Qingdao

Qingdao ([tɕʰjə́ŋtàʊ]; Chinese: 青岛; also spelt Tsingtao) is a city in eastern Shandong Province on the east coast of China as well as the largest city in Shandong province. Administered at the sub-provincial level, Qingdao has jurisdiction over seven districts and five county-level cities. According to the 2010 census, the built-up (or metro) area made up of 6 urban districts and Jimo City had 5,764,384 inhabitants, while the total population of the sub-provincial city is up to 8.71 million. Lying across the Shandong Peninsula and looking out to the Yellow Sea, it borders Yantai to the northeast, Weifang to the west and Rizhao to the southwest. Qīng (青) in Chinese means "green" or "lush", while dǎo (岛) means "island".

Qingdao is a major seaport, naval base, and industrial centre. The world's longest sea bridge, the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, links the main urban area of Qingdao with Huangdao district, straddling the Jiaozhou Bay sea areas. It is also the site of the Tsingtao Brewery, the second largest brewery in China.

China

China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of over 1.35 billion. The PRC is a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, with its seat of government in the capital city of Beijing. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces; five autonomous regions; four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing); two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau); and claims sovereignty over Taiwan.

Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, China is the world's second-largest country by land area, and either the third or fourth-largest by total area, depending on the method of measurement. China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes and the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in the arid north to subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometres (9,000 mi) long, and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East and South China Seas.

Lao She

Lao She (Chinese: 老舍; February 3, 1899 – August 24, 1966) was a noted Chinese novelist and dramatist. He was one of the most significant figures of 20th-century Chinese literature, and best known for his novel Rickshaw Boy and the play Teahouse (茶館). He was of Manchu ethnicity, and his works are known especially for their vivid use of the Beijing dialect.

Biography

Early life

Lao She was born Shu Qingchun (舒慶春) on 3 February 1899 in Beijing, to a poor Manchu family of the Sumuru clan belonging to the Red Banner. His father, who was a guard soldier, died in a street battle with the Eight-Power Allied Forces in the course of the Boxer Rebellion events in 1901. "During my childhood," Lao She later recalled, "I didn't need to hear stories about evil ogres eating children and so forth; the foreign devils my mother told me about were more barbaric and cruel than any fairy tale ogre with a huge mouth and great fangs. And fairy tales are only fairy tales, whereas my mother's stories were 100 percent factual, and they directly affected our whole family.". In 1913, he was admitted to the Beijing Normal Third High School (currently Beijing Third High School), but had to leave after several months because of financial difficulties. In the same year, he was accepted to Beijing Normal University and graduated in 1918.