Beijing V : Toast of Tientsin

When I mentioned a short trip down south, Charming Calvin repeated this oft-repeated joke that war-hungry invaders once intent on dropping bombs in China changed their minds after looking at Tianjin. Seemed like someone had already ravaged the city before their arrival.

Well Tianjin isn't all that bad :) A walk down the tree-lined avenues of downtown Tianjin is like being transported into a vaguely European city in the early twentieth century. Old Tientsin as it was known then with its elegant townhouses and French-inspired chateaus, prominent banking institutions lined with glorified Roman columns - albeit all covered with a layer of construction dust and an inimitable dash of Chinese evident in the gazillions of signboards plastered randomly over the edifices of the historical buildings.

The Chinese love their signs evidently.

Since pre-revolutionary years, downtown Tianjin seems to have stood frozen in time until recent years with the arrival of overzealous wrecking crews intent on demolishing each and every historical quarter in sight for the erection of new-fangled avant garde metal monstrosities.


Old-world elegance?
A fine example would be the hotel we stayed in for an evening, the dignified Astor Hotel - certainly the grande dame of hotels in days long past. Dignitaries and princes, emperors and songstresses have all made their way to this premier hotel in the glory days of Tianjin. Handsome marshals charmed their refined debutantes in the grand ballroom while Tibetan monks chanted in a special room upstairs. Rather than focus on the charming old-world decor of the original interiors with the vintage elevators and the aged wood-panellings, the hoteliers added an entirely new wing - an ostentatious and overdone generic block with little charm nor elegance that seemed oddly out of place with its surroundings in the European Concessions.

I found it well worth it just to soak in the old world atmosphere but I'm sure Calvin would argue otherwise. Poor guy didn't find much to admire in dusty colonial buildings, I'm afraid.

Still for those intending to travel out of Beijing by rail, be warned. The mainland Chinese thrive on chaos. Not only are their restaurants stereotypically mad and chaotic, their railway stations are doubly so. Touts and tourists, hawkers and commuters alike shove and jostle their way while yeling at the top of their lungs in a mindless melee through the thousands milling around the railway stations. Just picture the last American helicopters fleeing Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.

And for those who don't read a word of Chinese ( or only know a bare few like me ) you'd find yourself utterly lost in the glorious tribute to communism - otherwise known as the Beijing Railway Station. Sure they have raucuous crowds leading the way to the dozens of ticket booths selling fare to God-knows-where - but every damn thing is in Chinese. Still it's a sure-fire way to fix the words Beijing in your head. 北京.