Heavenly Ford

Today's plan was to go to Tianjin. The reasoning behind this was that Tianjin is quite close and easy to get to. We had no real idea whether or not it was worth visiting, or what there was to do there. "We" was myself, my Swiss classmate and two of his Swiss friends, and his Chinese friend (who spoke perfect American English, by the sound of it, learned from watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy).

We all met at the subway station and went to the train station - for this trip, Beijing South. This is the nicest Chinese train station I've been to, integrated with its subway station and looking even more like an airport than the others (a nice airport too). The Beijing-Tianjin train runs every half hour, and tickets are available from machines at the station (Y58 for second class).

The train is fast, covering the 120km between Beijing and Tianjin in half an hour with a top speed af 330km/hr. On board it is similar to an airliner, with soft seats and attendants - more comfortable than the train I took between Shanghai and Hangzhou. We arrived in Tianjin far sooner than felt right, and made our way out of the station into the station plaza area, which was quite nice, except for the wind and fog.


The view just outside Tianjin station, near the Hai river which runs through the city.

We walked around for a little bit, crossing Jiefang (Liberation) bridge over the river to look at some of the old European buildings. There is a lot more of this than in Dalian and it is a nice area - but there isn't much interesting apart from looking at the architecture, and plaques explaining what the buildings where when they formed the foreign concession area in the early 20th century.


Unlike in Dalian, almost all of these buildings are both well-maintained and the real deal.


Intersection in this part of town, with the Bank of China building in the background. You can also see the cool traffic lights in this area - LED grids which entirely change colour rather than having 3 separate lights.

We decided to take a turn and find something to eat. We ended up going through some dodgy streets (Tianjin is not as clean as Dalian) and found a nice pedestrian mall, with a section full of street food.


Most of these places were selling squid on sticks.

The others wanted to sit down, and it was a big crowd, so we ended up looking for restaurants. We settled on a Muslim place, which ended up being quite expensive, but partly because far too much food was ordered. Dishes included cold strips of jellyfish, ox tails (quite nice) and roast duck (not Quanjude but still pretty good). We were then nearly at a loss of what to do, but decided to go to the Jade Emperor residence - where the last emperor of China, Pu Yi, lived in Tianjin after being kicked out of Beijing.


Jing Yuan - the Serene Garden.

We had to sit through a video introduction to the history of the place (which was not badly done, but not as good an introduction as the movie The Last Emperor) before being allowed to wander around. You can go through some of the buildings (with bags over your shoes to protect the carpet) and see things like Pu Yi's bedroom and reading room. The place is quite small though and doesn't take long to explore.

So we left and, for some reason, the Swiss wanted to find a bar. I have no idea why, but they settled on one listed in my Lonely Planet. The taxi took us to the address in the book, which was a bit of a drive, and turned out to be a bank. So we asked the driver where the bars are, and he told us Jiu ba jie (Bar street). We went there...


Tianjin's hip bar scene.

We walked all the way down this post-apocalyptic alley (which was definitely signposted as jiubajie) and eventually found signs of civilisation - a nightclub under construction, and a Japanese restaurant which we entered. No food mid-afternoon, but we got some drinks and an explanation that all the bars closed down months or years ago. Some were considering returning to Beijing, with the Lonely Planet not much help (there didn't seem to be much interesting to see anywhere near where we were). Tianjin is often thought of as a port city, but the coast is a long way from Tianjin proper, about an hour's drive (Tianjin is one of four cities in mainland China administered at the same level as provinces, and the Tianjin Municipality area is about a quarter the size of Switzerland). However one thing left to do was visible from the restaurant - the TV tower.


Every Chinese city must have one of these, each with its own claim to fame.

Tianjin's TV tower is fairly tall, and built on a lake, with bridges for access. We all went in, paid our money, went up and enjoyed the panoramic views of beautiful Tianjin.


Good weather for it too. You can see the lake around the base of the tower in the bottom of the picture.

We tried to get our money's worth, spending a while up there and visiting the revolving restaurant (where one of us had to at least have something - a milk tea for Y20, which would be available for Y3 at street level). We considered staying up there for nightfall, but that would be at least another hour, so after a while of relaxing up there, we went back down and headed back to the train station.

We took the soonest possible train back to Beijing. We didn't realise (have any way of knowing either) until after buying the tickets this train was standing room only, and we got seatless tickets. This wasn't too bad though - less crowded, and less time than the journey on the subway from the train station back to the campus.

So, in all, I can't really reccommend Tianjin for the average traveller - but on the other hand, I suspect there is a lot more to it we didn't see. Should've done more research before going. I've heard Tianjin used to be better, but since the fast train started, people go to Beijing to have their fun and just live in Tianjin (it makes commuting between the cities practical).