After the balmy spring weather of Guangxi province in the south, Qingdao was cold. I only knew two things about this coastal city in the north east of China and they were its beer and its German colonial heritage, neither of which I had much hope for. I was not a fan of the rather bland Tsingtao brand lager that used to be the only beer you could get in many parts of China. And having been disappointed by Shanghai’s ‘French’ Concession and the old ‘legation’ parts of Beijing, I didn't hold out much hope for Qingdao’s German old town. How wrong I was.
While now only a small corner of a city of 10 million people, Qingdao’s German quarter comprises a remarkably well preserved and self contained area of European colonial era urban buildings. Like a distant cousin of the Hanseatic League Baltic cities, it was as if a little bit of Danzig or Konigsberg had been replicated in the East China Sea. And all the more remarkable given that it was created in just a few years of German colonial occupation of Qingdao, from 1898 to 1914.
I’d arrived in Qingdao by train in early April after an almost 2000 kilometre train ride from Guillin. The ten hour trip on a high-speed train had cost me 1000 yuan and had taken me from the warm climate of southern China through central Chinese cities such as Quanzhou, Changsha, Wuhan, and Zhengzhou, to deposit me in chilly Qingdao at 7pm in the evening. The taxi drivers outside the station looked on in scorn and then curiosity as I lugged my bike through the barrier, unpacked it from its bag and unfolded it, until I was ready to pedal away without the need for their services.
My destination was the Observatory Hotel located on top of Observatory Hill (观象山, Guanxiang Shan) overlooking the port. It took me a while to find but it was worth it.
The hotel was located in what was once the astrodome annex of the Qingdao Observatory. Its history was a testament to the turbulent changing control of the city during the early and mid period of the 20th century. Originally built in solid granite by the German occupiers in 1905, the Qingdao Observatory was created to provide accurate weather and star observations for the Imperial German Navy using the port at the time. In less than a decade, control passed to the Japanese during the First World War, and a decade later they reluctantly ceded control of the Observatory to China’s new republican government.
The astrodome was added to the Observatory by Chinese astronomers in the 1930s, built to a French design. But again control was short-lived as the Japanese military occupied Qingdao in 1937 and the Imperial Japanese Navy took over management of the Observatory until their defeat in 1945. After four years back under control of the Kuomintang Chinese government, the Observatory was eventually taken over by the PLA Navy in 1949, who still maintain control of the building today. While the Observatory is not open to the public, the astrodome was run as a youth hostel until 2018. Again reflecting the changing trends of China and the move away from the budget backpacker tourist market, the building has recently been converted into a boutique hotel.
I found the hotel to have retained some aspects of its old world architecture: wooden floors and art deco window frames. The new managers had renovated the place in an ‘Asian chic’ style that I would find was common across Chinese designer hotels: light, airy, IKEA-style furnishings with modern paintings, bookshelves and house plants and a scattering of vaguely Eastern religious icons.
Gone were the ‘dilapidated’ and ‘mouldy’ dorm rooms and hard beds and basic showers that had featured in negative reviews of the old youth hostel.
The young couple who ran the place were friendly and welcoming: I was the only foreign guest they had seen for some time and they practised their seldom-used English on me. They unlocked the door to a spiral staircase that led me up to the rooftop deck area, with its sweeping views over the city. However when I returned to the foyer, they admonished me that I was not allowed to recharge my e-bike inside the hotel: this was a new national rule in response to fire incidents with e-scooter batteries, and I was to be reminded of it several times in other hotels in which I stayed. Fortunately, thanks to the ubiquity of electric scooters across China, public battery recharging stations are everywhere, and so that is where I took my bike.
On my first day in Qingdao I took my bike for a ride around the old town area. I’d expected to see a handful of preserved buildings from the colonial era, so I was surprised to see almost every house on the street down from my hotel was built in the traditional German style. Many had the classic hipped gable roof or a curved baroque facade, not unlike the Cape Dutch style seen in South Africa. Other streets had houses and apartments in a more generic western style from the early 20th century and reminded me of the colonial-style architecture in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs.
Riding down Jiangsu Road, which had once been Bismarck Strasse, I was amazed to see the well preserved Qingdao Christian (Protestant) Church amongst a row of opulent colonial era houses and public buildings. Turning the corner there were more mansions and then the road opened out into a public square dominated by a large neo-classical government building that had once been the centre of Germany’s Qingdao concession administration. It looked far too grand for what was effectively a local government building responsible for a population of less than 100,000 city dwellers. It was now home of the Qingdao People’s Consultative Committee. Around the corner was another government building that looked in style more like the town hall of a provincial German town - a modest Rathaus from a town in Munster. And yet now it had the CPC red star above the gatehouse.
I cycled back uphill through the old town to see one of the main landmarks - the Catholic St Michael’s Cathedral. Situated in an open square it looked very European and was the focus of many Chinese tourists and couples using it as a backdrop for wedding photos. I parked my bike up down a nearby lane and popped into a cafe on the corner of what once would have been Friedrich Strasse, now like many Chinese cities the main street was renamed Zhongshan Lu. But looking up the road to the cathedral and squinting a bit to ignore the Chinese language signage, it could still have been a German town centre.
The people of Qingdao also looked different to their counterparts in Guilin. They were northern Chinese, Shandong natives, and had ruddy complexions to match the brisk offshore wind and cooler climate of these higher latitudes. To me they also seemed a bit more reserved and composed compared to the brash and busy Guangxi locals.
My tour continued down past the old German-built Hauptbahnhof - still in use as a railway station, and down along the shore. There was the pier where the German military landing forces had first come ashore from their warships in 1897. There were no sunbathers or swimmers lingering on the sands of Qingdao Bay in April, but there were some hardy keep fit types doing weight lifting and other exercises on the beach.
I pedalled round to the east and bypassed the monolithic PLA Naval museum to enter a different world of ornate European beachside villas and gardens. This was Badaguan (八大关), where in just a few years of the early 20th Century the colonists had lived a lifestyle to match those of Cap Ferret and Catalina Island. Many of the mansions were hidden behind walls, but it was possible to see their elegant designs and quirky mish-mash of features from the wide tree lined avenues. The large gardens were filled with neatly-trimmed fir trees and blossoming plum branches, set amid landscaped gardens and lawns.
Who, I wondered, had the wealth and taste to build and enjoy living in such residences in those brief early years of the 20th Century? Were they German citizens? And if so, what was their future after the Japanese took over Qingdao? Did they stay on or have to return to the turmoil of Hitler’s Third Reich? In modern day Qingdao, there was no information provided about the former residents of these villas - nor of their modern day occupants.
Badaguan marked the boundary of old and new Qingdao. Beyond the mansions and gardens lay another beach that provided the foreground to a wholly different city of glass and concrete skyscrapers, highway bridges and shopping malls. Just another new Chinese city. I cycled into the downtown area of this new city and used my map app to locate a bakery. Ironically European-style bread was not available anywhere in the old German section of Qingdao, but I found schwarz brot, pretzels, fresh baguettes, ciabatta and Galette des Rois for sale among the trendy boulangeries and coffee shops of Zhangzhou Erlu ( 漳州二路).
Foodwise, Qingdao was my first taste of the culinary culture shock that I was to experience in northern China. I was accustomed to a southern Chinese rice-based diet of spicy dishes that included many kinds of fresh vegetables, as well as meat. When it came to lunchtime in Shandong, I could find no rice dishes. Everything seemed to be based around noodles, steamed bread and large quantities of meat. And in Qingdao in particular, seafood and beer. At lunchtime I settled for simple beef noodles, without the usual ‘lajiao’ chilli flavour that I was used to. But for subsequent dinners, I could not get around my perception of noodles being only a lunch item.
With its German heritage, I fancifully imagined that Qingdao might have retained some elements of teutonic cuisine. If the Vietnamese had adopted baguettes from the French as Banh Mi, might not the Shandongers have kept the German wurst sausage as part of their diet? I should have done my research.
In the evening I took my bike down the hill (I was becoming grateful for its electric motor to help get me up and down the many inclines of Qingdao) towards the massive Tsingtao Beer factory. I had heard there was a nearby beer street where I could enjoy some local dishes washed down with freshly brewed local ale. I was right in one respect, but the food was all seafood. And I don’t eat seafood. The street opposite the Tsingtao brewery was lined with restaurants, all advertising their beer on tap, combined with various combinations of seafood meal deals. There were prawns, lobster, crab, locally caught fish and squid … and little else.
To make it worse for the individual traveller, the restaurants were geared up for group dining: they offered a smorgasbord range of dishes and hotpot or barbecue cooking at the table. All a bit much for the solo diner. I had to walk a couple of kilometres down the road to find the night markets where I was able to get a simple fried rice meal.
I returned to my hotel up the hill, opting to finish the day off with a Kronenbourg 1664 beer from the local minimart after having missed out on trying the famous local brand fresh from the brewery. So no Tsingtao in Qingdao, but a French brand beer made in China under license from the Danish-owned Carlsberg. The marketing manager for Kronenbourg must surely have earned their annual bonus because this beer was to be the main foreign brand available at every supermarket I would visit throughout my China cycling trip.
I enjoyed my time in Qingdao so much that I opted to linger in the city for another day before setting out towards the start point of my cycling trip.
The next morning I took my newly recharged e-bike out for another spin around the streets of the old German town. At the bottom of Observatory Hill I went past another church and followed a street of German-style houses to the base of a similar looking hill about one kilometre away, which from a distance had what looked like a retro-futuristic space station domes on the summit. This was Signal Hill (信号山, Xinhao Shan: formerly Diedrichsberg), which as its name suggested had been the location of the old signal tower used for communicating with shipping in the port.
The streets such as Qidong Lu (齐东路) leading up to the top were lined with European colonial houses and apartments that reminded me of the Montmartre area of Paris. One of the space station domes in the park on top of Signal Hill housed a cafe that was both cosy and offered panoramic views of the city and its harbour, as well as more distant landmarks such as Jiazhou Bay (胶州湾) to the southwest and the hills of Laoshan (崂山, where Tsingtao beer spring water is sourced) to the north east.
More immediately in view, just below the hill was the roof of an ornate building that I identified as the residence of the former German governor of Qingdao. After finishing my coffee I went down to have a look. It was an extravagant three-storey yellow mansion built in an extraordinary turn-of-the-century style that my guidebook told me was Jugendstil art nouveau.
The granite and wood structure had been designed by leading architect Werner Lazarowicz and cost an absolute fortune to build. Legend says the Kaiser was furious when he learned of the exorbitant expenditure on the house by the governor Admiral Oskar von Truppel, and recalled him to Germany to sack him. However, there is surprisingly little information in English about this episode.
According to the Chinese language history of the mansion, von Truppel had been responsible for the massive public building works program in Qingdao, so it is perhaps no surprise that he went a bit over the top for his own residence. The Chinese sources said von Truppel had not been fired, but had returned to Germany because of the sudden death of his 13-year old son. He can’t have been in the Kaiser’s bad books for too long because he was awarded a hereditary aristocratic title six years later, on the eve of the First World War.
As with many of Qingdao’s colonial era buildings, the Governor’s Residence was to go through a rapid series of ownership changes and functions in the next few decades. It was taken over first by the Japanese in WW1, became an official guesthouse and Qingdao mayor’s residence in the interwar period and was again a Japanese military governor’s residence in WW2 before becoming a Chinese government state guesthouse housing visiting dignitaries including Mao and Ho Chi Minh. It is now officially a museum and is open to the public, with the interiors reminiscent of some UK stately homes.
After a pleasant hour swanning round the swanky residence and its peaceful gardens, I took off down the hill to explore that last bit of old German Qingdao. I walked my bike down Longshan Road (龙山路) to the junction with Longkou Road (龙口路) - the view at the crossroads was quintessentially middle European: the clocktower and spire of the church on the hill above, with the yellow painted half-timbered frontages of houses and their red tile roofs in the foreground around the square with its old cinema building and a pedestrian crossing. Continuing down Longkou Road the colonial houses and apartments again reminded me of the similar tree-lined streets in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill.
Turning up the narrow Longjiang Road (龙江路) was more reminiscent of an Old German town, something not lost on the many local tourists snapping photos of the facades now converted into cafes and craft shops. Down a side street was the former residence of writer Lao She. It was an unremarkable building but the European milieu was perhaps not an unusual location for a man who had spent some of his formative years in London, where he based several of his early works on those of Dickens. Lao She had been a lecturer at the nearby Shandong University, whose campus was now the Institute of Oceanography. Running alongside it, University Avenue was another tree-lined road whose residences and shopfronts would not look out of place in western university suburbs.
Back at the hotel on Observatory Hill, I took a walk around the park area that overlooked the city. In the mornings it was the haunt of groups of retired residents who came here to do tai chi or practice their dance moves. At dusk however, there were just a handful of younger people here to savour a few moments of the sunset.
I said ‘ni hao’ to one guy standing nearby and told him I was impressed with the preservation of the old town of Qingdao.
“The buildings are well looked after because Shandong people like old things - we like to preserve historical and cultural items. Did you not see the many antique and retro shops selling old objects?” he said.
I asked him what it was like to grow up in a city with such a European heritage, and whether locals felt differently to people from other Chinese cities. He looked at me as if I’d asked a stupid question.
“The foreign influence in Qingdao was brief, just a few years in the last century, and the government does not want to promote foreign influence in China,” he replied.
“I never saw any foreigners when I was growing up except some Russians. That’s why I cannot speak English to you, I never had a chance to practice,” he added.
He asked me what I was doing in China and I told him about my plans to cycle along the Yellow River.
“Shandong is the province where Chinese history and culture is strong - we have scholars like Confucius, and we have thousands of years of history of Buddhism and Taoism. You should visit the Confucius mansion.”
They were already on my itinerary, I told him. But first I had to see one last remaining bit of recent colonial history in this part of the world - the former British naval base at Weihaiwei.
第1章: 青岛 德国老城
从南方广西省温暖的春日来到青岛，这里寒冷刺骨。我对这座中国东北沿海城市的了解仅限于两点：啤酒和德国殖民遗产。而这两样，我都没抱太大期望。
我向来对口味寡淡的青岛啤酒不感兴趣——这款拉格啤酒曾是中国许多地区唯一能买到的啤酒品牌。而见识过上海"法租界"和北京旧"使馆区"的失望后，我对青岛的德国老城也不甚期待。事实证明我大错特错。
尽管如今只是千万人口城市中的小小一隅，青岛的德国区却堪称欧洲殖民时代城市建筑的完美标本。就像汉萨同盟波罗的海城市的远房表亲，恍若但泽或柯尼斯堡的微缩版被复制到了黄海之滨。更令人惊叹的是，这片建筑群竟是在1898至1914年德国强租青岛的短短数年间形成的。
四月初，我乘坐高铁从桂林出发，历经近两千公里、十小时车程，花费千元人民币，穿越泉州、长沙、武汉、郑州等中部城市，从温暖的华南来到寒意未消的青岛。晚上七点抵达时，车站外的出租车司机们先是轻蔑、继而好奇地看着我拖着自行车过闸机，拆装车包，展开车身，最终无需他们服务便骑车离去。
目的地是俯瞰港口的观象山天文台酒店。虽费了些周折寻找，但绝对值得。
酒店前身是青岛观象台的天文圆顶附属建筑，其历史见证了20世纪上半叶这座城市的动荡变迁。1905年，德国占领者用坚固花岗岩建造了青岛观象台，旨在为当时使用港口的德意志帝国海军提供精确气象与星象观测。不到十年，一战期间控制权落入日本之手；又过十年，日方不情不愿地将观象台移交中国新成立的民国政府。
1930年代，中国天文学家按照法国设计增建了这座天文圆顶。但好景不长，1937年日军侵占青岛，帝国海军接管观象台直至1945年战败。在国民党政府短暂收回四年后，1949年解放军海军最终接管该建筑并沿用至今。虽然观象台主体不对外开放，但天文圆顶曾作为青年旅社运营至2018年——随着中国旅游业告别廉价背包客时代，这里最近被改造成了精品酒店。
我发现这家酒店保留了许多旧时代的建筑特征：木地板和装饰艺术风格的窗框。新经营者以"亚洲风情"风格翻新了此处——这种风格后来我在中国设计型酒店中屡见不鲜：明亮通风的宜家式家具，搭配现代画作、书架、室内绿植，以及零星摆放的东方宗教元素符号。
昔日青年旅社时期被差评诟病的"破旧"、"发霉"宿舍、硬板床和简陋淋浴设施已不复存在。
经营酒店的年轻夫妇热情友善——我是他们许久以来接待的首位外国客人，他们便拿我练习生疏的英语。他们为我打开通往螺旋楼梯的门，楼梯通向可俯瞰城市全景的屋顶露台。不过回到大堂时，他们提醒我禁止在酒店内为电动自行车充电：这是国家新规，旨在防范电动滑板车电池火灾事故。后来在其他酒店住宿时，这一规定被反复强调。所幸中国遍地都是电动滑板车充电站，我便将车推去那里充电。
在青岛首日，我骑车游览老城区。本以为只能零星看到几座殖民时期建筑，却惊讶地发现从酒店下山整条街的房屋都保持着传统德式风格。许多建筑带有经典的四坡山墙屋顶或巴洛克弧形立面，与南非开普敦荷兰风格颇为相似。其他街道则是20世纪初常见的西式住宅公寓，令我想起悉尼东郊的殖民时期建筑。
骑行在曾名为"俾斯麦大街"的江苏路上，我惊异地看着保存完好的青岛基督教堂矗立在一排华丽的殖民时期宅邸与公共建筑间。拐过街角，更多豪宅映入眼帘，道路尽头是座以宏伟新古典主义政府大楼为主的广场——这里曾是德国胶澳租借地行政中心，其壮观程度远超管理不足十万城市居民的市政厅规格。如今此处是青岛市政协所在地。转角另一栋政府建筑更似德国小镇市政厅——比如明斯特地区某座简朴的Rathaus（市政厅），只不过门楼上如今悬挂着中共红星。
我骑车返回老城高地，前往主要地标之一天主教圣弥厄尔大教堂。这座坐落于开阔广场的欧式建筑吸引众多中国游客，新人们以它为婚纱照背景。我将车停在附近小巷，走进曾名为"弗里德里希大街"的街角咖啡馆（如今与众多中国城市一样，主干道已改称"中山路"）。若眯眼忽略中文招牌，远眺大教堂的街景依然恍若德国小镇中心。
青岛人的面貌也与桂林人大相径庭。作为土生土长的山东人，他们面色红润，与高纬度地区凛冽的海风和寒冷气候相得益彰。在我看来，相较于喧闹忙碌的广西人，他们显得更为内敛持重。
继续骑行经过仍在使用中的德建老火车站（Hauptbahnhof），沿着海岸线来到1897年德军登陆的码头。四月的青岛湾沙滩不见日光浴者或泳客，只有些健身爱好者在海滩举重锻炼。
向东骑行绕过庞大的中国人民解放军海军博物馆，我闯入另一个世界——布满精美欧式海滨别墅与花园的八大关。20世纪初短短数年间，殖民者在此过着堪比法国费拉角与美国卡塔利娜岛的奢靡生活。多数豪宅掩映于高墙之后，但从林荫大道仍可窥见其优雅设计与风格混搭的奇趣。修剪整齐的冷杉与绽放的梅枝点缀着景观花园与草坪。
我不禁思索：20世纪初那短暂岁月里，是何等人物既有财力又有品位建造并享受这些宅邸？是德籍公民吗？若是，当日军接管青岛后他们命运如何？是继续留居，还是被迫回到希特勒第三帝国的动荡中？现代青岛没有任何关于这些别墅旧主或现居者的信息。
八大关是新旧青岛的分界线。别墅区之外的海滩对面，玻璃幕墙摩天楼、高架桥与购物中心构成全然不同的现代都市景观——不过是中国千篇一律的新城模样。我骑车进入新城区，用地图APP找到一家面包房。讽刺的是，青岛德式老城区竟买不到欧式面包，却在漳州二路的时髦烘焙店与咖啡馆里觅得黑麦面包、碱水结、法棍、夏巴塔和国王饼。
饮食方面，青岛让我首次体验到北方带来的文化冲击。我习惯以米饭为主的南方辛辣菜肴，配以多种新鲜蔬果与肉类。而在山东午餐时分，竟找不到米饭类餐食——似乎一切都以面条、馒头和大量肉类为基础。青岛尤以海鲜配啤酒为特色。午餐我勉强接受清汤牛肉面，却怀念惯常的"辣椒"风味。至于晚餐，我始终无法扭转"面条只适合作午餐"的固有认知。
因着德国渊源，我曾幻想青岛或许保留了些许日耳曼饮食文化。既然越南人将法棍改良为"Banh Mi"，山东人难道不该继承德式香肠吗？显然我该提前做功课。
傍晚骑车下山（青岛连绵起伏的坡道让我愈发感激电动助力功能），前往庞大的青岛啤酒厂。听闻附近有啤酒街可畅饮鲜啤佐以本地菜肴。我只猜对一半——所有餐食都是海鲜，而我忌食海鲜。啤酒厂对街餐厅鳞次栉比，皆以生啤搭配各式海鲜套餐招徕顾客：大虾、龙虾、螃蟹、本地鱼获、鱿鱼……别无他选。
更糟的是，这些餐厅专为团体聚餐设计：提供自助式多道菜品及桌边火锅/烧烤。对独行者实在过分。我不得不步行两公里找到夜市，才买到简易炒饭果腹。
返回山上酒店前，我在便利店买了罐本地灌装的凯旋1664啤酒（嘉士伯集团旗下法国品牌）结束这一天——终究没能尝到啤酒厂直供的著名本地品牌。讽刺的是，这款授权国产的法国啤酒竟成为我日后骑行途中每家超市必见的外国品牌。
我如此享受青岛时光，以至决定多停留一日再启程。
次日清晨，我骑着充满电的自行车再次探访德式老城。从观象山脚经过另一座教堂，沿德式建筑街道骑行约一公里至信号山（旧称"迪特里希山"）——山顶酷似复古未来主义太空站的穹顶建筑曾是港口船舶通讯信号塔。
通往山顶的齐东路两侧欧式殖民建筑，令人想起巴黎蒙马特高地。信号山公园的穹顶咖啡馆温暖舒适，可饱览城市海港全景，远眺西南胶州湾与东北崂山（青岛啤酒水源地）等胜景。
更近处的山脚下，一栋装饰华丽的建筑屋顶映入眼帘——我认出那是前德国青岛总督官邸。喝完咖啡后，我下山前去探访。这是座奢靡的三层黄色官邸，采用世纪之交非凡的"青年风格"艺术新潮建筑（我的旅行指南如此标注）。
这座花岗岩与木结构建筑由首席建筑师维尔纳·拉扎洛维奇设计，耗资极其惊人。传说德皇听闻总督奥斯卡·冯·特鲁伯海军上将为官邸挥霍无度后勃然大怒，将其召回德国撤职。但令人惊讶的是，英文资料对此事件记载甚少。
根据中文版官邸史料，冯·特鲁伯曾主持青岛大规模市政工程建设，因此他为私宅挥霍似乎不足为奇。中文资料称冯·特鲁伯并非被解职，而是因13岁幼子猝死返回德国。他显然未失宠太久——六年后一战前夕，他被授予世袭贵族头衔。
与青岛众多殖民时期建筑相似，总督官邸在随后数十年间历经多次权属变更：一战期间被日本接管，战间期成为迎宾馆兼青岛市长官邸，二战时再度作为日本军事总督住所，后改为中国政府招待所，曾接待毛泽东、胡志明等政要。如今这里作为博物馆对外开放，内部装潢令人联想到英国庄园宅邸。
在这座豪华官邸及幽静花园流连忘返一小时后，我下山探索德国老城最后一片区域。推着自行车沿龙山路行至龙口路交叉口——十字路口的景致堪称中欧风情教科书：山坡上教堂的钟楼尖顶，广场周围黄墙红瓦的半木结构房屋立面，老式影院建筑与人行横道。继续沿龙口路前行，殖民时期住宅再次让我想起悉尼贝尔维尤山类似的林荫道。
转入狭窄的龙江路更似德国古镇，许多当地游客正对着改造成咖啡馆和手工艺品店的建筑立面拍照。小巷深处是老舍故居——这座平凡建筑所处的欧式环境，或许正适合这位曾在伦敦度过创作关键期（其早期作品明显受狄更斯影响）的作家。老舍曾任教于附近的山东大学（现为中科院海洋研究所），大学路两侧的林荫道与西式校舍建筑群，与欧美大学城街景毫无违和感。
回到观象山酒店，我在可俯瞰城市的公园散步。清晨这里是退休居民打太极跳广场舞的场所，黄昏时分却只有零星年轻人来欣赏落日。我向身旁男子问候"你好"，并表达对青岛老城保护的赞叹。
"山东人珍视古物，这些建筑才保存完好——你没注意到许多售卖老物件的古董店吗？"他反问道。当我问及在欧风浓郁的城市成长是否令青岛人与众不同时，他露出看待愚蠢问题的表情。
"外国对青岛的影响很短暂，不过是上世纪初那几年。政府也不提倡外国文化影响，"他回答，"我成长期间除了几个俄罗斯人没见过外国人，所以没法用英语和你交流。"得知我计划骑行黄河时，他建议："山东是中华文化重地——我们有孔子这样的先贤，还有数千年佛道历史。你该去参观孔府。"
我告知这些已在行程中。但动身前，我还要探访本地最后一块殖民历史印记——前英国海军基地威海卫。
No comments:
Post a Comment