Shandong

Chefoo (Yantai)

Port at northeast tip of Shantung province. Designated a treaty port by Treaty of Tientsin 1858, and later a noted summer retreat from Peking. The consulate was established in 1861. Various plots were bought from local Chinese owners during 1864-67 to create a compound, later walled around, of about eight acres in the north east corner of the headland immediately north of the old town. Residence bungalows for the consul and assistant, and offices, constable’s quarter and lock-up were built here in 1870. About a quarter of the compound at the north end was subleased in perpetuity in 1878 to a Mme Elizabeth Nicolaeva Startseff, and the holding was regularised through a new title deed in 1934. After the post was closed [when?], military forces occupied the consulate in 1947, and it was sold in 1964 to the Chinese authorities.

The site is now part of the Yantai Hill Park [any signs of buildings?].

British consular compound as pieced together, 1872. (North is towards bottom left.)

Looking north, over a French property, towards the consul’s house on the headland, 1934.

A Chinese recording of the local land transactions, 1872.

Consulate offices, 1934.

Plan illustrating northern portion of land leased to Madame Startseff in 1878.

Consul’s house, 1934.

Compound siteplan, c. 1920.

Boyce’s design for the consul’s house, 1870.

Tsingtao (Qingdao)

A seaport on the east coast of the province, Tsingtao and its hinterland was a German possession from 1898 until it was captured by the Japanese in 1914. A career consular officer took over as consul from a local merchant in 1919. It was restored to China in 1922. A 2/3 acre plot of land with a three-storey building on it at 35 Hunan Road, at its corner with Yi Shui Road, was leased to the British government by the Chinese government in 1923 and adaptations to it were completed in 1924.

The Post closed in 1951 and the building was returned to the Chinese government in ? 1959. [Pps also refer to a 1946 acquisition with lease expiry 1961?]

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Consulate building, c. 1925.

Tsinan (Jinan)

A river port on the Yellow River, a post was established here in 1906, primarily to keep an eye on German designs in Shantung. As a result of the British government withholding recognition of the Regulations that were drawn up in 1905 for the international settlement, the consulate had perforce to lease its accommodation. In 1917, however, the consul was granted a 14 year, but extensible, lease on a three acre parcel of ‘Fourth Class Land’ in the south-east corner of the settlement on the corner of Shiao-Wei-Lu and King-Lu Roads. Here a two-storey consulate building with offices was completed in 1918.

The consulate was finally closed in 1937. The property was then sublet, successively [??] to the Japanese consulate-general, to Field Team No 7 of the Chinese-American Executive Headquarters and then, from 1947, to General Wang-Yao-Wu, Governor of Shantung province. The lease lapsed in the 1950s.

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Entrance front, c.1920.

Proposed floor plans, c. 1917.

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Garden front, c. 1920.

Weiheiwei (former Port Edward)

A naval port at the extreme north-east tip of Shandong, where a lease was first taken in 1897 (contemporaneously with Hong Kong’s New Territories) to counter the Russian naval presence at Port Arthur (now Dairen). A British consular official was stationed at the port. Weihaiwei was never developed as extensively as envisaged at the start of the lease, and its rendition was agreed in 1925, though not formally executed until 1930. Rendition brought an upgrading of consular representation and in 1925 an NCO mess building was converted into a consular office, and a senior district officer’s house into the consul’s residence. In 1930, a 30-year lease was negotiated for these two buildings. The Post closed in 1940. By the end of the Second World War, the consulate was being used as stables by the communists and was never re-occupied. No attempt was made to renew the lease when it expired in 1960. [Ref to Lot no 7 at No 3 Ta Ping Cho First Road – what was this?]

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