TSINGTAO
Millisphere: a discrete region inhabited by approximately one thousandth of the world population
Ching: as in cash-register
TSINGTAO, or Qingdao, is the English transliteration for the Mandarin Chinese name for a prefecture-city of ten million in the Shandong province (101 million) on the northeast coast of China. “Ching, as in cash-register, is how it’s pronounced,” said my contact who had spent several years teaching in an international school in Qingdao.
Baihua is now the standardised Mandarin used all over China.
Recent research has revealed that the areas of the brain activated when reading Mandarin pictograms are different than when reading a phonetic language like English. One reads pictures representing a word the other reads the sound a word makes. Written Mandarin was phoneticised in Moscow using a system the Russians used to translate Central Asia languages into their Cyrillic script; this was later Romanised. European missionaries translating the Bible standardised Mandarin into plain speech “Baihua,” using the vernacular used in Beijing. Baihua is the standardised Mandarin used all over China today. Feedback tells me that “Putong hua” is the 21st century term for standard Chinese.
TSINGTAO has the highest GDP in China’s richest province
TSINGTAO has the highest GDP in Shandong; which in turn is China’s richest province. In recent years it has enjoyed significant economic development, not least of all because of education and research. International Schools are foreign education businesses which teach the children of China’s elite keen to learn the international language of business - English - and other skills to enable them to compete in the global economy. My contact had once orgainised a conference of New Zealand (state-owned) education providers in TSINGTAO. The Chinese economy benefited from the injection of foreign capital to build the campuses as well as the creation of an internationally competitive workforce.
Ports are were new ideas arrive
Ports are where, along with trade goods, new ideas arrive. Around 400 AD the Chinese Buddhist monk Faxian set off up the silk route to Xingjang and crossed the Himalayas to the Ganges. Returning by sea Faxian arrived at Zhanqiao harbour; bringing some of the first Sanskrit scriptures from India to Confucian China.
Christian missionaries working hand-in-hand with European imperialists have also left their mark. In TSINGTAO the Germans were late imperial arrivals and their navy had long has their eyes on the strategic Zhanqiao harbour in TSINGTAO. Their opportunity came when Chinese “Boxers” murdered two prothletising German missionaries in Shandong; sparking the Boxer rebellion (The Germans referred the Chinese martial arts as “Chinese Boxing”). In compensation the Germans extracted from the declining Qing Empire a “concession” centred on Zhanqiao harbour, and built a trading port. While in German hands TSINGTAO had the highest concentration of schools in all China and the highest percentage of Chinese children enrolled at school; schools run by German Catholic and Protestant missionaries and paid for by the German government.
When the father of Chinese republicanism, Sun Yat-sen, visited TSINGTAO in 1912 he observed that: “China in spite of thousands of years of old culture has not achieved anything compared to what Germany has here in the course of twelve years; streets, buildings, ports and sanitation all bear witness to diligence and ambition.” Sun himself was himself a Christian and a global traveller.
The Germans established the Tsingtao brewery in Qingdao
German colonial architecture still graces the old centre of Qingtao and it was the Germans who established a brewery producing “Tsingtao” beer there. The German concession passed into Japanese hands after Germany lost the First World War. Tsingtao beer was produced, on and off, by the Japanese, until the Second World War before falling into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. At one stage during Mao’s disastrous Cultural Revolution Tsingtao beer comprised 100 percent of China’s exports. Now in private ownership, Tsingtao is an internationally known beer brand.
German missionaries put a value on education
While the German missionaries put a value on education, the Chinese Communist Party and their Soviet inspired education system produced “conformist mediocrity” and young students were forced abroad for advanced education; many never returning. The twenty-first century solution was to allow foreign universities to set up in China.
Soviet education models promoted technology (nuclear, aircraft and heavy machinery) at the expense of the humanities and social sciences. A system of corruption and deference to teachers squashed “unsettling brilliance” and China largely failed to produce top thinkers. Promotion was governed by patronage rather than talent.
A world of millispheres replacing one of competing empires?
One reading of the history of the collapse of the Qing Empire confronts the issue of scale. When the foreign missionaries and imperialists arrived the Qing Empire was weak simply because it was too big. The Qing mandarins, as well as being corrupt, were overextended after subduing Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Outer Manchuria and its ethnic minorities in the south. Not reading the history of the Qing collapse the “Xi Empire” has extended into the entire South China Sea, subdued Hong Kong and now has its eyes on Taiwan. The Chinese navy’s northern fleet is based in Zhanqiao harbour.
The Chinese Civil War was a competition between Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Tse Tung about who would win the big prize: The Qing Empire. Millions of Chinese peasants, many of whom were happy to be governed at a provincial or even a city-state level, died in the process. Once in power Mao viewed foreign policy as an eternal competition between China and the other big empires; with Russia and America taking turns at being the main villain.
TSINGTAO, like the millisphere of HONG KONG, could be better off uncoupled from the People’s Republic of China; but this in turn would require the fragmentation of the Russian Federation and the United States of America and a world of millispheres replacing one of competing empires.
A well-written article about Qingdao. "Baihua" seems to be an old saying about plain Chinese; nowdays we use "putong hua" as a saying for standard Chinese.