I found a Viking when I was in China.
ByGD
China Rose
Roses are so evocative of the English garden, it’s easy to forget that garden roses originated in China.
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Urban Skyline
China has a well-earned reputation for ugly, industrial cities blanketed in choking smog. But that’s not the whole story. The haze you see here is only partly smog; most of it is mist above the ocean water, and that burns off by midmorning. Qingdao is a city of hills and trees. It has its ugly industrial suburbs and it’s sterile districts sprouting glass towers. But the old part of town is red roofs and green trees, with fresh air blown in off the sea.
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Qingdao’s Tsingtao
The city of Qingdao is home to the only Chinese beer to achieve any popularity in the United States – Tsingtao. The beer is named for the city. In the U.S., even Chinese people often call the beer Sing Tao. But in its hometown, both are pronounced Ching Dao. The difference is a result of the system used to convert Chinese words into Roman letters.
Wade-Giles vs. Pinyin
When the German-occupied city of Qingdao began to export its lager brewed from mountain spring water, the system in use was Wade-Giles. It was invented by a couple of Englishmen – scholars of Chinese, but not native speakers. So the beer was first romanized as Tsingtao and built up a respectable brand under that spelling. Then, in 1955, a former banker named Zhou Yougang was assigned to a Chinese government committee to improve the romanization of the Mandarin language. He developed the modern system of Hanyu pinyin that is still used today. Under that system, the city is spelled Qingdao.
Branding vs. Linguistics
Most people agree that the new system is a better and more uniform way to represent the pronunciation of Chinese language. But as with all change, it has created some confusion. The brewers decided that it was better for consumers to be confused about the origin of their beer than its quality. So they spared beer drinkers the stress of wondering whatever happened to Tsingtao and whether that new Qingdao beer is any good. It was probably the right choice.
ByGD
Bookish Mural
China is better known for sprawling developments of faceless apartment towers, and for good reason: there are miles of them in every city. But Qingdao also has some of the best street art of any city I’ve ever visited, possibly including Reykjavik, and many of the best murals are on apartment buildings.
Qingdao is in Shandong province, which the wonderful book Oracle Bones informs me is where the titular oracle bones were found. Those carved bones are the earliest evidence of writing in the world. Shandong province was also the birthplace of Confucius, whose writings are a pillar of Chinese scholarship. So it’s not surprising that even their street art has a literary bent.
{By the way, a recent Google “On this day” alert sent me down a rabbit hole of neglected photos from the 2015 homeland trip I took with my then 10-year-old daughter. You can expect to see pictures of China in this Sunday 1000 Words space for a long time to come.}