An old photo of Dabaodao, one of the oldest villages in the city of Qingdao [Photo/WeChat account: qdweishinan]

Sifang Road -- in the Shinan district of Qingdao city in East China's Shandong province -- was built in the 1930s during the German occupation.

Buildings in the precinct present a wonderful combination of the architectural characteristics of Chinese traditional quadrangles and European townhouses, the result of the integration of regional  and foreign culture that is also typical of Qingdao. The buildings there were constructed to adapt to the specific contours and terrain of the road.

They adopted Qingdao's liyuan architecture – courtyard-style houses retaining the spatial composition of Chinese quadrangles (siheyuan), while at the same time utilizing western technology, making them the only extant examples in the city of these kinds of buildings with relatively complete shape and scale.

The most representative cultural memory of the Sifang Road historical and cultural area is Dabaodao, the old city district in the heart of the historical center of Qingdao.