Qingdao, a coastal city on the Yellow Sea in east China’s Shandong Province that is at roughly the same latitude as Tokyo and San Francisco, derived its name from a small offshore island.

With a thick profusion of yearlong greenery and surrounded by reefs and rocks, the island has long been popular with locals who nicknamed it Xiaoqingdao, or “little green isle.”

People later started to refer to the entire city as Qingdao.

An ideal place to begin a journey through Qingdao, which offers delightful views in all seasons, is the Trestle, a military port set up during the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

The port, just a strip of water away from Xiaoqingdao, stretches to a length of 440 meters and is 8-11.5 meters wide. It is made up of a stone bank in the north, a central lounge bridge and an island breakwater in the south with a pavilion above.

The Trestle used to be the last auxiliary port of navy torpedo fleet barracks the Beiyang Fleet of the Qing Dynasty built from 1881 to 1897, and the only one that remained unfinished at that time.

Construction of the Trestle was forced to halt as the defense army of the Qing Dynasty stationed in Qingdao was dispatched to the northeastern Liaodong Peninsula battlefield during the Sino-Japanese War in 1894.

After the war, the Qing Dynasty government, having to pay a large amount of war reparations, lacked enough funds to sustain the construction, which had been dogged by other factors such as tidal effects, climate and unfavorable seasons.

The government’s intention to reconstruct the port was further thwarted on the morning of November 14, 1897, when the German navy landed at Qingdao through the Trestle as part of the Triple Intervention against the cession of the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan.

The German navy dismantled some barracks architecture and further strengthened the port so it could dock its ships.

The Chinese characters for the Trestle, 栈桥, first appeared after the invasion of the city by Japan to replace Germany on November 7, 1914.

The Trestle, after multiple repair projects in the contemporary era, is a landmark tourist site for the city now.

Vendors sell seashells and conches at the seaside or along the deck of the Trestle for adults who still nurture childhood shell-collecting memories. Watching a beachfront sunrise above the Trestle inspires wonder at the beauty of nature.

The Qingdao Railway Station is close to the Trestle and a convenient traffic transit with plenty of lodging choices nearby from where to commence your trip to the architectural heritage buildings of Qingdao. The station is a German Renaissance-style complex combined with some Chinese elements. Visitors can transfer to Metro Line 1 and 3 through the subway station there.

Qingdao was a fishing village named Kiaochow before the occupation by Germany. On November 14, 1897, the Qing Dynasty government signed the Kiaochow Lease Treaty, in which 553 square kilometers of land and 560 square kilometers of water area were leased to Germany.

Shortly after that, a topography team started charting the area with the aim of building Qingdao into a German-style city in the Far East.

From March 1898 to November 1914, the German colonialists built a complete urban construction system in Qingdao, which included government and court buildings, churches, banks, hospitals, an observatory, a beer brewery, a slaughterhouse, docks, shipyards, railways, and marine and land defense barracks.

Among them, St Michael’s Cathedral, which was completed in October 1934, at 26 Zhejiang Road remains an iconic attraction for the city and is popular as a backdrop for wedding photos among young people.

The cathedral, which was supervised during its construction by the German architect Arthur Bialucha, is of the Neo-Romanesque style. Its main entrance was in the center of the southern facade, with a wide hall, which is able to hold thousands of people at one time for a service, and two bell towers each bearing a cross made from copper-clad concrete.

Bialucha first visited Qingdao in the early 1900s to run a transportation company with some business partners. He joined the Battle of Qingdao between Japan and Germany in 1914. After Germany lost the battle, Bialucha was captured and sent to jail in Japan until 1920.

He returned to Qingdao in 1926 to become a registered architect and supervised the construction of several villas and St Michael’s Cathedral, as well as the third floor of the Former Convent of the Holy Ghost.

The German architect died in Qingdao in 1947, having remained single his entire life.

The beer factory, or the former German Brewery, at 56 Dengzhou Road, is presently occupied by the Tsingtao Beer Museum.

The buildings that make up the museum feature plain brick walls, with red tiles covering their sloping roofs.

At that time, a complete set of brewing equipment, including a boiler, air pressure machine, condenser, pump and tubes, were provided to the brewery by the German Chemnitz Machinery Plant.

Bier, the German name for beer, has been widely adopted in Qingdao since the German occupation.

British and German merchants then founded their Germany Beer Company on Dengzhou Road in 1903. That was the first standard beer brewery in contemporary China. At that time, beer was translated as 皮酒 in Chinese.

After the Battle of Qingdao in 1914, Japan took the place of Germany and took over the brewery.

Beer was also translated as 脾酒 in Qingdao in the 1920s and 1930s, because people believed the drink had benefits for the liver and spleen.

The Chinese characters 啤酒 made their first appearance in Qingdao in the 1920s and were widely recognized as meaning beer in the 1940s.

State-run Tsingtao Beer Co is now a competitor on the global beer market.

A common scenario in Qingdao today is that people purchase beer using plastic bags in the city, because 袋 (bag in Chinese) is pronounced the same as 代 (generation) to indicate an auspicious wish: The brand will be passed on and favored by generations of beer drinkers.

Historic architecture stretches across Qingdao, whether it is from the Trestle to the Former Office of the Governor, or from the Tin Hau Temple to the Tsingtao Beer Museum, as sorted and recommended by Yuan Binjiu, a Qingdao native and researcher on the city’s historic architecture.

“If we consider architecture as a kind of concrete music, then the old buildings in Qingdao are like a symphony, bearing the history of Qingdao and also reflecting an artistic tint,” Yuan said.

After 1901, Germany paved the sewage pipes of Qingdao according to its urban design tradition, with solid waste, sewage and rainwater discharged separately. The lid for the well of the channels was given a unique name in Qingdao — guligai (古力盖). “Gully” is a German word for a drainage channel, and gai is a Chinese word for a lid. Both the Germans and Chinese understand the meaning.

“Even if you don’t know the splendor and suffering of Qingdao, nor the story of every building, you still can’t help feeling attracted to the beauty of the architecture itself,” Yuan said. “That might be the reason why we’re doing our best to protect and restore the historic relics of the 20th century.”