Hongjialou

Hongjialou is the name of the square where the Sacred Heart (or Hongjialou) Cathedral is located, and which now forms an external corner of the old main campus of Shandong University. I worked on this campus for all five, and lived just off of it for the last two years I was in Jinan. It was a busy area, especially because it had a popular night market, with street food stalls (much frequented by ever-hungry students). There were also many inexpensive, though not particularly good, small restaurants, a large supermarket, and a shopping centre as well. Towards the end of my time there, the night market disappeared, and many street-food outlets opened on the ground floor of buildings near the campus. Many buses passed through on the main road, so it was fairly easy to get around the city from the University, and Jinan East railway station was (just) in walking distance.

Sacred Heart (or Hongjialou) Cathedral

The sunny pictures are from summertime (mostly 2013), the wintry ones are from the time my friend Sunny was visiting for Spring Festival in February 2014 (it was only a few degrees below freezing).

During that same visit, we attended the Lantern Festival (last day of the annual Spring Festival) in Baotuquan park, which involved walking into town along the moat from the Central Campus of Shandong University.

The park was open in the afternoon, but the main event was after dark.

From dusk ’til dark. This is only a small selection of photographs from the time. I actually took so many that my SD-card ran out of memory. We left fairly early, because it was becoming VERY crowded.