Lixia District is Jinan's upscale commercial and residential core — the part of the city where the money has settled. The area around Jingsi Road and the CBD contains the city's best hotels, most polished restaurants, and the buildings that appear on Jinan's promotional materials. It lacks the historic interest of the spring district but shows the confident face of a prosperous provincial capital.
The Lixia district also contains the Shandong Provincial Museum and Art Museum, making it the natural base for a culturally-oriented morning before returning to the spring parks for the afternoon. The restaurants in Lixia skew toward the upscale end of Shandong cuisine and also include a full range of other Chinese regional food — Sichuan, Cantonese, Yunnan — that the city's executives and government officials demand.