German Architecture in Tsingtao

A brief interruption to my rather haphazard Yellow Peril week of posts to note a rather nice slideshow of photos from Tom Spender of surviving German architecture up in Tsingtao (Qingdao). Tsingtao is one of those cities,  like Suzhou for instance, and decidedly unlike Shanghai or (particularly) Peking where the local authorities have by and large built their new architectural non-entity towns in others areas – along the coast somewhat in Tsingtao’s case. This means that heritage and older architecture stands a chance, which is has not in Peking or Shanghai. Not that this guarantees anything I should add – Dalian built all its non-entity stuff further away from the old town with freezing never ending squares, kitsch and bankrupt fairytale castle hotels etc and then in recent years rounded on some rather precious buildings and still tore them down anyway (largely in the hope of impressing globalist corporate suits arriving for the Silly Summer Davos they hosted and hoped to keep forever – but Summer Davos and the suits all moved to Tientsin anyway, so tearing down some rather attractive old Russian architecture turned out to be a waste of time in the end!). Hopefully this will not happen in Tsingtao.

And how nice to hear Gong Chio Xia (below) singing Chiang Wei Cu Cu Kai – haven’t heard that delightful gem for ages!