I had been trying to learn Mandarin at Beijing Language and Culture University and still had about 3,500 Chinese characters to memorize with two months left in the semester. It was going slowly and, often, not well. So, taking a note from American college students, I packed my bathing suit, flip-flops and a mystery novel and came to Qingdao for spring break.
Millions of Chinese sun-seekers annually visit Qingdao, the beach capital of northern China. It occupies a hilly peninsula on the eastern coast of the mainland that meets the Yellow Sea in a series of stunning bays. Olympic yachting events will take place here this summer, but that's not the only thing that makes Qingdao famous. Formerly known as Tsingtao, the city gave its name to the beer that is still bottled at a historic brewery here.
Beer and beach. That's about all I knew about Qingdao. But maybe that's not so bad. When you start with no preconceptions, everything surprises.
The first one was my guide, Mr. Yang, who picked me up at the airport and give me a daylong city tour. He had the pink face of a cherub and was a devout Christian in a country with an atheistic government.
On the way to the Huanghai Hotel, Mr. Yang pointed out fancy housing developments that have sprouted in the wetlands on Jiaozhou Bay, west of Qingdao, the city's new sports stadium and Super Seafood, a 10-floor fish restaurant as big as a department store.
The Huanghai was a modern high-rise building with a vast, empty lobby. The government rates the hotel as three stars, and it was slated for a fourth, according to the brochure, although I can't think of a reason it deserved to.
My room had the clean, cheap and cheerful character of a Days Inn. The air-conditioning hadn't been turned on yet because it was too early in the season, the front desk told me - never mind that it was steamy - and an odor of insecticide permeated.
The next morning I found Mr. Yang and Mr. Zhang, our white-gloved driver, waiting in the lobby to begin my city tour.
Qingdao was little more than a village in the late 19th century, when the great powers of Europe began grabbing territory in China. Germany claimed Qingdao and turned it into a modern seaport, erecting government buildings, churches and villas that wouldn't look out of place in Hamburg. The German imprint unfolds like an architectural handbook of the building styles popular in Europe during the first part of the 20th century.
