Qingdao: German architecture and beer by the sea

A German concession until 1914, Qingdao preserves red-brick villas and Bavarian-style churches along its bay, as well as the beer recipe the German colonizers brought with them—now exported worldwide under the city's name.

The waterfront conveniently connects the day's main stops.

The Zhan Pier, a stone causeway stretching nearly four hundred forty meters into the bay, ends in a two-story pavilion in Chinese style that has become the city's official symbol.

The St. Michael's Catholic Cathedral, with its twin Gothic spires, was built by German missionaries in the 1930s and remains today the largest Catholic church in Shandong.

The Badaguan district, the 'eight gates', gathers over two hundred villas built between the 1920s and 1930s in diverse European styles, each street planted with a different tree that gives it its name.

The Tsingtao Beer Museum, housed in the original brewery building founded in 1903 by German colonists, allows tasting of beer still warm directly from the historic production line.

The Gothic spires of St. Michael and the villas of Badaguan tell of a colonial occupation lasting only twenty years yet capable of leaving an architectural mark still central to the city's identity today.

Tsingtao beer, born from that same German heritage, is perhaps the only one of these legacies to have traveled beyond China itself, now exported around the world.