Yantai means "smoke mound" due to the ancient practice of lightin wolf-dung fires on the headland to warn of imminent Japanese invasion, or (more likely) approaching pirates. Prior to 1949, it was a fishing port called Chefoo, and its recent history, like that of Qingdao, is closely bound up with European adventurism. In 1862, Chefoo was made a British treaty port as a prize of the Opium War. Thirty years later the Germans arrived, wishing to extend their influence on the peninsula. After World War I it was the turn of the Americans , who used the port as a summer station for their entire Asian fleet, then the Japanese , who set up a trading establishment here. However, all this foreign influence has not left a distinctive architectural mark, there has never been a foreign concession, and though you will see the odd incongruous nineteenth-century grand European building, most of the town is of much more recent origin, a product of the rapid industrialization that has taken place since 1949. The port has been expanded, and Yantai is now a Shandong industrial heavyweight. In the early years of this century, the main exports were beancake, vermicelli, groundnuts and silks, and a hundred thousand coolies a year, bound for Siberia. Now the area produces and exports large amounts of apples, peanuts, fish and shrimp, as well as wooden clocks. It's also known for its more than passable wine , produced in vineyards set up by Singaporean Chinese in 1893, who learned their skills from French soldiers stationed here.