Yantai is famed for its fresh seafood 2017[Photo by Bruce Connolly/chinadaily.com.cn]

Close to the ocean, seafood is plentiful in Yantai as walks around the markets adjoining the old port would reveal. Restaurants, often bustling with customers, had boxes of freshly caught fish including many shells displayed outside. Indeed Yantai is famed for its marine cuisine.

My walks would take me, always with my camera, to historic temples, former commercial guild and trade halls and even hilltop forts. At either end of the early city the latter structures defended against attack and seaborne invasion. Indeed throughout history much of coastal Shandong had witnessed incursions and wartime engagements as I would learn by visiting the large Yantai Museum.

However, it proved to be the older areas that kept me enthralled as a photographer. There I would walk alone, at times the only light coming from inside quiet households or an occasional solitary bar. One similar such area I came upon was well inland from the harbor, indeed almost on the lower slopes of the hills rising steeply on the urban periphery. Locals were fascinated by my keen interest in old buildings, often lacking in modern facilities.