Qingdao Travel Guide

Your first impression and feeling about the city is that Qingdao isn't an ordinary Chinese city, its European architectural style, beer culture, the blue clear sky and beaches, which make you feel that you are not in Asia. Squares with beautiful flowers and meadows become the essential part of the city, for which they are different with one another. It is also the important Olympic sailing base in 2008. 

Music and sculptures in the square make the city romantic and poetic, narrow one way roads are common in the downtown but traffic congestion conditions are quite seldom seen, drivers and pedestrians are abiding the law and obeying the instruction of the traffic lights, so you seldom to see the traffic police so busy in doing the direction gestures. The road signs are very clear, and everything here is clean and tidy. Every detail in Qingdao is very artistic, for example, the traffic isolation area and bus stops are well-designed and very eye-catching. So if you are in Qingdao, perhaps you are in a giant museum or a big art exhibition hall also !

Geography 

Qingdao is a coastal scenic city located in the southwestern part of the Jiaodong Peninsular, at the coast of Shandong Province, eastern China. The eastern and southern sides of the city face the Yellow Sea, neighboring Yantai in the northeast, and bordering Tanfang City and Rizhao City in the west and southwest respectively. So the altitude of the landscape is high in the north and low in the south ; the highest point of Qingdao is the Laoshan Peak, which has a height of 1133 m above sea level, it is also the highest peak of the coastal region of China and one of the holy peaks for Taoism in China. With low mountains and hills, as well as bays and beaches, landscape of Qingdao landscape is seen as quite unique among cities in China.

The length of Qingdao's coastline is about 730 km, having 49 bays, in which some of them are suitable for ship's berth. The total land (with 52 small coastal islands) area of Qingdao is 10654 sq. km.

Climate 

The four seasons are quite distinctive : summer is shorter and cooler than the inland areas because Qingdao belongs to the maritime temperate climate zone. Winter is much milder than other places in northern China too.

The mean daily temperature in the coldest month January, is -0.1 degrees Celsius, while the hottest month is August that the mean daily temperature is 25.1 degrees Celsius. The extremes recorded are -10.2 and 37.4 degrees Celsius. The average annual rainfall is around 950 mm. So the best time to visit the city is between July and September, especially in August when the famous Beer Festival is held here. In winter, tourists must be wrapped up warm because the low temperature and high humidity.

Population

The total population in Qingdao is officially estimated around 7.5 million in 2006, which the Han Chinese occupies the vast majority of the people in the city.