Tianjin

On Saturday we decided to wake up bright and early and do a day trip to Tianjin, which is the third largest city in all of China, right under Beijing and Shanghai. We left campus around 7:30 AM and walked about a half hour from our dorms to Wadaokou, which is the closest Beijing subway station. It’s like the equivalent of Tenleytown in Washington, DC.

We took the Beijing subway a few stops and then ended up having to switch lines. The subway stations and the train stations look just like airport terminals, so in order to switch lines, we has to walk quite a ways. The subway is pretty nice, but it can get pretty crowded. It’s really clean and cheap. Any destination on the subway costs 2 yuan, which is the equivalent of about 30 cents in American dollars. After a few more stops, we got off the Beijing subway and took a cab to the Beijing South Train Station. The train station is pretty new. I think it was just finished in 2007 and it’s very clean and modern.

Train tickets to Tianjin cost 58 yuan each way, which comes out to about $16 total round trip. This is a pretty good price considering that Tianjin is about 200 miles from Beijing and the train will get you there in about a half hour. This particular train is very famous because it is one of the fastest trains in the world. Riding the train was one of the coolest parts of the day. I guess it is kind of like our version of the Acela. The seats were pretty comfortable because you could adjust both the vertical and the horizontal parts of the seat. The train also had Western style bathrooms and stewardesses who came by and gave us free bottled water, even though it was just a half hour ride. It was also pretty cool that they always told you how fast the train was going. At one point we were going about 350 km/h, which is almost 200 mph.

Tianjin is a very modern looking city with very modern architecture. There are also a lot of Communist looking statues and tanks. When we got to Tianjin, we walked through this farmers market, where they were selling a lot of fruit and pastries and other foods right on the street. We then crossed a river and made our way to what is called “Old Cultural Street” in Tianjin, which is basically like a very traditional looking outdoor Chinese bazaar. They had giant inflated oxen for to celebrate the year of the ox as well as a ton of lanterns and lights. There were a ton of shops and it was definitely the kind of environment where you can haggle on the prices. It felt a lot like Chinatown, especially since I felt like they were really targeting our group to purchase pocketbooks. I didn’t buy anything yet because I’m trying to save a lot of my money for later on in the trip.

After walking through this bazaar, we went to lunch and had some more Chinese food that was pretty good. However, we ate light because after lunch we went to this famous cake stand in Tianjin where you can buy these little fried cakes that Tianjin is famous for. They tasted like the combination between a zepole and a Chinese doughnut that was glazed. Very delicious!

We then took the Tianjin metro downtown to a very famous shopping district. When we came out of the subway, it looked a lot like New York City because I saw Starbucks, Sephora, Mac, and Zara. We walked down this huge pedestrian only street with a bunch of stores. Most of the stores were western or western style. It was a very overwhelming walk. There were so many people that it was almost impossible to step off the street and into a store! After walking down this road, we walked back to the train station and headed back towards Beijing.

At the end of our trip we were very tired. We came back to Beijing, went to dinner at a Mexican place in Wodakao called La Bamba, and then came back to Beida. Everyone was really tired from a long day and a lot of walking, so we called it a night and went to bed early.