SHANDONG
PROVINCE

Jinan
Jinan is the capital of Shandong Province, and has been known for centuries as the 'city of springs'. Unfortunately, most of the 100 springs have dried up in recent years, due to increasing industrial use of underground water and prolonged droughts, but a water project designed to restore the springs, and Jinan's reputation, has been started. Time will tell.

Jinan's most interesting buildings are of German design and were built during the 13 years or so from 1898 that Shandong was a German 'sphere of influence'. The railway station is pure Bavaria, and 50 are a couple of streets in the centre of town. The Germans built the railway through to Qingdao (Chingtao) on the southern coast of Shandong, connecting a large part of the province up with the outside world for the first time. There is little else to see in Jinan, although some of the older parts of the city are pleasant to walk around.

To the south of Jinan city is the THOUSAND BUDDHA MOUNTAIN (Qianfuoshan), but it is a depressing place to visit because so few Buddhas are left. The Red Guards were let loose on the place during the Cultural Revolution and destroyed hundreds of ancient statues and carvings in a frenzy of vandalism inspired by Mao's directive to destroy everything old. Apologists for the Chairman would say that he had not meant it so literally. The other thing worth seeing in Jinan is the YELLOW RIVER DYKES, huge earthworks built up over the centuries to prevent 'China's Sorrow' from spilling over and inundating the surrounding country-side, as it has done from time to time (see Zhengzhou, p.142, for a further description of the Yellow River).



How to get there and where to stay
There are flights from Peking to Jinan, and the city is also on the main Peking-Shanghai railway line, about nine hours' journey from Peking. The main hotel is the Jinan Hotel (372 Jingsan Road), which also houses the local CITS office. The hotel served as headquarters for the Japanese during their occupation of Shandong in the 19305 and 19405 and, ironically, many of the tourists who now stay there are old Japanese soldiers on trips down a rather blood-stained memory lane. Another hotel is the Nanjiao (2 Ma An Shan Road) on the southern fringes of the city in quieter and more scenic surroundings. However, the Jinan Hotel is probably the better of the two simply because it is more centrally located.

Taishan
For centuries, Taishan has been regarded by the Chinese people as the holiest of their holy mountains, a sort of Chinese Mount Olympus inhabited by the gods. Every day, come rain or shine, old women clamber up the 7ooo-odd steps on the 'Stairway to Heaven' to make their offerings, fulfilling a tradition which probably goes back more than 2000 years. Many of the women have deformed feet only a few inches long, a sign that, when they were young, their feet were bound to make them more desirable in the eyes of Chinese men, and they sometimes have to crawl up the slope as they go. They do so without complaint. It is a moving sight, and one which proves that China's traditions die hard.

A thousand years ago, emperors of China used to come on pilgrim-ages to Taishan. In 1980, the present Communist Party chief, 67-year-old Hu Yaobang, made the same pilgrimage just before officially taking up his new post, and he climbed to the top of the mountain in less than five hours. One hopes he was aware of the irony of his visit.

The steep steps start just outside the town of Tai'an at the foot of the slope and wind upwards through a Chinese painting-like landscape of rocky outcrops and fir trees with occasional resting places for travellers who find the path heavy-going. Halfway up, you pass the Middle Gate to Heaven, then continue up to Heaven's Southern Gate. After that, there are a few more hundred steps up to the TEMPLE or THE AZURE CLOUD, probably one of the most spectacular buildings in China - for those who get to see it.

But a new era is approaching for Taishan, the summit of which has until now been accessible only to the fit and the fervent. A newly opened road allows visitors to ride up to the Middle Gate, and a cable car is being built (with Japanese assistance) from there to the summit, which is expected to open in 1983.

Until now, everything at the top of the mountain from bread to building materials has had to be carried up the steps from the plain 5000 feet (1325 metres) below, by workers who earn the equivalent of about one British penny for each pound in weight they take up. Watching the coolies, many of them old men and girls, jogging stoically up the mountain with up to 100 pounds (45 kilograms) slung over their shoulders is a sobering experience. The fittest of these workers make two trips a day, providing them with reasonable wages and huge leg muscles.

Taishan is becoming a major tourist attraction, but it is never likely to regain its former glorious position as a religious centre, in spite of the peasant women who still come to perform openly the 'superstitious rites' which the Communists have worked so hard to suppress. Most of the temples and shrines have either been vandalised and left to crumble or have been renovated as tourist sites and kiosks. Taishan used to be particularly sacred for disciples of Taoism, China's only indigenous religion which was suppressed with especial vigour by the Communists. However, there is one Taoist priest left on Taishan a toothless 76-year-Old man named Sun who has been allowed to move back into the Temple of the Heavenly Dowager (also known as the Pool of the Queen Mother) near the base of the mountain after many years of hard labour. Or at least he was still there when I visited Taishan in 1981. He looked very frail.

Beneath Taishan is the town of TAI'AN, which owes its existence to the mountain and the pilgrims who passed that way on their way to the summit. The main attraction in the town is the DAIMIAO THMPLE, a large, rambling place which has been in existence since the Han dynasty 2000 years ago.

How to get there and where to stay
Taishan is on the main railway line from Peking through Jinan to Shanghai, and is a couple of hours south of Jinan, the provincial capital of Shandong. The guesthouse for foreigners in Tai'an is on Wenhua Yi Lu (Wenhua first road), about ten minutes' drive from the Bavarian-style railway station, a relic of the days when the area was a German 'sphere of influence'. There is also a hotel at the summit of Taishan where visitors can stay overnight. Food and drinks are available at various points on the way up the mountain.

Qufu (Chufu)
Qufu, a delightful little town to the south of Taishan, is famous for being the birthplace of the sage Confucius, who probably bears more responsibility than anyone else for shaping the Chinese personality and Chinese society as we know it. Confucius was born in Qufu in 351 B.C. at a time when China was divided into a number of states, all constantly at war with one another. His philosophy, in a nutshell, envisioned a system of human relationships in which people occupy different ranks within society and within the family. Those above have a duty to look after those below, while those below have a duty to respect and obey those above. For much of the past 2000 years, Confucianism was, in effect, the state religion of China, although it makes no claim to explain the higher mysteries of life.

In Chinese, Confucius is called Kong Fuzi (Master Kong), and about one-fifth of the 30000 people in Qufu today still have that surname. People will tell you that they are the seventy-fourth or seventy-third generation in a direct line from their great ancestor. The present head of the family, the seventy-seventh direct descendant of Confucius, Professor Kung Deh-cheng, fled to Taiwan with the Nationalists in 1949. (Kong is the Pinyin spelling of the name, which Professor Kung, as a resident of Taiwan, would certainly object to.) Now aged 62, Professor Kung has four children, including two sons, as well as one grandson, so the family line would appear to be secure at least up to the seventy-ninth generation. Meanwhile, back in Qufu, Professor Kung is viewed as a traitor to the socialist motherland, but the places where he grew up are being renovated and opened up as tourist attractions.

There are three major places of interest connected with Qufu's most famous son: the KONG FAMILY MANSION, the KONG THMPLE next door and the 'KONG FOEE5T', or family graveyard, a mile or so outside the town. All were damaged during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960S when the Red Guards obediently followed Chairman Mao's order to 'smash the four olds'. Mao issued his call in July 1966, and in October a special group of Red Guard radicals was dispatched from Peking to purge Qufu of its feudal relics. Officials of the local cultural heritage office were given some notice, and wrote the character liu (preserve) on as many ancient objects as they could in the hope that the radicals would leave them alone. The Red Guards marched into town shouting their slogans, and the local officials tried to reason with them. 'Most understood, but others just smashed whatever they found,' said one official. The crowd pulled down a large statue of Confucius, paraded it through the town and then ceremoniously burned it. The leader of that Red Guard band, a female firebrand named Tan Houlan, was jailed in 1978 for her excesses, and was put on trial in late 1982.

More damage was done during the 'criticise Lin Piao and Confucius' campaign in 1974. The campaign, ostensibly aimed at exorcising the influences of the late Defence Minister (killed in 1971) and the Great Sage, turned out in the end to be a veiled attack by the radicals on Premier Chou Enlai, possibly orchestrated by Mao himself. But it had its repercussions in Qufu, where just about everyone is open to the charge of being Confucianist, by descent if not by inclination. The Red Guards attacked and sometimes beat people accused of harbouring Confucianist ideas and went out of their way to leave their mark on the age-old monuments of this ancient town.

One person who remembers those days is Liu Chenghou, who became an acolyte in the Confucius temple at the age of seven and later an attendant in the Kong household. When the Communists came in 1949, they asked him to stay on at the residence as historical guardian, but at the height of the anti-Confucius campaign, he was struggled' by mobs of Red Guards who denounced him as a 'watch-dog for the royalists'.

'All I could think of was the master's words: Do unto others what you wish done to you,' he said.

Luckily, the huge Kong family archives survived both the Communist and Cultural Revolutions intact, and are now being sorted and examined by scholars.

The mansion is a huge, rambling collection of buildings which, nowadays, is partly used as a hotel for foreign tourists. The temple is also large, but the main feature is the curious emptiness of most of its halls - a sure sign that the Red Guards passed that way. The Kong Forest, beyond what remains of the city walls, is reached by walking F along a road lined with some of the most ancient, gnarled cypress trees in the world. They create the right atmosphere for a visit to one of the most peaceful and beautiful spots in China. Walking through the 'forest' among the trees and mounds of earth marking the graves is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Some of the graves are marked with tall steles giving details of the Kong family members buried beneath, although many of the steles were toppled and smashed during the Cultural Revolution. In the centre is the largest , mound of all under which are supposed to lie the remains of the man who started it all, Kong Fuzi.

Having been denounced and pilloried in the most outrageous fashion only ten years ago, Confucius has today been rehabilitated. His ideas are now cautiously praised by the Communist ideologists who explain his feudalistic errors away by saying that at least he was ideologically 'advanced' for his era.

His temple has been opened to the public again purely as a tourist attraction, although one official (surnamed Kong) told me that occasionally people come wanting to pray or offer incense to the memory of the Master. They are discouraged. There may be so-called 'freedom of religion' in China, but only with religions not classified by the Communist Party as superstitions. Confucianism is considered a superstition and is therefore outlawed, except as a subject of debate by philosophers.

Twice a year, in the spring and autumn, Qufu is the scene of a huge market fair which attracts more than 130000 peasants as well as artisans, shopkeepers, acrobats, magicians, snake charmers and itinerant medicine men. During the market, which has a history of more than 2000 years, the streets of the small town are absolutely jampacked with people buying and selling all manner of goods. Most of them are poor peasants, and they look like what they are: many wear ragged clothes; some of the children have eye sores obviously caused by vitamin deficiencies. It is a China that foreigners are rarely allowed to see, something close to that elusive creature, the 'real' China.

How to get there and where to stay
Qufu is about 12 miles (19 kilometres) east of Yanzhou, a stop on the main railway line from Jinan to Shanghai. There is a bus from the station, and taxis can be arranged through the China Travel Service. There is only one place to stay in Qufu, the Kong family mansion, but who would want to stay anywhere else? I shared my room with a couple of rats, but don't let that put you off. It's a fascinating town and a hotel to remember.

Qingdao (Chingtao)
Qingdao, on the south coast of the Shandong peninsula, is rightfully famous for two things: its beer and its beaches. The Germans forced China to cede the town to them in 1898 using good old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy. The pretext was the murder of two German missionaries, but in fact the Kaiser simply wanted a port for his navy in the Far East. To their credit, the Germans developed the place quickly, building a thriving German-style community in less than a decade. They built a railway from Jinan, constructed a port and put picturesque Germanic mansions along the beautiful coastline, which is lined with some of the best beaches in China. When the First World War started, the Japanese snatched Qingdao away, and only handed it back to the Chinese government in 1922.

The town has grown substantially in the past three decades, and Qingdao is now Shangdong's biggest industrial centre. But it still has the beaches (which attract huge numbers of Chinese in the summer months) and the old-world feel of the German architecture, most of which is still in good shape. They obviously expected to stay.

The QINGDAO BIIIIWERY, however, is the town's main claim to fame. Started by the Germans, it produces what is considered to be the best beer in China, and possibly the best in Asia. The quality is attributed to the fact that the water used in its production comes from the Laoshan mountain mineral water spring not far from town. Most of the beer is exported to Hong Kong and elsewhere, or else drunk by foreign tourists in China. It is an important foreign exchange earner, so very little is wasted on the locals. Visits to the brewery (which naturally include samples) can be arranged.

How to get there and where to stay
There are now a couple of scheduled flights a week from Peking. Otherwise, Qingdao is a 15-hour train ride from the capital. The two main hotels in town are both situated on the sea in picturesque settings. The Huiquan Guesthouse (Nanhai Road) is near Beach No.1, while the Zhanqiao Guesthouse (Taiping Road), the better of the two, is near Beach No.6.

Yantai
This little port on the north coast of the Shandong peninsula used to be a favourite seaside retreat for foreigners in the old days. As a result, many of the older and sturdier buildings are of European design. Around the old city, formerly known as Chefoo, Yantai has grown considerably during this century, and now has a number of important industries, the most famous being a wine factory which produces a brandy considered to be one of China's best (not a great recommen-adation). The port continues to be important, and there is a large fishing fleet.

There are beaches close to the town which are good for walks, although the large amount of seaweed in the water makes them not so attractive for swimming.

There is one interesting excursion from Yantai, west along the coast to PENGLAI, a strange castle perched on a cliff. A part of the fort was built as long ago as 1042 as a naval base to guard against a Japanese invasion, but most of the structure dates from the Ming and Qing dyflasties.

How to get there and where to stay
Yantai is connected to Jinan, the provincial capital, by a railway line.The main hotel for foreigners is on the coast to the east of town.