【城市印象】之——齐鲁大地 · 山东City Impressions: Shandong, the Land of Confucius

How to speak of Mount Tai? Over Qi and Lu, its green never ends. Nature gathered all its wonder here; light and shadow carve dusk from dawn. My chest swells with the rising clouds; I strain my eyes to follow the homing birds. One day I'll stand atop the highest peak — and see how small the other mountains are. — Shandong

Shandong: the land of Qi and Lu, the homeland of Confucius and Mencius. Home of Lu cuisine, one of China's eight great regional cooking traditions.

Politics: Shandong is politically as red-blooded and orthodox as it gets. Its officialdom-worship — that reflex to rank everything by government rank — is no less entrenched than Tianjin's; it runs deep in the bone. It was one of the former seven military-region seats, and the army has always liked recruits from Shandong: easy to lead, easy to manage.

It's the country's third-largest provincial economy. Jinan, as one of China's 15 sub-provincial cities, enjoys a high degree of independence in economic and legislative matters. As the provincial capital, it administers the allocation of education, healthcare, and administrative resources across the province, and holds considerable political weight.

Qingdao — also one of the 15 sub-provincial cities, and one of the five cities with independent budgetary status — has independent authority over economic and legislative affairs, and its finances are tied directly to the central government, with no obligation to report to the provincial treasury. That's a high degree of fiscal independence.

But nationally, Shandong's "weakness" is that it has no truly heavyweight city. Even Qingdao ranks a notch below Nanjing and Hangzhou in political standing. And Jinan's location doesn't stack up against Zhengzhou or Wuhan.

Economy: In 2015, Shandong's GDP was 6.3 trillion yuan, still third in the country. Its industrial structure is rich and well-balanced, with a three-sector ratio of 8.1 : 48.4 : 43.5 (the national average being 10.1 : 46.8 : 43.1). As a major agricultural province, Shandong is rich in farmland resources and crops; on the industrial side it has real muscle and abundant mineral resources, along with good ports and decent tourism assets.

Shandong is vast and sprawling. Qingdao is the province's little princess, Jinan its eldest son; the southwestern region, by comparison, is like the child born to a concubine — while coastal Weihai and Yantai do quite well too. On the whole Shandong runs a "wolf pack" economy: Jinan, Qingdao, Yantai, Weifang, and Zibo are all solid, and Jinan doesn't get much of a capital-city advantage.

In terms of urban structure, Shandong — or Qingdao — looks more like the Jiangsu–Zhejiang region: a small central city ring plus a cluster of strong county-level cities. In terms of economic structure, it's a handful of big state-owned enterprises plus a mass of small private factories. In terms of politics and daily life, it's heavily bureaucratic with a huge wealth gap.

A lot of people say Shandong is poor. It isn't. It's just that its wealth isn't flashy. Shandong's real problem is: "strong province, weak people."

(Figure in original — a "2015 GDP Ranking of China's 31 Provinces and Regions" table.)

China's six most economically formidable provinces, the ones with the strongest all-around chops: Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhejiang, Liaoning, and Fujian. Shandong sits around third or fourth overall. If you rank only by how wealthy the ordinary people are, Zhejiang stands alone at the top; Jiangsu and Guangdong form the second tier; Fujian, Liaoning, and Shandong make up the third. These six are also the regions with the best shot at reaching developed-country standards.

By total GDP you can roughly sort them into three tiers: the Guangdong–Jiangsu–Shandong Big 3 have long held the first tier, and their order never changes. Guangdong and Jiangsu joined the 6-trillion-yuan club early, side by side; Shandong crossed 6 trillion in 2015 too, but the gap between third-place Shandong and fourth-place Zhejiang is still close to 2 trillion. Fifth-place Henan is chasing Zhejiang for all it's worth.

Culture: First, Shandong people are bighearted, loyal, and true to their word. Dealing with them is easy — they say what they mean, no need for going around in circles.

They're loyal and particular, they keep their promises — which is exactly why they're slow to promise anything, for fear of not being able to deliver. But once they've said yes, they'll do everything they can; they won't leave you hanging.

And now the biggest flaw: the officialdom-worship runs deep, and people's minds are steeped in "feudal" thinking. To me, Shandong and Tianjin are the two spots in the north where this instinct is strongest. It all traces back, in the end, to that same playbook from two thousand years ago — the one that shaped the Shandong of today.

Because it's been a land of rites and etiquette since ancient times, Shandong folk have valued education from childhood: grades decide everything, officialdom is prized, and the old hierarchy of scholar–farmer–artisan–merchant has been handed down generation to generation, with the scholar-official first and the merchant last. That's tied up in the officialdom-worship too.

And because face matters so much, Shandong people to a large degree live for others. In Shandong, nothing outranks face. What every level of the province's city governments loves best is a good vanity project. Blame the legacy of Confucius and Mencius: this place produced a formidable culture — Confucianism — two thousand years ago. Follow enough elaborate rules and rituals and you turn honest and sincere, sure, but also rigid and stiff. So Shandong people are on the inflexible side, rule-bound, unlikely to take any shortcuts.

A teacher once told me she wasn't too fond of her Shandong students: rigid, no creativity, good at nothing but grinding through exam questions — great at pulling in scholarships, but they never produced anything really good. Which province's students did she like? Guangdong. She said Guangdong students had first-rate creativity and imagination, and that the Shandong ones should study harder... (Now aren't we about to have a fight.)

As a major agricultural province, the social structure Shandong built up around farming is extremely well suited to a bureaucratic order: master the ways of officialdom and you're set — you don't really need much specialized expertise.

Shandong isn't a great place for young people to build a career. There's no proper high-tech industry, which of course means few respectable jobs and few decent salaries; and as a tourist region, housing prices get pushed up by outside investors. (Dalian keeps it company on this front.)

Shandong's single biggest problem right now is a shortage of high-level talent. The rare few who've had a good higher education mostly don't want to come home — most head to Beijing, Shanghai, other first-tier cities, or overseas — and those who do come home almost invariably land in the government or a public-institution posting.

Shandong's 2014 three-sector ratio was 8.1 : 48.4 : 43.5. Nobody wants to work in the primary sector; and the high-energy, high-pollution secondary sector is mostly factories — exhausting work, sometimes on night shifts. Meanwhile the tertiary sector, things like the internet and cultural industries, hasn't come into its own. So it seems there's not much respectable work to be had beyond the civil service.

Urban Development: First and worst — the capital, Jinan, and its city planning, which is honestly something else... Gridlocked beyond belief. And for a major economic province, the whole place has no megacity, which by comparison makes population mobility a bit sluggish. Shandong's building style is also very "distinctive" — not big on skyscrapers. Jinan's tallest building is 300 meters, Qingdao's is 241. Is that any kind of "bearing" for a city with independent budgetary status? Not exactly commanding. Qingdao's urban build-out, though, is quite good.

That said, Jinan's location is pretty great — it's the hub on the north–south spine of the Beijing–Shanghai high-speed rail line, with high-speed rail running out in every direction.

One more important point: as one of the most economically developed regions, it somehow has no subway. And a subway is one of the yardsticks a lot of people use to judge whether a place is prosperous. This is being fixed, though: Qingdao's Metro Line 3 north section is finished and began operating in December 2015. Line 2 is under construction, projected to open by the end of 2017; Line 11 is under construction, opening mid-2017; Line 13 is under construction, projected for 2018; Line 1 (the cross-bay section under construction) is projected for 2021; and the Line 8 airport line is about to break ground.

On healthcare, Jinan has the province's best medical resources, with 18 top-tier (Grade 3A) hospitals citywide. Qingdao has 10, second only to Jinan. Healthcare here is quite good by national standards.

On education, Jinan has the province's best resources, with 45 universities including Shandong University (Project 985, Project 211). Qingdao's education resources are no worse than Jinan's — its universities include Ocean University of China (985, 211), China University of Petroleum (211), Shandong University's Qingdao campus (985, 211; enrolling from 2016), Shandong University of Science and Technology (Qingdao campus), Qingdao University, Qingdao University of Technology, and 24 institutions in all.

Local Customs: Among the major economic provinces, Shandong is just about the only one where people don't watch their own provincial TV station. Mostly because Shandong TV is, well... it's dragged the province's image way down. You could argue that Shandong being seen as poor has a lot to do with Shandong Satellite TV promoting that image every single day, tirelessly.

Also, for an education-heavy province, it's actually easier for Shandong locals to get into a top university outside the province than into an equivalent one at home... People often joke about it: Tsinghua and Peking University are Beijing's Tsinghua and Peking; Fudan and Jiao Tong are Shanghai's Fudan and Jiao Tong; and Shandong University... isn't Shandong's Shandong University.

Shandong people are big on etiquette and big on face — homeland of Confucius and Mencius, a land of rites — and holiday meals are anything but relaxed. Seats have a designated place of honor; you serve dishes according to seniority. Everyone's afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.

Their consumption mindset lags behind: thrifty to a fault, spending oriented toward what's practical rather than what's fashionable or delicious. Ordinary folks living ordinary lives — save money, go to work, save money, go to work. (Honestly, southerners still know how to enjoy life best — Jiangsu-Zhejiang plus Guangdong-Fujian.)

In one line: Shandong is a thriving, evenly developed place that doesn't shut outsiders out. But it doesn't offer any especially good opportunities or conditions, and it's not really the place to build a career.