Jinan is the “Spring City”- Here “spring” is not the name of a season… but rather rather the meaning of “spring” referring to water coming up from the ground. (This recognizes Jinan as a town with an abundance of water that springs up from beneath the ground.)

My hotel is a short walk from a number of popular springs, which tend to be wrapped in extended gardens and park areas.

I visited the “Five Dragon Pond” site, and “Baotu Spring”.

Enclosing the old part of Jinan is a somewhat rectangular, spring-fed canal. One tourist brochure uses the word “moat” to describe it.

Next, I visited a neighborhood that includes a large Confucian temple complex and a series of old residential alleys that have been mostly converted to shops. To get there, I rode in a tiny three wheeled contraption (In America we call these “tuk-tuks”, using their Thai name). This bone-jarring ride involved careening from street to street in a vehicle that seemed to ignore all traffic flow rules.