The Strange German Connection to China’s Shangdong Province

Qingdao is a beautiful coastal city in China with a unique colonial history. With over nine million inhabitants, it is the capital of the Shandong Province. A bee line from Qingdao across the Yellow Sea, and you reach South Korea.

May Fourth Square, with its whirling red sculpture which represents the winds of May, is located at the heart of the city and commemorates the May Fourth Movement. This anti-imperialist protest in 1919 was sparked when possession of German Qingdao was transferred to Japan instead of back to China in the Treaty of Versailles.

The Shandong province was the only section of China under German control during the Spheres of Influence period in the late 19th and early 20th century. The German Empire was a diminutive one – late to the imperial land grab game – with territories in present-day Namibia, Togoland, and the oft-forgotten Qingdao.

Today, the city of Qingdao carries the historical presence of Germany in subtle but noticeable ways. There is a terribly gaudy Roman Catholic church downtown, called St. Michael’s Cathedral.

Constructed in 1934, it bares the Nazi-era style of neo-classical arches and pillars, with some Chinese anachronisms inside. As this church is more of a landmark and photo-op than an active place of worship, signs inside explain smoking is forbidden in the confessionals.

Instructional guides to Christianity stand next to kitschy busts of Mary and Jesus. Outside, half a dozen couples in full wedding attire have their photos taken with the church in the background.

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A couple of blocks from the church is the Seemannshaus, a classic German meeting hall with exposed wood just like in Bavaria. This was the clubhouse and amphitheater of German sailors docked in Qingdao during the time.

Nearby, German-style pretzels and stollen (powdered sweet bread) are sold by enthusiastic Chinese vendors, recognizing the potential selling power of these strange relics of the past sticking out like sore thumbs in Qingdao. Let me tell you, those were the weirdest pretzels I ever tasted.

The biggest reminder of the German occupation nearly 100 years ago is the libation that flows proudly and generously through the city and carries its name as a standard-bearer to the world: Qingdao beer. You might be more familiar with the spelling “Tsingtao”, but the green and silver bottles can be found all over the world as the official beer of China.

As an aside, the “Ts” spelling is a relic in itself of the former transliteration system widely used to convert Chinese characters into the Western alphabet, known as the Wade-Giles system. This system was based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and while informative for linguists, should never have been used for the broader public. Wade-Giles is the reason why we still say Peking duck instead of Beijing duck. In the IPA, the letters “p and “b” are both represented by “p”, using a hanging aspiration mark pʰ or apostrophe to differentiate the two sounds. As this mark is not on any keyboard or typewriter, the symbol would be dropped, leading to the general confusion of how to pronounce many Chinese words.

The same thing happened to “Qingdao”, which was misrepresented in the Wade-Giles system (“t” and “d” were both represented by “t”). Thankfully, we now use the far superior Pingyin system to convert Chinese into English and other languages. Still, you can find anachronistic spellings scattered throughout the English language. See Daoism, not Taoism.

Back to the beer. When the German imperialists received a lease for the region in the late 19th century, the first thing that any good German would do is build beer factories. These factories were then operated and maintained by China after regaining control in the 1920s. And Qingdao is a pretty solid beer with a definite German lager taste. Today, the beer can be found all over the world, and the Qingdao beer factories are a major tourist attraction in the city