Shandong and Germany are the heartland of their respective civilizations' machine instinct. Both sit on a fertile coastal plain that faces a shallow sea. Both produced the canonical philosophers — Confucius, Mencius from Shandong; Kant, Hegel from Germany — and the canonical engineers. Both have a strong reputation for being literal-minded, slightly humourless, hard-working, and devastatingly effective once a target is set.山东与德国，是各自文明「机器本能」的腹地。两地都坐落在朝向浅海的肥沃沿海平原。两地都贡献了正典哲学家（孔孟出山东；康德、黑格尔出德国）与正典工程师。两地都以「认死理、不太幽默、刻苦、目标一旦定下便摧枯拉朽」著称。

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  A grain belt feeding the entire civilization.养活整个文明的粮带。

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  A philosophical canon that the rest of the civilization is graded against.一套被整个文明用来给自身打分的哲学经典。

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  Heavy industry, beer, ports, shipyards.重工业、啤酒、港口、船坞。

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  A strong moral seriousness; politics is read as ethics.强烈的道德严肃感——政治被理解为伦理。

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  Germany is sovereign and federal; Shandong is one Chinese province.德国是联邦主权国；山东是中国一省。

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  Germany's Protestant Reformation; Shandong's Confucian orthodoxy.德国的新教改革；山东的儒家正统。

1. Philosophical age哲学时代
   CN

   551 BC – Confucius born in Qufu.公元前 551——孔子生于曲阜。

   EU

   1517 — Luther's 95 Theses.1517——路德 95 条论纲。

2. Industrial rise工业崛起
   CN

   1898 — Qingdao under German lease; Tsingtao Brewery.1898——青岛德占；青岛啤酒诞生。

   EU

   1870s — Krupp, Siemens, modern industry.1870 年代——克虏伯、西门子、现代工业。

3. Modern role近代角色
   CN

   Today — Shandong is China's largest port complex.今天——山东是中国最大港口群。

   EU

   Today — Germany is Europe's economic anchor.今天——德国是欧洲经济压舱石。

Both are the no-nonsense block of their continent, and both are now wrestling with the same question: how does a manufacturing heartland reinvent itself when the next economic wave is intangible?两地都是各自大陆「不废话」的板块，并在今天面对同一问题：当下一波经济浪潮是非物质的，制造业腹地该如何再造自己？

• Germany: Memories of a Nation
  Neil MacGregor · 2014
• The Analects of Confucius
  (trans. Slingerland) · 2003