Looking for Home

It was much too early to be homesick—and I wasn’t yet—but I was curious to see what Western influences I could find. I set out for the center of the city where the Concessions had been.

In the middle of the 19^th century the Chinese had engaged in several wars, primarily with the British, in their efforts to end the Opium trade. Opium was illegal in China, but the Portuguese and the British had been importing the drug from India in very profitable trade. The first war from 1840-1842 ended with the Treaty of Nanking in which the defeated Chinese ceded Hong Kong to the British in ‘perpetuity.’ The second war between 1856 and 1860 ended in the Treaty of Tianjin (yes, it’s named after the city where I am). This time the Chinese were forced to ‘concede’ substantial areas in a number of ‘treaty ports,’ among them Tianjin on the Hai He or Sea River. These ‘concessions’ were autonomous zones in which western businessmen and their families lived as if in their own nations. Because Tianjin long had been an important port for northern China, including Beijing, it soon attracted many westerners and developed large German, Italian, French and English communities.

With the communications tower at my back I headed northeast toward the center of the city. Several blocks from the university I found a McDonalds and a foreign language bookstore.
I headed for the bookstore! It had a surprisingly good selection of English language books, particularly the ‘classics’ of literature—Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy—the kind of thing that’s assigned in high school and college literature courses. But there were also popular novels by Ian Fleming, Mary Higgins Clark, Danielle Stone, and others. In fact, there had been a large display of the latest Harry Potter novel at the entrance I hadn’t even noticed when I entered. I bought a novel and a map of Tianjin in Pinyin and English.

I passed up the McDonald’s to get a quick lunch at a Taiwanese restaurant across the street. I’d been told they had a menu with English translations. They did and it made ordering food much easier. (I’m going to save McDonald’s until I am homesick.)

I started walking along Machang dao (Racecourse Street) which had once gone to a racetrack built by the British. The street was lined with large homes which could have been in England.

As I walked in the English concession area I passed a large rose garden where a photographer was doing a shoot of a young couple in western wedding clothes (they were white, not the traditional Chinese red for weddings). A little farther down Tai’an dao I passed an abandoned Anglican church, once All Saints, to come to Victoria Park. Here the Chinese amahs or nursemaids would bring the English children they cared for to play.

There were still plenty of children—all Chinese—and three ping pong tables where several furious games were in progress.

Across the street is the very early Astor Hotel (Lishun Fandian or Profit & Success Hotel in Chinese). It was built just 3 years after the Treaty of Tianjin.

The Chinese have preserved the original building and added a large, very modern structure behind. Inside, the original lobby, dining room and some of the bedrooms are still in use. Herbert Hoover stayed here, as did the last emperor of China, Pu Yi (with his wife and mistress), Sun Yatsen and his wife Song Qinging, and Zhou Enlai. It seems like most important figures in 20^th century Chinese history have slept here. Farther up the Jiefang lu (Liberation Avenue, formerly Victoria Road) I found the building once occupied by the firm of Jardine & Matheson which engaged in the opium trade.

There are still many foreigners in Tainjin. Many are students. Martin, the young man I have been working with in the university’s Foreign Affairs Office, thought there might be as many as 40,000. Jim Tichenor, a former New Zealand high school teacher with 10 years of teaching experience in Tianjin, indicated the number was more likely 14-15,000. Still a lot. Most of them are Japanese and Korean, but you see some young Americans on the streets and I expect I will meet many before I leave. And there are Americans and other westerners working in the new, rapidly developing commercial/industrial zone of Binhai where the Hai river enters the sea. They tend to meet in western hotels, like the Sheraton not far from Tianjin Normal’s old campus where I am living, and in clubs and bars catering to westerners.

As I neared the university—with the communications tower dead ahead—I passed a Starbucks. I’ve been drinking green tea to get me going in the morning. A cup of genuine American coffee was too good to pass up. So after loading up on cash at an adjacent ATM, I went in and ordered a small cup of coffee. It was 12 Yuan. That’s about $1.80; an awful lot in China—and I thought the price at the First Stop was steep! But it was good American java.