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that they are happy to share with all present. I learned that one can not over-estimate the time that should be spent on planning for such an event; the room allocations of those who were sharing, for example, should have been sorted out in the relative comfort of Hong Kong rather than hoping to patch things up on the day. I learned that even though we were shamelessly interested only in European colonial remains, half expecting to have to be apologetic about this to the local population, many of these remains have been carefully restored and protected. I learned that only three bars of Cadbury's chocolate are not nearly enough to sustain me during five days in China.
The only real disappointment was being told that foreigners could not go and look at a 100-year old railway station, and a foreign built one at that. However, one of our members got his own back by video-taping Chinese fighter planes taking off and landing at Dalian airport whilst waiting for our flight back to Hong Kong, and doing this in full view of everybody. He was not even cautioned, let alone arrested.
Which brings me back to why I took 25 people into Shantung and only brought 18 of them back. Were the others lost? Not really. Being a fairly long trip (six days/five nights) there was an option for participants to leave the tour after Weihai - which seven of them did.
All the accompanying photographs with the exception of No. 1 were taken by the author.
Bibliography
Readers who are interested in reading more about Treaty Ports in China in general, and the places we visited in particular, might like to refer to the books the organisers of the trip used as reference:
The Treaty Ports of China and Japan, Mayers, Dennys and King, pub. Trübner, London, 1867
Wanderings in China, Constance Gordon Cumming, pub. Wm Blackwood & Sons, London, 1888
The Encyclopaedia Sinica, Samuel Couling, pub. Kelly & Walsh,