture differs a lot from all the prefabricated buildings and skyscrapers which can be found in every other Chinese city like Beijing, Shanghai and so on. I guess that’s one of many points why I already like Qingdao so much! Back to the western influences: best example for this might be the brewery where the famous Qingdao Beer (or Tsingtao Beer) has its origins. Btw, it’s the most drunken beer all over Asia! For that reason, Dengzhou Road – the street with the brewery – is called Beer Street and has countless bars and restaurants. It honestly spoken is comparable with a Disney World theme park with beer as main attraction. Even the bench seats at the roadside are bottle formed. That’s really impressive!

Besides this I enjoy the really expensive seafood here. Further, there are a lot of spots that totally deserve to be visited. Just pick one of plenty activities to create your weekend. The nightlife is in no way inferior to Beijing’s. I think, I’ll go to watch a Qingdao Double Star basketball game next weekend.

I’m really glad to have the opportunity to stay here for six months. It definitely will be an interesting time for me.

I hope my first blog post wasn’t too lame 😉

You’ll get some updates soon,

Stefan