After another stay of nearly three months in Mt Gambier we flew to Beijing via Sydney on 24 November after a quick 2-day trip to Brisbane to attend to some business. We have returned to China for my next teaching engagement and then to continue our wanderings through this vast country with so many fascinating sights and sounds. We were picked up at the spectacular new Beijing Capital International Airport and driven to Tianjin about 100 km to the south-east. Our Qantas plane out of Sydney took off 8 hours late with the result that we arrived in Beijing at around 4am and then in Tianjin around 5.30am.Tianjin is a huge, rapidly modernizing city of about 15 million people. All over town whole blocks of formerly decrepit buildings have been bulldozed and in their place have arisen forests of cranes and completed, or the concrete shells of what soon will be, gleaming 30-storey apartment blocks. This is our 4th visit to Tianjin and the rapid changes to the cityscape are always noticeable as we drive in off the expressway from Beijing. Many more traffic lights are also appearing and unlike the recent past, the cars now heed them. Tianjin is largely a grey concrete metropolis with very little grass or other greenery, but it has an air of excitement about it and very friendly locals. Tianjin is home to Nankai University, one of China’s largest, and whose most famous graduate was Chou En-lai who went on to become Premier of China in the 1950s. There is a large statue of Chou overlooking the main entrance to the Uni.
It is now the beginning of winter in Tianjin and the temperatures are dropping quickly although not yet to the level we experienced on a previous visit when a sudden cold snap swept in overnight from the Gobi and blanketed Tianjin in snow and frost. But the hospitality and rooms in Tianjin are always warm and we have enjoyed many memorable banquets and meetings here. Like the time a Tianjin resident we had met a few months before in Adelaide and whom we had taken on several picnics and winery visits wanted to return the favour by showing us the sights of Tianjin. The good doctor and his wife showed us through their modern apartment and took us to lunch at the 99 Serious Dumplings Restaurant. This was true to name; the dumplings were seriously delicious. According to our hosts, Tianjin is actually the birthplace of the dumpling, a fact of which the locals apparently are very proud, and rightly so if our lunch was anything to go by. That evening they took us to the “Kou Bu Li” (“Dog Doesn’t Care”) Restaurant. I wondered why it was called that, but my darker fears were assuaged by the thought that if the dog doesn’t care, that probably means that our best friend doesn’t appear anywhere on the menu. In any case, just to be on the safe side, I steered the conversation, and menu, towards seafood and things that fly (or more to the point, that once did). Another great meal.
Less than an hour to the east of Tianjin is the industrial seaport city of Tanggu, one of China’s principal outlets for the massive amount of manufactured goods it exports every year to the rest of the world. Tanggu is also the departure point for the ocean-going ferries that regularly cross the Yellow Sea from here to Incheon in South Korea and Kobe in Japan. We hope to include such a crossing in our future travels - but not this time as we have air tickets to fly south on Monday.
