Qingdao: the city of ideals

Abstract

Qingdao, a stunningly beautiful coastal city in China’s Shandong province, has been regarded as an ideal city over the course of its history. But the content of the ideal has changed over time. In the past, it was associated with nearby Lao Mountain, a sacred Daoist site, and regarded as a spiritual ideal. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Qingdao was viewed by leading Chinese intellectuals and political reformers as an ideal political city that best expressed modernity. More recently, it has been viewed by ordinary Chinese as China’s most romantic city. In this essay, we draw on history, the strolling method, and interviews with ‘city-zens’ to discuss Qingdao’s ethos and how and why it has changed over time.