Qingdao 青岛

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Qingdao sits on the southern coast of the Shandong peninsula, on the Yellow Sea. It is the geographic anchor of Lijie 周丽婕’s family as so far documented — both grandparents on her father’s side (in adulthood) and both on her mother’s side (in birth and life) are Qingdao people, her parents were born and raised here, and she was born here in 1983.

The city’s modern history is comparatively recent in Chinese terms. Qingdao was a small fishing village until 1897, when the German Empire took the surrounding Kiautschou Bay as a leased concession; the Germans laid out the city’s central plan, planted the European-style architecture that defines downtown to this day, and founded what is now — under the same name — the Tsingtao Brewery (1903). Japan held the city through the First World War period; the Republic of China recovered it; the People’s Republic has held it since 1949. The German concession period left a legible architectural and infrastructural imprint that the rest of the city was built around through the 20th century.

Lijie’s own Qingdao childhood is anchored in the Shinan district (市南区) — the old town that grew up around the German concession plan. Her primary school years were spent at Dexian Road Elementary School (德县路小学), one block south of St Michael’s Cathedral; the same compact walking-radius that holds the cathedral, the seafront, and the city’s earliest streets is the geography of her childhood.

The deeper Chinese ancestry the Zhou family carries is from Jiaozhou Shi, just inland from Qingdao on the same peninsula — centuries-older as an administrative center and the ancestral place of Lijie’s paternal grandfather Zhaoxiang.

中文

青岛 位于山东半岛南岸，黄海之滨。是本档案周丽婕一系所记载家族成员的地理中心 — 父亲周玲、母亲李恂，外祖父李仲初（1921年生于青岛）、外祖母尚耀真（1921年生于青岛）、祖父周兆祥成年后定居青岛、祖母孙运哲亦居青岛 — 而周丽婕本人也于1983年在此出生。

按中国历史尺度，青岛是一座年轻的城市。1897年德意志帝国租借胶州湾以前，这里只是一个小渔村；德国人规划了市中心、栽下了欧式建筑，并于1903年创办了至今仍以同名行销世界的青岛啤酒厂。一战期间日本接管，民国收回，新中国延续。德占期留下的城市肌理至今仍是青岛主城的骨架。

周丽婕本人的青岛童年安身于市南区老城区 — 即德占规划下生长起来的那片老城。她小学时代就读于德县路小学，紧邻圣弥额尔大教堂以南一街区 — 大教堂、海滨、老城最早一批街道，皆在同一狭小步行半径之内。

周氏一支更深的远祖之地是胶州市 — 即青岛市内陆方向上的胶州，作为行政中心比青岛本身古老得多。周丽婕的祖父周兆祥1930年正是出生于胶州市。

• Qingdao (Wikipedia) — the city’s full history.
• Kiautschou Bay concession (Wikipedia) — the German concession period 1897–1914.
• Tsingtao Brewery (Wikipedia) — founded 1903 by German and British settlers; one of China’s most internationally recognized brands today.
• Shandong (Wikipedia) — the peninsula on which Qingdao and Jiaozhou both sit; Confucius’s home province.
• Jiaozhou (Wikipedia) — the inland city-region that is the Zhou family’s ancestral place.