Tianjin:
Darkness whizzes by my window as my train speeds south to Shanghai, the financial capital of China and the glittering metropolis which I have heard and seen so much of. Like the Emperor on his southern inspection tour I first journeyed from Beijing to Tianjin, the ford of heaven, this time via China’s fastest conventional high speed train rather than an imperial procession. We reached speeds of up to 300 km/hr and zipped through the soggy flat green countryside between Tianjin and Bejing, dotted here and there with smoke spewing factories, villages, every inch of land cultivated, in intensive agricultural or industrial use.
It was beginning to sprinkle when I disembarked in Tianjin and took a cab to Wudadao, where I walked around the stately, leafy streets of a former European-dominated area where wealthy Europeans built homes. I felt like I had left China for good, and had landed either in America or in Europe. Brick and stucco residences graced the street, most with a historical plaque detailing their preservation status and significance. I tried putting my entire suitcase/backpack on my shoulders but this proved a cumbersome system, and I felt like a pack animal. I ended up having to schlep my bag around the streets of Tianjin but only for a few hours. I walked into a strange building featuring odd art pieces all around it which turned out to be a sort of private antiquities museum also featuring a restaurant and known as the “Eatable Museum” I went next door to find something cheaper and ended up eating at Cheng Gui’s western food restaurant where I actually had quite a decent fried chicken with ham and cheese, vegetable soup, and rice, and moderately priced for western food. After stuffing myself, listening to a Britishman talk business in the restaurant with his Chinese colleagues, I left.
I took a taxi to Jiefanglu, one of the main streets in Tianjin’s Americanesque downtown, where neoclassical and neo-Baroque former bank buildings graced every block of a quiet pedestrian street near the river. I decided Tianjin was about as American as any city I’d seen in China. Its scale was more manageable than Beijing’s and it was laid out like an American city, with a downtown area near a river, its buildings a mix of styles ranging from the turn of the century to the present.
I had my quick sojourn in Tianjin planned out perfectly so that I ended up back at the train station, crossing the Hai River by a clunky iron footbridge that reminded me of something from the Mississippi. Across the river from downtown was the train station, built around a large plaza snug against the river. Tianjin was a booming city, a rather modest metropolis compared with Beijing, but altogether, I decided, a much finer city from what I saw, than from the horrendous descriptions of industrial waste and decay that I had heard elsewhere.
On the train, where I unfortunately am stuck with a back breaking upper berth, I chatted with a Chinese family (two sisters and one of their middle school boys) for quite some time, every so often being reminded how good my Chinese is, and trying to think of ways to throw in grammar patterns that I just studied. Fifteen minutes ago the lights were turned off so I am sitting here in the dark aisle of the compartment typing, trying to make myself tired enough so I can fall asleep in my 6’ x 3’ cell of luxury.
…So I will await my arrival in Shanghai as my southern inspection tour continues.
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