Tianjin - A fascinating city worthy of many return visits

One of China’s earliest railways connected the early Tanggu Port with today’s downtown area. Today Tianjin is a nodal point on the nation’s rail network where lines from the northeast join others radiating both south, west and of course, north to Beijing. High-speed trains today serve these routes.

Arriving by rail from Beijing, I usually sit for a while close to the railway station at Jiefang Bridge which crosses the Haihe. There I would look and think about the river while taking in its increasingly modern skyline dominated by 336.9–meter-high Tianjin World Financial Centre that opened in 2011. With 13 bridges spanning the Haihe and its tributaries Tianjin is a “City of Bridges”. Mostly modern in design they are integral in the landscaping and regeneration of the riverfront.

Jiefang Bridge, completed in 1927, connected both the railway station and the former Italian concession area with similar but much larger districts south of the river. In total there were eight foreign concessions in Tianjin, granted by the former Qing government. Some, such as the Austro-Hungarian (1901-17) and the Russian (1903-1920), were relatively short lived. The French and British Concessions, dating from 1860 to 1943 and 1946 respectively, were actually built up from formerly swamp lands stretching from the river whose course was straightened to alleviate potential flooding. Stretching along Jiefang North Road many of the grand, classical-styled buildings from that period have survived and continue to be utilized as banks, public offices and museums. Indeed at its north end, close to the bridge still stands the unique architecture of the Belfran Building and the former Imperial Hotel (today the Ji Hotel).