(Wednesday, March 2nd, 2016)
Waiting for my new ship, the Rickmers Antwerp, to arrive, I’ve been mostly walking around. Tanggu, Tianjin, Beijing. I’ll write three posts, and maybe another general post or two. First, I thought I ought to explain these names.
It took me a while to figure this out. I had made some assumptions that stuck in my brain, keeping me from listening properly and learning more. Some of this may be a repeat but there’s more detail for those interested. I’m not sure this is all exactly correct but as a working theory it has served me well.
I am in Tanggu, Binhai, TEDA. They are all ways of saying almost the same thing. I’ll explain later.
This part of China is best known as “near Beijing”, since Beijing is the largest city by far and the most well known. Beijing is about 100 miles from where I am now, in Tanggu/Binhai/TEDA. Beijing is west of here.
Tianjin is a very large city between Tanggu and Beijing. Tianjin is about 20 miles west of Tanggu and 80 miles east of Beijing.
The extensive ports here serve both Beijing and Tianjin.
Beijing and Tianjin are also municipalities, one of four in China (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chungqing). The closest analogy to American divisions is that if you think of “City and County of Los Angeles”, maybe “municipality” is similar.
Tanggu is (was) a district (a city within a municipality, think Long Beach inside of Los Angeles County).
The Tanggu area has a harbor, several ports, and serves both Tianjin and Beijing for shipping.
A while back an economic development effort (I don’t exactly know what that involves) resulted in a new entity, the Binhai New Area. I think that there must be special considerations for international business, because many international businesses came to the Binhai New Area. Tanggu, being within the geography of the Binhai New Area, ceased to exist as an entity, except as a place name. There are many things named “Tanggu” around, and it doesn’t seem to me that people are trying to erase it. It is just no longer a governmental entity. Binhai is slightly larger than the old Tanggu, encompassing a few additional communities.
Inside the Binhai New Area, there is an even more special development area called TEDA. I had thought that “Teda” was another town, next to Tanggu. Nope. TEDA is Tianjin Economic-technological Development Area. It is mostly over by the ports, but its presence is felt all over, and there are TEDA signs all over the Tanggu/Binhai area.
Binhai has about a million people. Tianjin City has 5 million, Tianjin municipality 13 million. Beijing municipality has about 21 million.
When I got in a taxi and asked to go to downtown Tianjin (I actually pointed at a map with Chinese characters and HOPED that I was pointing at downtown Tianjin!), I thought it would take 10 or 15 minutes. 45 minutes later, and a trip on a toll road, we were there. I almost told the driver that HE had made a mistake, but I held my tongue, luckily. Mostly I kept quiet because I had no clue as to how to start the conversation. That’s when I decided to “study up”, tee hee.
One more name: Xingang. Xingang is really just one of the port areas. It probably has some separate administration but I don’t think it is a town or anything like that. Just one of many ports.
“Tianjin” was recently in the news due to a large explosion at a storage location for dangerous storage in August of 2015. Many deaths and injuries – I see conflicting numbers. Ed showed me the location on a map. It is in the TEDA area of Binhai, which of course is “technically” in Tianjin (municipality), but a long way from Tianjin City. This makes sense – for international news, Binhai or TEDA wouldn’t make as much sense to people as Tianjin. The site is very close to where I am staying. I took a walk there, only took a couple of hours, but surprise surprise there were guards there so I didn’t get the pictures that I wanted. Here’s a couple, though…
I am learning to read Chinese street signs. It is relatively low risk – if I get lost I can get a taxi back to the hotel by showing the driver a card with the hotel name and address in Chinese. That card is important!
These areas have a long history due to their importance to trade as Beijing and Tianjin grew. Hundreds of thousands of years ago the Chinese domesticated dinosaurs (Tanggusauri) to pull giant freighter ships on an intricate canal system between Tanggu and Beijing. (One of the preceding sentences might need some fact-checking.)