Tianjin’s foreign concessions

Going to Tianjin

Last night was my second night sleep after flying east and it’s usually my worst sleep.  I think I would have made it through the night without half a tablet halfway through the night if I hadn’t been worried about the early wake-up at 0630.

D arrived late last night and today we are going to Tianjin together.  This had been originally planned as a daytrip but I had heard that Tianjin is quite good for street food at night.

And D wanted to catch a ride to Tianjin with his friends to spend some time together.  That takes about 2h30 in the car instead of 30 mins in a train.

So, I decided it would be better to make it an overnight trip.  Meaning that I would be paying for accommodation in Tianjin tonight as well as keeping my room in Beijing.  Because Tianjin accommodation at the Ibis was cheap at about NZD50, D suggested that we didn’t share.

D came over to store his bag in my room and decided to do a load of laundry before we left at 0825 in a car to his friend’s place.  The ride took an hour once we got there, we fluffed around for about 20 mins with his Saab before departing Beijing in earnest.

Arriving in Tianjin 

First stop in Tianjin around 1400 was the MOT or WOF station as we call it in the UK or NZ, where the Saab had been booked in for an annual check.  The car had non-standard sized tyres and would probably fail in Beijing, so they brought it here.

Around 1400, we went out for a delicious sushi lunch.  After that, we called a car to head to the Ibis Hotel by the old town, getting there around 1530.

Exploring Tianjin’s foreign concessions

After about an hour’s rest, we took a car to the Cathedral where the French Concession was.

In the late 1800s, parts of Tianjin was ceded to various European and other powers after China’s losses in the opium wars, in which China tried to stop the trade of opium into the country.

There wasn’t much left that was French so we moved on by metro the British concession area.  This appeared to be the old financial centre which has now been converted into a shopping area including a pedestrian mall.

Many of the buildings looked overly restored.  We continued by foot to the river where there was another small collection of historical buildings.

We crossed the bridge that took us to the other side of the river where we found the Italian concession.  It is now a nice dining precinct.  Here, the buildings were well-restored without looking too artificial, apart from some garish add-ons to the area on the periphery.

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Standing out amongst the old Italian buildings was a modern interpretation of an Italian building created out of slats of bricks.  The theme was carried through to the interior which functioned as a bookshop.

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Old town

From the Italian concession, we took a car back to the old town, or rather the fake old town where we started looking for dinner.  The place was rather dead with some shops closed and not too much of a crowd.

After a while, we were starting to feel pity for the businesses there.  But we weren’t about to patronise places where the food might not be fresh.  D was keen for some liangpi and we went to a mall where it was available.

It was about 1930 by the time we sat down for our simple dinner.  It did the job well enough and we headed back to the Ibis for the night.