Yantai

Yantai city, Shandong province, is located in the central Shandong peninsular, N36°16′～38°23′, E 119°34′～121°57′. Near the mountain and by the sea, Yantai has pleasant and mild climate where winter is not too cold and summer is not too hot.

The city of Yantai is composed of four urban districts, one county, seven county-level cities as well as China National Economic and Technical Development Zone, Export Processing Zones, High and New Technology Industry Park. It covers 13,700 sq kilometers, in which 2722 sq kilometers belongs to urban area. At the end of 2008, the population of Yantai is 6,517,000 while 1.8millon people are in the city.

Yantai is a city with a long history, as well as one of the birthplace of ancient Chinese culture. As early as the late Pleistocene (since about 1 million years ago), there was humanity thriving here. Once the tribe for Dongyi ancient, and then they founded they own state in the Xia Dynasty. Records from the history, Qin Shi Huang had ever been in the peak of Yantai Zhibu and engraved stone tablets to promote the merits and virtues on the Qin G 29 years. To preventing the invasion and harrying of pirates, the government founded Qishan Guard on year 1398 (Wu Ming-hong 31 years) which the rudiment form of Yantai. The beacon tower in Zhibu is also called “rocket tower”, thus named Yantai. The Qing government signed a “Treaty of Tianjin” with Britain, France and other countries, set Dengzhou as trading port. After that, Britain, France, the United States and other 17 countries had set up consulates in Yantai.

After new China was founded in 1950, establishment of Wendeng, Laiyang area and provincial jurisdiction in Yantai City and thenYantai area set up in 1958. In November 1983, Yantai became the prefecture-level city. Situated in the east part of Shandong peninsular, Yantai city is close to Hanghai Sea and Bohai Sea, linking to Dalian city with the sea on the north and facing Japan and Korea across the sea, adjacent to Qingdao city on the south as well as Tianjin City on the west. It is a pivotal city connecting Liandong peninsular with Shandong peninsular, a joint city in the Bohai Sea Economic Circle and a window city opening towards Northeast Asia.

The city of Yantai is embraced by mountain and sea, and it has exquisite scenery with four distinctive seasons. Yantai becomes a world-renowned scenic spot due to the vast stretches of golden sand and blue waves, spectacular islands of various size, famous Peng Lai pavilion, magical mirage etc. The terrain of Yantai is low foothill area, with mild hills up and down. Major mountains with elevation higher than 500 meters include Daze Mount, Mount Ai, Mount Luo, Mount Ya, Kunyu Mountain, Zhaohu Mountain etc, among which with 922.8 meters Kunyu Mountain ranks the first in height.

A great deal of rivers runs through this area, eight of which covers 300 sq kilometers basin, including Wulong River, Dagu River, Dagujia River and Xin’an River. The coastline of Yantai is 909 kilometers, comprising of 63 islands among which Zhisu Island, South Changshan Island and Yangma Island are with larger area. The climate of Yantai belongs to temperate zone continental monsoon climate, with moderate rainfall, humid air and a moderate climate. The mean annual precipitation of Yantai is 765.4millimeters, average temperature 12.7℃, sunshine duration 2441.6 hours and frost free period 284 days.

Yantai is rich in marine fishery resources, and is an important national fishery base productive in various seafoods such as sea cucumber, prawn, abalone, sea shells and so on.