(Wednesday, March 2nd, 2016)
I am in the Juchuan Magnolia Hotel here on 3rd Avenue in TEDA, also known as Tanggu, Tianjin, China. Since I see “Tanggu” around me more than TEDA, I’ll use Tanggu.
The Rickmers’ agent booked this hotel and Rickmers is paying for it, which makes sense. A couple of the Romanian officers, one of whom lives in Shanghai (he handles on-shore activities for Rickmers in Asia), recommended that this be my hotel, due to its proximity to a couple of pubs in which English is spoken and American/European food is served. That turned out to be a good recommendation.
My room is very good, with one of those “sleeps four or five” beds. This is my third hotel in Asia on this trip, and all have shared an interesting trait I haven’t seen elsewhere: At the door there is a place to insert your key card. It is where you can always find your key card, so that is nice. But the important part is that power to the room is enabled when the card is inserted. So, when you leave, taking your card, there is a slight delay and then all the power to the room is either turned off or changed to “unoccupied” settings (for example, hallway light only). Ashtray near the elevator:
The room overlooks a local soccer stadium, seating for a few thousand maybe, like a large high school stadium. The surface is something rubbery poured like a popcorn ceiling over concrete. It feels okay to run on, or do jump rope on, but it would be devastating to fall on without armor. It is in constant use by the public. The lights are on until 9pm. There are groups doing Tai Chi, groups doing exercises to music, people along the sidelines using some strength and flexibility equipment, and people jogging or walking around the track. It is motivational to look out my hotel window and see those people, so I have exercised a reasonable amount while here, even though it has generally been cold. “If they can do it so can I” I say to myself, and that’s enough motivation to get me out the door and over there.
I have taken several walks in different directions while here. Sometimes I have a goal, like getting to their waterfront “Bund” park, or finding the site of the August explosion, but other times I just take a roundabout path that ends up at one of two nearby pubs at the end of the walk. I’ll include a few representative pictures. Some of them are just my capture of regular city scenes – some fancy places with statues and all that, some regular storefront places, some working sections (hardware stores, scooter repair), and some mall and waterfront scenes.
They have shown Chinese professional volleyball on TV (I recognized some American and European players on some teams!), and the Chinese Olympic Woman’s volleyball team is featured on a car commercial. Wow!
I have not seen any suburbs. There are so many tall apartment buildings, maybe consistently 30 stories. To be fair, I am mostly walking, so I might not go far enough to see suburbs, but when I have taken taxis to a couple places that involve leaving the city proper, I still haven’t seen suburbs.
It doesn’t seem to me that Tanggu is a tourist destination city. Cruise ships berth here but from brochures I’ve seen they generally take a tour bus, a taxi, or the bullet train to Beijing for the Great Wall and all the Beijing city sites. So I think this is a pass-through place for tourists. When I am out and about, very few people, including cab drivers, understand English. One exception – there was an alien spaceship resting across the river:
Tanggu is mostly a port-support city, with international businesses that are connected to the shipping industry, or dependent on shipping. There are a couple big malls, many apartment complexes, some executive-type hotels, a downtown area with tall buildings (not like Shanghai, though), a well-developed waterfront amusement area, an extensive subway system, and many rail stations including two that support fast trains.
On my first night here I went to the recommended pub, only to find most of my ship’s senior officers! We couldn’t get rid of each other, tee hee. ‘Twas a fun night. It was also the last night of a week-long New Year’s celebration, so, a little later into the night, there were really loud noises just outside the pub. The noises were a local fireworks show that was really good, really long (45+ minutes), and right in the middle of a major city street. I mean with no barricade, nothing like that, cars had to choose to stop or make their way around the fireworks, as they were firing. Ha! I thanked them, of course, for welcoming me to their city.
I had a brief interaction with Tanggu police. Sorry, that was deliberately sensational, blame it on too much reading of US political stuff. Anyway, I was walking along a sort-of busy street, and heard a crunch behind me – that noise that you know in your gut is a wreck. A scooter and a car had come together. The car won. Always bet on the car. There were bits of scooter and car on the road, and the scooter rider was down, his ride trashed. He was in pain, a leg, but not bleeding, able to talk easily, and could use his cell. The two guys in the car also got on their cells. I stood so that traffic would have to move around us, and “asked” the guy on the ground if he wanted help up or wanted to stay there. He wanted to stay, but did take some water from me. When the police and ambulance arrived I was about to continue my walk, but the police wanted me (I think) to make a statement. I tried to mime to them that I had heard, not seen, the wreck, but it didn’t work. They took me to the police station, and found someone with English. We had it all solved in 15 minutes. They asked if I wanted to be taken back to where I was walking. I said no, I was just walking anywhere. When the English-speaking guy translated it for the others, he said they said “well you are sure to get there”. Same joke all over the world.