Jinan

The real reason for going to Jinan was to watch a football game. However we thought we might as well go for a weekend and being that none of us had to work on the Monday we would make it a long weekend.

Jinan is the capital of Shandong Province. It has a population of 1.96M. It is very modern and like myself most people just use it as a transit point to other places in Shandong. There have been a lot of famous people who come from Jinan such as Bian Que who was the founder of Chinese Medicine.

South of the train station you will see the German influence. It is not as prominent as Qingdao but the streets are lined with European style architecture. The city itself is quite picturesque with plants and grass.

The modern development from Jinan stems from the construction of the Jinan - Qingdao railway line when construction started in 1899. The construction finished in 1904 and gave the city a major communications role. Jinan was opened to foreign trade in 1906.

I was quite surprised at how sprawling the city was. Everyone had told me that there is nothing to do in Jinan and everything is in one big square. I found it quite different to that.