As a famous coastal tourism city with quite a number of tourism highways, Qingdao has recently determined the overall planning framework for tourism highway network featuring “one belt, one axis and three rings”.

To be specific, “one belt” refers to the core coastal tourism belt composed of coastal tourism highways in combination with Jiaozhou Bay, Aoshan Bay and Lingshan Bay. “One axis” is the axis for rural tourism characterized by ecological leisure, on which Jiaozhou, Jimo, Pingdu and Laixi are linked up by ecological highways across Dagu River and Xiaogu River. “Three rings” consist of the Zhu Mountain -Cangma Mountain greater ring road for tourism, the Daze Mountain-Daqing Mountain greater ring road for tourism and the Laoshan Mountain Range greater ring road for tourism. Dependent on the three ecological sources, namely Laoshan Mountain, Zhu Mountain and Daze Mountain, the “three ring” tourism highway network will be constructed. Expressways are the main channels between the three rings to form the “fast-forward” system. Within the rings, national and provincial level arterial highways, county and village-level feeder highways supplemented by leisure greenways jointly constitute the “slow travel” system. Generally, the tourism highway system features “fast-forward and slow travel”.

(Zhou Jianliang)

 Drive on highways in the Laoshan Scenic Spot to have a panoramic view of Qingdao’s mountain and sea scenery.