Lost in Tianjin

I did it!! I got to Tianjin, saw the city, got back to Beijing and even found my hotel again! I'm so happy!! :)

What an adventure. I got completely lost in Tianjin. But first it was quite exciting trying to find a taxi in Beijing. K. J. had kindly written down all sorts of "useful" phrases in Chinese including "take me to the Beijing Railway Station" (which was useless as I discovered that the train went from Beijing South instead of the main railway station - thanks Minnie for teaching me North, South, East and West in Chinese!! It worked) and he had also given me the Chinese for "I think that you're beautiful" (which I decided not to try with the taxi driver - unfortunately, I didn't get to use this sentence with anyone). Anyway, the first taxi driver looked at my instructions, shrugged and shook his head. I then spent ages trying to flag down another taxi. In the end I did manage to get one and off we went towards Beijing West station (whoops). I said "nan" and awful lot (which is an approximation to 'South') and then we headed off in the correct direction. At this point I was a tad nervous - I'd been told that the taxi was the easy bit!

Anyway, Beijing South railway station is spectacular. It's modern, easy to find your way around and the trains are incredible. I got a second class ticket (I treated myself to first class for the return journey) and headed off on the fastest conventional train in the World. It's amazing. The train is so smooth and almost silent. You think that you're just getting going with a slight acceleration, but look up and find that you're already travelling at 200km/hr. The top speed we reached was about 330km/hr. That's fast! The view out the window was good. It's amazing how quickly the suburbs of Beijing disappeared and we were in the countryside (the journey is 120km and takes 30 minutes). We zoomed through a few stations, but didn't stop.

Tianjin is a nice city. It seems more relaxed than Beijing and has a big river that flows through the centre. I didn't have anywhere particular to go and so just walked down the river. I didn't know what to expect, but I certainly didn't expect to see lots of statues of people being very intimate! The statues were very well made, but I did feel very embarrassed taking photos of them! Along with the statues there were lots of people fishing in the river. I only spotted a dead fish. I walked for an hour or so and then spotted (on my completely useless map - more complaints about the map later) a street that had been renovating as an Ancient Chinese street. I'm not totally sure how I found it - it involved passing a few old Chinese military tanks.

More later ... just going out for drinks with KJ ...

Back again. (Just had a great evening with KJ somewhere near the centre of Beijing. We ended up at a lake with lots of bars, outside dancing, bats flying around and multiple offers of "young ladies" and "laser pointers".)

Anyway, back to Tianjin. This may not be as coherent as I'd like due to the number of beers just drunk (and the fact that it's almost midnight). I'll try. I found the "Ancient Street", saw the temple dedicated to the Goddess of the Sea (Tianjin is a major sea-port in China) and enjoyed walking around buying souvenirs. My haggling improved during the few hours that I spent there. I managed to reduce the price of the last thing that I bought by a third. It's hard to try and describe the scene, but imagine lots of very colourful shops with huge calligraphy brushes or kites hanging outside. I also walked through a few markets which were selling trinkets from the Mao era - including posters, mugs, the little red book .... Nobody seemed to be buying anything!





I then decided to select a street by random and walk down it looking for food. I was tempted by "Dickus" - a Chinese fast food place and by a place that looked very "interesting". I chose the "interesting" restaurant. It didn't have any menus in English, nor pictures of the food so I randomly pointed at about 5 different things. It turned out that I'd selected a hot pot where I was given a pot of water + sichuan peppers (my mouth turned numb after eating a little food and has only just returned to normal) with cold dishes of noodles, chicken, random veg. and tofu. Not knowing what to do, I tipped everything into the hotpot and then spent the next hour or so trying not to burn my mouth. I was laughed at again by the waitresses :(

I then walked to a shopping centre to buy some tissues and toothpaste. Unfortunately, there was a mistake in the translation and I ended up buying 14 boxes of tissues. Not quite what I had in mind, but I won't need to worry about tissues for a while! Actually, they were quite useful after the sichuan peppers!

I then got very lost. Very lost. I tried to find "The excellent Antique Market on Shenyang Dao ... a riveting sprawl of collectibles". Well, my stupid map simply marked it as a dot half way between two main roads - about 3km apart. I decided to be scientific and walk down every road within a 3km^2 box until I found the market. I never did. I walked for ages and never found either of the roads that it was bounded by (even though Binjiang Dao is "Tianjin's biggest thoroughfare"). I walked for hours. I walked past a school where all the kids waved yellow flags at me. I walked past a police man who followed me around for a while. I walked down a dusty street where old men were playing Chinese chess (with huge wooden pieces). I found the "George mary love chateau" with huge topiary elephants outside. I went down modern shopping streets (and stopped for coffee at a Starbucks). I ended up (don't ask why) in a pharmacist where I could buy a picked deer (or something similar - see photo). I found (no idea how) my way back to the river and hence to the station. I then took another look at the map and tried again to find the market. I failed.

I gave up.

I treated myself to a first class ticket on the return journey. Apart from having a slightly bigger seat and the opportunity to plug my non-existent headphones into a socket, there wasn't much difference between first and second class. I read the safety guide: "Please stand the queue during get-on and get-off. When getting on after the get-off please don't crowd. It is forbidden to pass through under train, climb to roof, jump off station, enter railway track, and so on. It is forbidden to follow the running train for get-on and get-off before stopping. ... During the trip don't be crowded, lying on the floor, and don't pull (or push) the emergency brake button at random."

The taxi ride back to the hotel from the station was as dramatic as ever. I'm sure that we actually left the ground at one point as the driver decided to drive over a concrete post at high speed. I'm now ready for bed!

Back to Shangahai tomorrow and landing in Sydney the day after!