Qingdao

=Qingdao=

{| This page focuses mainly on Epiphone guitars made at the Qindao factories in China. For more information pertaining to the city of Qingdao not relating to Epiphone, click on the "Qingdao, China" link to wikipedia below.
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Qingdao, China
Qingdao, historically known as Tsingtao, is a major city in eastern Shandong Province, Eastern China, with a population of over 8.715 million. Its built up area, made of 6 urban districts and 4 county-level cities, is home to about 4,896,000 inhabitants in 2010.

Lying across the Shandong Peninsula while looking out to the Yellow Sea, Qingdao is a major seaport, naval base, and industrial centre. It is also the site of the Tsingtao Brewery. The world's longest sea bridge, the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, links the main urban area of Qingdao with Huangdao district, straddling the Jiaozhou Bay sea areas. Qingdao is named China's most livable city.

An important region in Eastern China, Shandong Province has seen substantial change in its economic landscape in recent years. Much of this development has been concentrated in Qingdao. Internationally, Qingdao is perhaps best known for its Tsingtao Brewery, founded by a German-British joint venture in 1903 that produces Tsingtao beer, the best-known Chinese export beer. It is also home to Haier, a large white goods manufacturer, and Hisense, a major electronics company. In 2002 guitar manufacturers Epiphone opened a factory in Qingdao.

Epiphone
Epiphone has outsourced manufacturing of several guitar models to China on and off since roughly 1995, as well as a few models being made in Taiwan in the late 1970's through the early 1980's. During this time, most manufaturing was done in Korea with the exception of the 1970-1985 models when most production was done in Japan.

Prior to opening the Qingdao factories, Epiphone guitars manufactured in China were made at factories such as Dongbei, Daewon, Muse, Mirr, Saejung, Unsung-China and others. These factories were used mainly to meet production demands on higher volume orders, as well as certain models made specifically in and for China. Typically, but not always, lower end models were made in China or Indonesia unless Korean manufacturers needed help meeting large orders on higher end instruments due to demand. While Epiphone still produces some guitars in Indonesia, as well as Korea and Japan, it is unknown if Epiphone still utilizes other Chinese contractors to produce Epiphone instruments. These other factories are most likely contracted to produce intruments for other companies under the Gibson Family of Brands, such as Baldwin pianos which are made at the DaeWon factory in Dalian, China.
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Gibson Qingdao


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Gibson Qingdao

Epiphone Qingdao


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Epiphone Qingdao