Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Tianjin

Last weekend, I went to Tianjin, a port city that China was forced to open up to the West in the 19th century. Since I was in Henan, I tried to rush back to Beijing in time to catch the train with the colleagues I was going to Tianjin with, but really dense fog in Beijing ruined those plans. Many of the pilots in China are relatively new and inexperienced since the aviation industry in China is growing so rapidly. Thus, even though the planes are equipped with technology to land and take off in heavy fog, they decided to just shut down the airport. Since I was away, I did not realize that the fog had been a problem for almost a week. When I finally did get back to Beijing, it felt almost surreal – dark, misty clouds covered everything, making even the building down the street difficult to see. The next morning, I embarked on my first train experience – on my own. Masses of people were everywhere, pushing and shoving like their life depended on it. But eventually I did managed to get on the right train and made it to Tianjin. When I arrived there, a mass of taxi cab drivers approached me like a pack of wolves. I could barely understand most of them but managed to get one of them to take me where I wanted to go.

As a result of its history, Tianjin is a cool mix of local and foreign. On the first day, we went to visit the Ancient Cultural Street and the Old Chinatown, where we sampled a ton of local snacks, and visited some cool arts and crafts stores. It’s funny that a city in China has a Chinatown, but for a while, it was occupied by all these foreign players. The French, English, German, Austrians, Italians, Belgians, Russians and Japanese all established their own concessions in Tianjin, so there is a ton of buildings with European architecture. We walked around the Wudadao area the next day, where it completely does not feel like you are in China. We saw beautiful Italian palazzos, old German and British buildings, and even an old French church.

Since Tianjin is so close to Beijing (only an hour by high-speed train), definitely want to come back. We saw the Tianjin Olympic Stadium, which is called the “water drop” in Chinese, where they will be hosting some of soccer matches for the Olympics next year. The stadium is a beautiful combination of metal and glass. It in the sun, it was shiny and reflective, and it does sort of resemble a water drop. Am trying to get Olympic tickets for next year for events in both Beijing and in Tianjin. But alas, the website crashed within half an hour yesterday when the tickets went on sale. Now, they are not sure when they are going to sell tickets again. The problem is the tickets are priced way too low (to make the games accessible to the local people). Ticket prices start at 30RMB, the equivalent of less than $5. Even the most expensive tickets to the women’s gymnastics finals only cost about $40! Craziness. I’m just planning to see what I get and then if anyone is interested in coming to China for the Olympics, let me know! Should be fun.

First it was heavy fog in Beijing, and this week it’s crazy windstorms. They blow up all the dust on the ground, sending huge swirls of dust and debris everywhere. There are heavy sandstorms in the winter which blows sand all the way from the Gobi desert to Beijing. Not looking forward to those. The sand supposedly coats anything and everything outside – including people. And I decided not to go to Africa so I wouldn’t have to deal with lack of electricity or hot water. However, even in my building, I haven’t had hot water in almost a week (thank goodness for the showers at the gym!) and they are cutting electricity tomorrow for several hours. I guess you can’t take anything for granted here. Tonight is Halloween. Should be an interesting experience here in China! But alas, I am lame and costumeless. Did not even know where to go to get one (not that I've had time to shop)...

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