Yantai city has plenty to offer volunteers with many bars and cheap restaurants found within walking distance of your school. You will never be bored with the Shandong cuisine – it’s simply amazing! If you like seafood then you are in for a real treat!

Food in Chinese culture is central to their lives - you can eat and eat and never put on weight! A good and filling meal costs about £1! Yantai is a popular tourist destination for Chinese people so there is plenty of choice (including KFC and Pizza Hut!).

There are a couple of European style bars in the city too that offer excellent beer in pints and food you would instantly recognise from home.

Equally there is always lots of entertainment going on and most of it is free! There are sandy beaches close by, temples and pagodas to visit locally.

There are thousands of western style shops selling essential supplies like toothpaste, clothes, computer software, compact discs and it is all cheap and good quality.

There are ATMs all over the city centre. A Mastercard or visa debit card is the best option to access personal spending money. Travellers cheques are also useful and there are banks everywhere.

Away from the main shopping areas there are some very traditional market places selling everything imaginable.

The following are some english site for Penglai Pavilion tour in Yantai for your information:

http://www.plta.gov.cn/english/index.asp

http://www.plg.cn/enplg/index.htm

All these are excellents site for Penglai tours of Yantai.

For information on Yantai, you may use the link at www.yantai.gov.cn and www.yantaifdi.gov.cn for more.

There are Olympic sports facilities available, huge stadiums and a new opera house for those in need of even more culture.

Taxis to get around the city are very cheap.

If you are intending to stay out then it is sensible and wise to let your hosts know. For example the head teacher needs to be informed a couple of days in advance. They feel responsible and want to know that you are going to be safe and well.

At the weekends when you are free you can easily travel outside the city limits. Nanshun is well worth a visit for its temples and pagodas and a ‘mock’ Great Wall of China.

Yantai has excellent bus networks to other parts of Shandong province. Getting an insight in to Chinese rural ways of life is extremely interesting as here the recent rates of change or so much less than in the cities – traditional ways of life continue unchanged for hundreds of years.

You can fly to Beijing for £100 return on a one hour flight.