old battleship and war with Japan

It was real windy, and we could hear the flags flapping hard in the wind from inside the room all night. In the morning, it was clear, but still very windy. It turned out that the ferry to Liugongdao was cancelled for the day, so we could not go there as originally planned. Instead, we walked along a park by the sea for a while, it was a nice park with a long walkway along the water, and many statues inside the park. It even had a hedge maze to walk through.

We stopped at the replica of an old Ching dynasty battelship Ting Yuen, now a museum along the water. It was a totally rebuilt battleship, with many exhibits showing what it was like in 1894, and a movie to show its fate (blown up by the Japanese during the Sino-Japanese war in 1895).

It was a surprisingly well presented museum, with wax statues substituting for the sailors. It was a sad time near the end of the last dynasty in China, although the sailors were well paid, and the ship was built in Germany, it was not a match for the Japanese battelships at the time (which can fire its cannons about 10 times per minute, vs the Chinese ones of 1 every 10 minutes), so at the battle protecting Weihai in 1895, even though it put up a good fight, it was fatally wounded, and the Japanese blew it up near Liugongdao. The Japanese landed behind the cannons in Weihai and took over the city. The cannons were built to face only the sea, and were not able to defend against land assaults. After this last battle, the Chinese navy were wiped out completely, and eventually signed a humiliating treaty with Japan, not only did China lose its power of Korea, it had to cede the Liaodong peninsula, Taiwan and other territories to Japan, and paid Japan huge sums of money (200 million, 4 was enough for one person to live on for a whole year then). Taiwan did not return to China until 50 years later, after the 2nd world war. A lot of history making events happened in this area, so today the Chinese have been making more of these memorials/museums to remind its people of her history.

After viewing the battleship and movie, we went back to the hotel and had an early lunch. We all agreed that this hotel is first rate in its service and food. It also had the most "civilized" decorations, with curios and books in the guest rooms, and many photos exhibited throughout the hotel. The photos were taken by Mr. Yang who owns the hotel, and there were many books written by him too. No wonder the hotel has the flavor of an artist and scholar. Lunch was on the first floor "fishing village restaurant", the staff were super friendly, I took my camera and wandered to the back of the restaurant where they had a pond for fresh fish and where the chefs were cooking in 3 big woks, they welcomed me in, and I have some photos to show you what it looked like.

------above still in Weihai -------

It's a long drive from Weihai to Qingdao, almost 5 hours! We arrived at Qingdao about 5pm, and checked into the hotel.