The Route

The venue for the sailing events of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Qingdao is a unique blend of sea and mountains. The city is a popular health and holiday destination and in summer visitors flock to its beaches to escape the heat inland.

Early in the 1920s Qingdao became famous as a tourist city and summer resort. Lying on the south coast of the Shandong Peninsula in Jiaozhou Bay facing the Yellow Sea, the city is blessed with beautiful scenery and a pleasant climate. Red-tiled roofs nestled in the green hills next to the blue sea paint a fabulous picture.

The west of the city is the old urban area, known for its red-roofed, European-style houses set against the backdrop of beautiful trees and azure skies. In the east is the new urban area, where modern high-rise buildings shoot skyward. Both the old and the new combine in a seaside city with both European and Asian characteristics.

Perhaps the most famous symbol of all in this city, often referred to as 'Eastern Switzerland', is Qingdao's 110-year old pier, Zhan Qiao. It is ten metres wide, stretches 400 metres into the sea and at its very tip is the Huilange Pavilion. This colourful, two-storey, octagonal building has carved beams and beautiful painted eaves.

Twenty kilometres to the east of Qingdao at the southern end of the Shandong Peninsula Mount Laoshan, with its strange rocks and precipitous cliffs, rises majestically from the sea. It is the birthplace of Taoism. The picture-postcard natural setting of the 1,133-metre-high mountain has also given rise to many tales of fairies living among the forest foliage, springs and waterfalls.

Clipper crews will find so much to fascinate and entertain them in Qingdao. Not least the award-winning local brew, famous the world over – Tsingtao Beer.