Why it looks like this

Yantai's name means 'smoke tower' — after the wolf-smoke beacon mounds built on its headland against pirates. Opened to foreign trade in the 1860s as 'Chefoo', it gathered consulates and trading houses on the bluff by the harbour, whose old lanes survive among the modern seafront.

In 1892 the overseas-Chinese businessman Zhang Bishi founded the Changyu winery here, planting European vines on the Shandong hills — the start of China's modern wine industry, which still calls Yantai its capital. The city today is a long chain of ports, beaches and orchards along the Bohai coast.