I always know about Tianjin, but I only know that it is very cold in the winter, it's very close to Beijing (around 130kms between train stations), and of course, there's a special type of bun in Tianjin called, 'Tianjin Goubuli Bun', this is one of the four most famous buns in Chinese culture. So that's enough reasons for me to make a trip there and experience another city outside of Beijing.
Did a little bit of research online (baidu.com) about what's fun and what's worth while to visit in Tianjin. I really like doing these researches before making any traveling decisions because travelers will put their comments, experiences and photos online in forums and also Baidu Answer (copy of Google Answer). I like searching like this 'two day travel plan in Tianjin' or something like this. I found plenty of forums and blogs by other travelers who post online their trip for how many days in a particular city. These routes are very clear and detailed, but at the same time very brief and easy to be understood. For example, the travelers will write take the super train from Beijing to Tianjin at this certain time and cost this much, then arrive and cab for $amount to the motel (rate for $night), then bus #route to this place for this particular restaurant average price of $amount. It's really clear and detailed, and it allows me to go around the city by taking the cheaper option and closer to the normal daily life of the Tianjin people.
Gerard is at work this weekend and Josi is going to skiing with her colleagues so only Jordan can make it to this trip with me. Our plan is to follow the advices and trip plans online and stay in Tianjin for 1 night and 2 days. We took the bus and subway then taxi to the Beijing South Train Station. This is the train station that have the super fast trains direct between Beijing and Tianjin. I found out online that the train leaves very often and there's no need to pre-purchase tickets. When we got to the train station, we realised that the train leaves every half an hour and it's 29RMB per ride and therefore it's 58RMB return. This is really cheap huh? The train is really new, it travels 200KM per hour, imported from Japan. The ride is 29 minutes only and it was a real nice day to travel. Bright sunny day, warm inside the train, and guess what? Free bottle of water for every passenger~ That's pretty cool huh?! The train is very new inside, very comfortable and at no point squashed or dirty.
As soon as we got off the bus, we decided to go find our accommodation first, book hotel rooms and drop off our bag. We hopped onto a taxi (start up rate 8RMB and 1.7RMB/KM) and asked to go to the closest Homes Inn. Homes Inn is now the biggest chain inns/motels in China, it has 658 inns all over the country. The rooms in Homes Inn are very standard, clean, cheap (in comparison to hotels), and offers standard room service. The locations are always near central or populated areas so it's very easy for travelers. We arrived at one of the Homes Inn near the trains station and something surprising happened.
We went to the main reception to ask for room rates and availability. When we have decided on renting the rooms the receptionist asked for our ID. Both of us don't have Chinese IDs and neither of us brought our passports. We told them that we're from overseas so we didn't know we need to bring IDs. The receptionist told us that it's the company policy and also law that all motels and hotels must check and register all customers. We talked to her for so long and see if there are any other options available but unfortunately she couldn't helps us either. We were very dissappointed. We walked out from Homes Inn and walked into another motel next door and was also turned down for the same reason. So now what? What are we going to do for the night?
After some discussions, we decided to go for lunch first then find the solution. We decided to go to the Food Street (as advised by travelers online). We sat in the taxi again and started chatting to the taxi driver throughout our ride. He found out about our situation and said that he knows some motels that don't ask for IDs and can drop us there to try. We thought, why not? Jordan got off the taxi and went into the motel where the taxi driver recommended us and 5 minutes later, he came out with the same answer. Apparently, because it's near the end of the year, so the police are very strict on governance and check-ups. Every motel/hotel had received notice about following strict regulations and no one is allowed to check-in without IDs. Then the taxi driver recommended us to go to spa at the night, where we can enjoy spa, entertainment as well as food. He said it's a great way to relax and we'll have a place to stay overnight. We decided to give this a try too because it really does sound relaxing and fun. Nonetheless, let's not let these problems kill our eating mood. Food Street, here we come.
We got dropped out outside the Food Street and we were already really really hungry. Happy to know that we'll be having Tianjin buns soon, hoho. We took some photos on the outside and started walking into the walking street. However, every step we took results in greater dissappointments and confusion. Where's the people? Why are the doors of the shops closed? Where's the food? What?! We are at the place that were recommended by travelers online, and the taxi driver knows where we are going to, we are at the right place I'm sure. This is really dissappointing.
Eventually Jordan and I resulted in a conclusion, based on our personal experience, it's the weather. Tianjin is colder than Beijing by a few degrees, and people are just not coming out onto the streets. There's no business opportunities here. We continued to walk further down the street and found more shops (but closed!!). Although there's no food around in this Food Street, but the sceneries are still quite pretty and very heavily Chinese culture style.
We walked further into the GuLou South Street and this special building caught my eyesight. It's the mansion for one of the emperor's daughters, it's now privately owned but turned into a museum and open to public. We decided to go in for a tour and have a look at this so called 'Princess mansion'. The mansion is made of two SiHeYuan, the old Beijing style courtyard, a very typical late Qing Dynasty architecture. This mansion used to belong to Princess Shuo (硕格格); her father is YuYu (counsulate general in Japan and France) and her mother is French. Princess Shuo followed her dad to different countries since little and on her return to Beijing at 1903 (when she was 17 years old), her sister and her became interpretors for Queen Cixi. Eventually she married to a diplomate from the USA and migrated to America. She passed away after a car accident in Canada at the age of 58. Her mansion was reserved from then until now, and it was purchased by a very successful businesswoman and now open to the public.
Photos are not allowed to be taken inside for privacy issues but the guy let me take a photo at the entrance, with the ancient cart and decorations. It's a relatively small mansion (comparing to the emperor's palace in Beijing, the Forbidden City), but it is still very nice and reveals some parts of the history. I really like visiting these places and I don't think I'll ever get sick of hearing about these stories.
Eventually we found some restaurants randomly on the streets opposite a shopping centre and went into a Chengdu style restaurant for lunch. To be honest, restaurants in China are pretty much all fusion style and you can find most of the common and popular foods on their menu. Anyway, we ordered a few dishes and some fried rice for our lunch and to be honest, it was one of the worst meals we had in China. It was very OILY, SALTY, BURNT. Yeeeek. I just don't know how to explain it better. We couldn't finish what we ordered, and I think the major reason was because of the amount of oil and salt in the dishes. Anyway...... food and acommodation were not the easiest for us today >_<
After lunch (which was already like 4pm?) we started talking about what else we want to do in Tianjin. We took out the travel plans I printed and after a long discussion, we decided we don't want to stay here overnight. One is that it's actually really cold here and we don't have enough clothes to stay warm. Second is that we don't even have a place to rest! Third is that the food wasn't very attractive (so far). Fourth because of the weather, most of the tourist attractions are either closed or barely have anyone visiting. Ahhhh, I miss Beijing.
So to make sure that we at least get something out of this Tianjin journey, we decided to visit the Tianjin Eye as our last stop. Tianjin Eye is a ferris wheel opened in 2008 and it's the only ferris wheel situated on a bridge (on the Haihe Yongle Bridge of Tianjin). Tianjin Eye have 48 clear cabins and each cabin can contain a maximumn of 8 people, and therefore at most 384 people can ride the ferris wheel together. The Tianjin Eye is around 110m wide in diameter and 120m tall. Each trip on the Tianjin eye will take about 30 minutes and each ride is 60RMB. It's actually really expensive in Chinese standard but this is one of the must-do's when anyone visits Tianjin, and especially given the dissappointments we've got so far, I think we deserve to finish the trip with something nice =)
We got onto the ferris wheel and then realised how slow this is going to be, haha, and guess what? We are the ONLY passengers/tourists riding the Tianjin Eye. Maybe it's the weather? Too cold so there are no tourists coming? Or maybe it's not dark enough and tourists like night views? Anyway, we enjoyed the beginning of the ride where we see new scenes and took some photos. But after a while, we started to feel the boredom with the slow movement and the same buildings around us. Before reaching to the top of the ride, both of us fell asleep. Haha, yes, what an insane journey. We traveled all this way for buns and ferris wheel but we fell asleep. I think it's because it's too cold, we just don't feel the energy anymore. LOL. Anyway, I still like the ferris wheel, haha, I would still ride a ferris wheel, but maybe not at Tianjin, not much sceneries around to be seen >_<
After the ride on the Tianjin Eye, we decided to take the taxi to the train station and head back to Beijing. Before that, we went into a shopping centre selling only fabrics because I really need to go to the bathroom. Why am I talking about bathrooms in my blog? LOL, it's the worst bathroom experience ever for me for the 22 years of my life. We went into the shopping centre and without much effort, we found the toilets. Guess what? We found the toilets because we followed the smell, not because of any signs. This alreay is suggesting something nasty. Jordan decided he'll give it a pass to go to the toilet but I still went ahead. Man..... The toilets here are just beyond disgusting. No words can possibly describe how bad the toilets were. I couldn't take it any longer and I just want to leave this shopping centre as fast as I can.
We went back to the train station, got our tickets and saw some pretty buildings around. The buildings were all in European style, I read about this actually. I read online that there's a street here that' built with Italian style buildings. We were going to go and visit but then we didn't think it's worth it. We saw them over the other side of the river, opposite to the train station. Yeah, it looks quite pretty, but it looks to be still under construction.
Our last dissappointment was with Tianjin buns. Sigh. We've been looking for the Tianjin buns ever since we arrived this afternoon. So far we had no luck. Until suddenly we saw some restaurants at the train station and one of them is specialised in making Tianjin buns. We were so excited, thinking, yep, this completes our purpose of visiting Tianjin =) We bought one serving of buns (which there are 8 little buns inside), but..... BUT.... as soon as we took a bite, we looked at each other, then from reading each other's expression, we know that neither of us liked the buns and again it's a big dissappointment. The buns were in different flavours, and none of them were meat based. The flavours we had includes salty tofu and egg, seafood and something weird, and more weird flavours. Yuk. I can't believe this. (after talking to my colleagues later who lived in Tianjin several years of Uni, she told me that nobody in Tianjin eats Tianjin buns, they're really for sale for non-Tianjin people; Tianjin buns are usually very dry and a mixture of ingredients as fillings, not the typical buns that we have in Beijing or Shanghai or the other parts of the country). This is it, now we seriously want to leave Tianjin.
Home, here we are, arrived back at our flats, with the surprise look on Josi's face that we came back just before she left for her ski trip. Yeah, it was a tiring and dissappointing day, but it's worthwhile because I can write about it. Jordan and I made some really light food for our dinner, soup with vegies, dumplings, and tried our best to keep our dinner as light as possible (especially after the super oily lunch and weird buns). Ah, home, I miss home, I miss the warm and cosy environment, snuggle in my bed, watch a movie and slowly fall asleep.
Home,sweet home.
Hospitality has long been synonymous with the hotel industry.
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