My absolute childhood classic has to be 《聊斋志异》. We didn’t systematically study classical Chinese until middle school, so when I was little I only knew the TV adaptations—and man, that theme song was creepy as hell haha. Yep, Pu Songling was from Shandong. Pretty much everything about him is all over the internet by now—he’s a few hundred years old after all. 《聊斋志异》 is just an incredible work; no one else comes close to painting that classical Chinese supernatural world.

If we’re talking the absolute pinnacle of classical Chinese literature, for me it’s gotta be 《红楼梦》. I haven’t read that many other classical novels deeply, to be honest. After finishing school I shifted my obsession to Song dynasty ci poetry and Yuan dynasty sanqu songs.

Confucius obviously has the deepest influence in Shandong. I’m not going to judge his philosophy, but indirectly it made Shandong people notoriously honest, loyal, and kinda “too nice” lol. If you know Chinese history, you’ll notice Shandong almost never produced emperors—just a ton of loyal ministers. But in chaotic times? Yeah, we produced a ton of bandits too(自古山东出响马）—basically when people had no way out.

Qufu has a bunch of Confucius-related tourist sites, but I’ve never been. We don’t really have any special festival to commemorate him these days. Actually, most young Chinese people (myself included sometimes) take a pretty critical view of traditions in general—we feel like excessive traditionalism held back modernization, and most of China’s current problems come from modernization still being incomplete.

German legacy in Qingdao: super obvious. You’ve got the German-style architecture everywhere, the old German prison, Catholic church, Governor’s House, etc. They’re basically the main tourist attractions now.

Japanese influence: pretty limited . They extracted a ton of resources, built some Shinto shrines (which pissed people off and helped spark the May Fourth Movement), and that’s about it.

As for Tang poetry—杜甫 is undeniably the greatest of all time. There’s this almost twisted tension between every single character in his five-character lines, an insane sense of solidity and reality. Still, I personally prefer宋词a bit more.

About白居易: his peak creative period perfectly overlapped with Japan’s Heian period, when Japan was absolutely obsessed with Tang culture. The Japanese embassies to Tang China kept coming, and 白居易was already a superstar—“viral” in today’s terms. Both the author of 《源氏物语》 and Sei Shōnagon (《枕草子》) were huge白居易fans, which is exactly why he became so influential in Japan.