Congress 606 “Cheefoo”

“Cheefoo”, 1905. The back design depicts a young boy holding an umbrella and wearing what appears to be traditional Chinese garb of the time. Now known as Yantai, the major district is Zhifu, which used to be the largest independent city in the area. It was variously romanized as Chefoo, Che-foo, Chi-fu, and Chih-fou (or Cheefoo per USPCC’s spelling of the name). Although this name was used for the city by foreigners prior to the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, the locals referred to the settlement as Yantai throughout. It is a coastal prefecture-level city on the Shandong Peninsula in northeastern Shandong province of the People's Republic of China. Lying on the southern coast of the Bohai Strait, Yantai borders Qingdao on the southwest and Weihai on the east, with sea access to both the Bohai Sea (via the Laizhou Bay and the Bohai Strait) and the Yellow Sea (from both north and south sides of the Shandong Peninsula). It is the largest fishing seaport in Shandong. Its population was 7,102,116 during the 2020 census, of whom 3,184,299 lived in the built-up area made up of the 5 urban districts of Zhifu, Laishan, Fushan, Muping, and Penglai. The name Yantai (lit. "Smoke Tower") derives from the watchtowers constructed on Mount Qi in 1398 under the reign of the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming dynasty. The towers were used to light signal fires and send smoke signals, called langyan from their supposed use of wolf dung for fuel. At the time, the area was troubled by the Japanese pirates (Wokou), initially raiders from the warring states in Japan but later principally disaffected Chinese. It was also formerly romanized as Yen-tai.