Tianjin - A fascinating city worthy of many return visits

Commerce bustled along its “bund“ similar in some ways to Shanghai, but the shallowness of the waters means that today only sightseeing tourist boats cruise day and night along with the occasional fishing craft. However, some of Tianjin’s contemporary charm, its attraction, comes from landscaping of several kilometers of river banks today lined with often futuristic, indeed striking architecture. It is particularly beautiful at night when buildings and bridges are illuminated.

For me, the river area offers so many photo opportunities, but as a geographer the entire waterway system around Tianjin has long intrigued. The city is generally flat, lying only a few meters above sea level. Its topography along with that of neighboring coastal Hebei and Shandong has through millennia been influenced by the Yellow River (Huang He). That river presently discharges into the Bohai Gulf near Dongying in Shandong. During the Spring and Autumn Periods of the Qin Dynasty and again around 1048 AD it flowed into the Gulf close to today’s Tianjin. Known for centuries as “China’s Sorrow” the river was long associated with devastating floods along with frequent course changes. Taming the uncertainties of the river has been one of China’s great engineering achievements. In past epochs the coastline was more inland than today. Over time as it entered the sea so deposition of transported material ultimately built up new land - an ongoing process. Tianjin spread across such sediments but the river, the waterways required regular dredging to maintain navigable channels. Ultimately, as with many river ports worldwide, so major dock facilities move downstream to deepwater coastal locations. For Tianjin massive, modern port-handling facilities steadily developed at Binhai.