Our trip to the Yellow Mountains which we just completed covered several days and thousands of feet of climbing.  Well, not technical climbing anyway but walking up and down stone steps, quite steep at times, for a real workout.  Like in many mountains, the mornings were clearer than the late mornings to afternoons when the cloud cover came in pretty thick.  The best pictures with the clearest sky’s were in the early mornings.  The second morning there we got up at 05:20 to hurry to see the sun rise over the Yellow Mountain peaks.  By 9:30 the clouds had rolled in and the views of the valley below were all but obliterated.

Over the three days that we were in the Yellow Mountain district a total of 550 pictures were taken, a few of them really nice.  All of them can be viewed at flickr but sift through quickly to find the good ones.

After all of the climbing my calves were feeling it while others in our party were really laid up lame for days afterward.  Our little “Goat” was the realy climber of the group scampering up the climbs waiting for us at the top.

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Qingdao China is a wonderfully modern city on the Eastern coast an hours flight north of Shanghai.  The city is super clean with new roads and fantastic architecture.  It is really amazing how modern this city is.  From our travels throughout the greater Qingdao district it is evident to see that the rush for modernization here is China is in full tilt forward.  This probably stems from years of push by the Qingdao government stressing the overall development of the city and urban planning, ecological construction and residential buildings construction. All of the old shanty buildings have been removed in the downtown district and in the outlying areas this work is continuing.  I have a couple of pictures demonstrating this well.  As a result of this effort over the past 20 years, the city was awarded the honorary title of “National Model City for Environmental Protection” in 2000 by the National Chinese Government. The city gained first prize for the “China Living Environment Award” in 2002, becoming one of the cities with the best environmental conditions in China.

Looking around to find the history of this district has revealed several interesting tidbits.  Qingdao is the birthplace of Taoism.  I will have to look this up to sharpen my memory of this religion but if I recall correctly Taoism is founded on the idea of non aggression.  That is what I remember anyway from my reading during the seeking years of the 60′s.  The philosophy of the Dao or Taoist is more of a way of life than a religion and has long roots in the local traditions here in Qingdao.  Its a way of getting along in the world without putting yourself forward.  Shrinking to make yourself strong or something like that.

Second historical occurrence has to do with the German invasion and occupation of the City during the early 1900′s.  The Japanese have invaded and occupied Qingdao in both World Wars I and II finally being removed after 1945.   There is a hugely famous May 4th Celebration of the cities liberation. The German influence has remained however.  There is a German community that has remained founding a beer factory no less.  The Tsindtao brand has world wide distribution and locally honored.  Its pretty good especially the Gold label stuff. Tsingtao is produced with spring water from Laoshan, a mountain area to the North of Qingdao and famous throughout China for it purity.  Every year there is an International Beer Festival here in Qingdao lasting two weeks at the end of September.  We were lucky enough to get to visit the Beer Festival with Jennifer’s cousin Miao Miao (pronounced Meeooow Meeeooow like a cat crying for milk.  Serious!) along with her husband. She holds a very high position in the National Government in the Tax division.  The local IRS?  Her driver drove us all over the Qingdao district for two days.  Thank you Miao Miao, you are the “Bomb”.  That means you are great!  Wonderful meeting her and her family.  I will always remember her “Gan bei” which translated means “dry the cup”.

While we were visiting the city of Qingdao we were fortunate enough to take a trip up the coast to the Laoshan mountain via Miao Miao’s driver.  We drove up the spectacular coast and ended up taking a gondola ride up to about mid way to the top of the Laoshan mountain.  From there we hiked up another couple of hundred feet to a very old Taoist temple remembering that this is the birthplace of this religion/philosophy.  The grounds of the temple were simply amazing.  Several of the trees growing there have been alive for thousands of years.  There was one Camilia Japonica that towered above us with an inscription dating to a planting 414 years ago.  The days sunlight finally broke through allowing me to take some really nice pictures of the temple grounds and woods which can be viewed at flickr.

Qingdao was home to the 2008 Olympics hosted by the Chinese featuring their wonderful harbor for the sailing competitions.  Qingdao is a very sports involved city having a very active soccer program.  Everyday from out hotel balcony we could witness the runners and joggers up and down the sandy beaches.  Swimming in the netted off area in from of our hotel was a very large swimming area measuring about a half mile of open water by one mile along the beach.  Qingdao is a wonderful place to visit.  So far of all of the cities in China where I would want to live Qingdao ranks at the top of every list.

Interesting Links to Qingdao information

That’s Qingdao