Qingdao: The film city and beer capital where old meets new

China is living in the future…China is living in the next century. You must have heard of these phrases across the room when people speak of infrastructure development and technological innovation. 

What was unknown to me is the old that remains deeply rooted in the Chinese culture, century after another.

As the Great Wall stands tall in Beijing, the world’s largest man-made project, Qingdao is a reminder that there is more to the history and modernity of the country, with seven of the world's 12 mountain peaks. 

Qingdao city was new to me, having not heard of or read about it before May 2026. To me, understanding Qingdao was through keen observation of people and the infrastructure on the streets. 

Since mine was an organised tour, my itinerary largely involved visiting locations within the media and entertainment ecosystem and, of course, social amenities. 

To know this coastal city is to first pronounce the “Q” in “Qingdao” as “Ch”. I certainly do not speak Mandarin, but a novice enough to say “Nǐ hǎo” and Xièxiè. 

Ever been to a place where what surrounds you is scenic? This was my experience in Qingdao, where old infrastructure constructed by German’s decades ago blends with modern infrastructure developed by the Chinese. 

The film and TV industry thrives in Qingdao, where the Qingdao Film Museum is located in Lingdong Castle. The film museum was set up at the location of the oldest existing theatre in China. It was the venue where China's first commercial film screening took place. The museum would later be opened for public visits in 2022. 

At the film museum, the old meets the new as large and bulky cameras, tapes and other equipment are displayed alongside digital film equipment. Linearly, the museum depicts the innovations in film production from those used in creating black-and-white films to those used in virtual reality and artificial intelligence setups. 

Qingdao is recognised as a City of Film by UNESCO.

The history of film in Qingdao is also evident when you visit the China Movie Metropolis in the West Coast New District, which was completed and opened in April 2018. 

The Metropolis covers 408 acres and consists of 40 world-class studio stages, 25 workshops and two permanent underwater stages. It also has large outdoor shooting pools, a digital lab for post-production processes, a live shooting venue, and an outdoor setting shooting site.

At the Movie Metropolis, world-class movies are produced – some even at a cost of 1 billion RMB. 

The Film City is not only built at the theatre, but through training at the Qingdao Film Academy, one of the top undergraduate film colleges in China. 

Outside the theatre, Qingdao is recognized as a ‘coastal city on the Yellow Sea’, as it is on its Western shore. 

My first perception of a coastal city was a warm one that would make me feel like I was at Kenya’s coastal sandy beaches. But the beach by the coastal city in China is different – with ice-cold water that only takes a dare to swim through the still waters. 

While film and the ocean economy are the breath of Qingdao, its heartbeat is also beer. A beer city, it is well known. Here, you would come across several beer towers, largely featuring the famous Tsingtao Brewery. 

The "Beer Capital of China" gets its history from its deep-rooted German heritage. Here also lies the Tsingtao Beer Museum, the namecard of Qingdao City. 

To keep this culture, Qingdao plays host to the Qingdao International Beer Festival in the Laoshan District to celebrate its signature brew. 

I wouldn’t satisfy your curiosity about the taste of this beer, nor say much about the fineness of the beer because the closest I have come to beer is a taste of my brother’s favourite chilled Whitecap. 

From the land of Laoshan Mountain, where Taoism was born – the mix of old and new is evident and lives across generations.