Badaguan (Eight Passes)

Badaguan Scenic Area is a famous picturesque sanitarium area in China, located in the east of Qingdao city, Shandong Province. This place used to have eight avenues that were named after eight famous passes in China. Thus, it was named Badaguan, which means eight passes. After the People's Liberation, two more avenues were built in the area and there are now actually ten avenues. However, its name still remains the same.

 

Nick named the "Architecture Museum" it boasts more than 200 different architectural styles ranging from German to Dutch. The tiny lanes that vein this area are draped with cypress and peach and crabapple trees, lending it a botanical garden quality.

 

Luxuriant trees growing along each avenue provide a pleasant shade in Badaguan Scenic Area. Moreover, there is a vast array of different flowers, which form a quiet, clean and beautiful environment all year-round. Each of the ten avenues has different flowers and trees. The flowers also bloom in different seasons and give this area its other beautiful name, Hua Jie, which means Flower Street.

 

What makes Badaguan so popular is not just its natural scenery, but also its garden-like villas and foreign-styled buildings. Badaguan Scenic Area used to be a place where people from more than twenty countries, such as Russia, Britain, France, Germany, the United States of America, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Switzerland, Japan and etc., constructed buildings in each of their unique national styles. After the People's Liberation, the government repaired the entire area and its buildings, symbolizing Badaguan's significance as one of the most important sanitaria in China. Many leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and foreign friends of China have stayed here for rehabilitation or simply, for pleasure.