Yantai
— a coast that gave its smoke signals to a name.
Not only on a wall.
“The northern edge of Shandong, where the Bohai narrows into the Yellow Sea. The city takes its name, Smoke Tower, from the Ming beacon on Yantai Hill that once warned the coast of pirates. Penglai Pavilion, an hour up the road, is one of the four great towers of old China. Changyu, founded here in 1892, is the country's oldest winery. The apples that bear the city's name ship across Asia each autumn.
Yantai, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Yantai is a prefecture-level port city on the north coast of Shandong Province, on the strait where the Bohai Sea narrows into the Yellow Sea, about 240 kilometres east of the provincial capital Jinan and 165 kilometres across the water from Dalian. The municipality covers around 13,750 square kilometres and the population stood at roughly 7.1 million at the 2020 census. The city name means Smoke Tower, from the Ming-dynasty beacon stations built along this coast as warning posts against pirates.
Penglai Pavilion stands on a cliff above the sea about 65 kilometres north-west of Yantai's centre, founded in 1061 during the Northern Song dynasty and counted as one of the Four Great Towers of ancient China alongside the Yueyang, Tengwang, and Yellow Crane towers. The complex covers around 32,800 square metres and is associated in folklore with the Eight Immortals, who, in the legend most often retold here, crossed the sea from these cliffs. The buildings have been rebuilt several times after fire and war.
Yantai sits in a temperate maritime climate, milder in summer than the inland Shandong cities and colder in winter than coasts further south, with January averages near -2°C and August averages near 25°C. The apple harvest runs late September through October across the surrounding hills; Yantai apples have held Geographical Indication status since 2002. The Changyu winery, founded in 1892 by overseas Chinese businessman Zhang Bishi, was the first industrial winery in China and runs harvest tours from September.