We decided it would be fun to take a couple of days to go see some other city in China, not too far from Beijing. Unfortunately, we couldn't find train tickets for many of the more interesting places, so we went to Qingdao, which has the advantage of being not so far away from here.

Qingdao is a city. It has 4 million people, and some buildings, and hotels, and restaurants. It's an old German colonial era town, which has some buildings that still bear some of that heritage (such as the brewery for the world famous Tsingtao beer), but for the most part, it's just another regular Chinese city. It does have some very good seafood resetaurants, if you're culinarily inclined.