"If you wanna know what China's gonna do..."

Watch the following video. Go on, I'll wait. It may be the greatest, most beautiful example of modern soft power propaganda you will ever get the incredible privilege to see in your life.

If you're one of those ingrates who doesn't watch videos online after being told to, this is a music video, in English, about the next Chinese Five-Year-Plan (a gigantic planning document released every five years detailing major programs and national strategies for the next planning period). The narration is clearly done by Americans, and the animation is a perfect example of early-2000s JibJab video style. And the theme is just so damn catchy. It is made by a mysterious film studio (full-ish story here) that has been difficult to pin down, but is clearly supported by the Chinese government, seeing as their videos are often reposted by Xinhua or Chinese ministries on social media.

In recent years, China has greatly increased its efforts in promoting a kind of soft power diplomacy and propaganda to better its image in the world, to an almost obsessive point. On the topic, Xi Jinping has been quoted as saying, “China should be portrayed as a civilized country featuring a rich history, ethnic unity and cultural diversity, and as an oriental power with good government, developed economy, cultural prosperity, national unity and beautiful mountains and rivers." Olympic Games, study abroad programs (I won't deny my program probably contributes to this effort, even if it isn't explicitly part of this planning), and Chinese language courses are of course a major component of these goals, but occasionally the people in charge seem to take little tumbles off the deep end, and some of those even might end up working at our dear mysterious friend, the Fuxing Road Studios. 

So far, I personally doubt China's more esoteric soft power efforts on the cultural arena have been all that successful. Historically, a lot of Chinese communication trying to project a friendly, positive image to the West has failed as a result of misunderstandings in how to reach Western audiences. Giving out free copies of China Daily at every street corner in DC is probably going to have a negligible impact on American perceptions, when the refutation of its sanitized stories is readily available on every other news source the reader has access to (and when the Epoch Times, the Falun Gong newspaper, is also distributed for free in stands usually directly adjacent to the China Daily ones). And of course, Western audiences will see these kinds of videos more as a joke than as a bringer of epiphanies about the inner workings of China. We've been trained (among other things, by history) to see overtly cheery government-produced videos as likely dishonest, and seeing these videos come out of China likely only reinforces Western popular views on the untrustworthiness of the Chinese government. 

In the end though, it is probably easy to overstate the importance of these videos to the Chinese government. A few investments in the tens of thousands of RMB into a Western-oriented propaganda video pales in comparisons to the real heavyweights of Chinese soft diplomacy in education and development support. The many thousands of scholarships given to students in developing countries to study at major Chinese universities or the $49 billion in aid given to African countries, for example (including major financial help with the new African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa), show where the bulk of these efforts are concentrated. In the end, stories of Chinese mistreatment of local laws and workers aside, this is the kind of soft diplomacy that is likely to have a long-term effect on international views on China. The obvious parallel of course would be American investment in postwar Europe as part of the Marshall Plan and the sheer number of international students studying at American universities, both of which undoubtedly have had a positive effect on America's moral standing in the world. 

It will definitely be interesting to track the further development of the Chinese soft power approach, especially since it seems to be the best strategic fit with recent broader Chinese development strategies (i.e. the "Peaceful Development Doctrine") and is appealing to a country with large geopolitical ambitions that doesn't yet have the economic or military strength alone to give it the place in the world order that it wants (especially considering that soft power is notoriously ephemeral). 

I will leave you with another beautiful example of modern Chinese video propaganda, this one produced by the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, in which international students studying in China wax poetically on how they want their future husbands to be like Xi Jinping:

(Also go back to the QZ article in the first link above for more Fuxing Road Studios propaganda masterpieces. The one on how China chooses its president is also great, if mainly for the animation of Obama punching Mitt Romney in the face to win the White House)

How to Succeed at setting up Taobao without Nearly Crying

Have you heard of Taobao? You haven’t? This must be changed. What is Taobao, you ask? Taobao is the greatest temple to 21st century consumerism you will ever find. Think Amazon, if everything cost 1/5th as much. What can you buy? Everything… as long as it isn’t western political literature. Otherwise, if it doesn’t exist on Taobao, it’s probably not worth buying. If it does exist on Taobao, it probably isn’t worth buying either, but I digress. Clothes, sports equipment, books, furniture, food, cars, travel packages (I refuse to correct what google translate presumably incorrectly told me was a trip to America, “so easy” for only “3999 direct American freedoms”), real estate, paternity tests, semen (*record scratch* and you thought I was kidding). During the most recent largest online shopping day in the world (Chinese Singles’ Day! 11/11. Of *course* someone would try to take advantage of impulse buyers on the day their potential loneliness is thrust in their faces), Taobao raked in $9.3 billion. The fact of the matter is that they should have a different word for shopping addiction, one much more evil sounding, to capture what could happen to you once you discover Taobao.

I too, wanted in. As the ultimate example of the incredible evolution in Chinese domestic consumption demand, I thought it crucial to join to better understand modern Chinese culture (well…. okay, I wanted a rug and an air filter. And a keyboard. Maybe some socks. Also some…). Of course as a usual Chinese system, it’s pretty easy to access and navigate if you neatly fit the person for whom this system was designed. Unfortunately, for the first time since coming here, I was very clearly not that person. Read on, dear foreigner, and learn from my struggles. 

1) Get hooked

I was first motivated to look on Taobao for socks. This may sound unexpectedly banal, but a very unexpected difficulty I’ve had to deal with is that I apparently have giant monster troll feet, at least from the perspective of the average Chinese shoe store. The local hypermarché maxes out at several sizes below mine and the attending staff just laughs when I ask if anything bigger is available. So I turned to the internet. After a brief search, I found some socks I liked (though for some reason part of the advertisment on the page was pictures of the socks being burnt over a teacup and the (English) words “FASHION SOCIALIST PUBLIC IS POPULAR”. I guess there’s some deeper hidden meaning I’m missing out on here), 5 pairs for roughly $1 no less, and clicked the buy now button. I get asked for a login.

F*** the system, I think?

2) First Attempts

You see, Taobao is connected through a common parent company with Alipay, itself another Chinese modern consumerist legend. The Chinese name for Alipay (支付宝 - Zhīfùbǎo) is for some reason rendered as PayPal by the Google Translate Chrome plugin, but once again, it is more than just a mere “Chinese [insert Western tech company here]”. It has all the patently Chinese innovations such as the possibilitiy of logging in, paying, or sending money to friends by the scanning of a QR code with your phone and an incredibly annoying sign-up process for foreigners. Therefore, to buy anything off Taobao, you must have a functioning Alipay account. So much so good, and I proceed over to the Alipay website to conduct the formalities.  

3) First Succeses

I signed up for an alipay account. It was pretty easy, honestly. On alipay.com, clicking 登录 (log in) and then 免费注册 (free register) on the subsequent popup will direct you to a straightforward registering process familiar to anyone who’s been on the internet. Google translate will even be enough to get you through this. Say you’re from China when it asks. If Taobao looks at you funny, just say *shhh* and move on (if you’re reading this from the U.S. or Europe, no, Taobao hasn’t come to your country yet). Get your sms verification code sent, and after some more registering that took an hour (because lolz, I can’t speak Chinese that well), you’re back at the home page of Alipay. You tentatively put in your username and 密码, spend 5 minutes trying to read the nearly illegible captcha, and are logged in! Success! The glory of consumption was only some clicks away!

4) Or so it may seem

So now you’ve set up your alipay account. Next you think, rationally, that it’s time to make your alipay account able to pay for things. There are two ways to do this; load money onto Alipay itself or link Alipay with a debit card. I of course chose the latter, I didn’t want to waste time during purchases to remind myself of how much money I’m spending by such frivolous distractions as recharging an online account. Welp, time to do some more registering. After navigating the same procedures again (phone number, verification codes, fun stuff), I hit a first snag. I’m asked for my citizens’ ID number, likely a consequence of my insistence on being from China. I try my passport number, which my bank has as my ID verification. Nope. 18 characters needed, no more, no less. There are suggestions on just filling the number with 0s until 18 characters are reached, but that seems no less sketchy. I try again, thinking I might’ve missed a button for foreigners. No such luck. After another hour of pressing around and looking for solutions, I give up. Clearly, this link between Alipay and my bank card was not meant to be. 

5) False hopes

Thankfully, there’s another option! I quickly mover over to the function to load money onto my account. For some reason, this goes much more smoothly. In no time (well, as with everything relying on my Chinese skills, ‘no time’ seems to mean an hour), I had my first 500 kuai loaded, ready to be thrown at the world’s greatest online marketplace. I go to Taobao, pick a random thing that costs next to nothing, and attempt my purchase. Once again, I’m faced with a login screen, now one that I approach confidently. I fill it out, and am hit with another variety of the amazing world of Chinese captchas - the ‘identify the quoted character by clicking on it in this picture’. This, thankfully I can do, unlike the much more terrible “identify the picture that corresponds with the impossibly blurry character” I had to go through trying to get my qunar.com train booking account set up, or the “deconstruct the blurry chinese character into its components” which google images claims exists as well. I click on whatever wavy, struck through character they ask me to, slide a little slider all the way to the right, and finally convince the computer that I am, in fact, human (muahaha?). Here, finally I meet my true enemy - the real-name verification system. It pops up on a screen, taking me to Alipay’s verification site. 

6) Meeting my Archnemesis

Another registration? Urg. Okay. I’ve heard rumors of this. Something with passport pictures. I can do this. Thankfully here’s a 外国 button, *finally*. Once again, I put in my phone number, and get a text verification code (man, they’re obsessed with these). I pass onto another page, where I need to input all my personal information, including scans of my passport information page and my Chinese residency permit. I had both, so I put them in. I gave my Chinese address associated with my bank account, and move forward. The next page asks for my bank account. This, once again, I can do. I click the “your bank” drop-down menu, scroll down to look for ABC (Agricultural Bank of China, our illustrious bank in which all our stipends are deposited), aaaaaand………. nothing. I look again. I turn off google translate to see if maybe it translated wrong. Nope. In between the ICBCs, China Merchant Banks, China Industrial Banks, etc etc, my Agricultural Bank of China was nowhere to be found.

7) Defeat

I frantically restarted the process, and was stuck at the same place. I started looking for alternate buy buttons on Taobao, anything that would let me use the money already in my account. Nothing. Even adding the item to my online shopping cart prompted the verification procedure. Jesus. After a long time of trying, I decided I was done. Clearly, Taobao was not meant for mere mortal foreigners such as myself. From behind a thin veil of water in my eyes, I can make peace, and go back to bargaining for too small socks at the corner store. 

8) A New Hope

At this point, a friend with both the qualities of being effectively fluent in Chinese *and* not having a Chinese ID card number (therefore having faced the 老外 struggle before) jumped in to help. We went through the steps above several times, and he confirmed that I haven’t missed anything. He turned to Alipay’s customer service, who mentioned a curious point - apparently, the Agricultural Bank of China (and ABC alone) could not verify bank accounts if the names were written in non-Chinese writing systems. For some reason, this was a problem only with ABC, and represents another incident in the long line of things that make it difficult to trust my bank (a fellow Yenchinger was required to produce his (US) social security number while opening his bank account and was sent away when he refused to give it out, for example). It was impossible for me to complete the process with my current bank. 

9) The Slog Continues

So, I go to ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China - the largest bank in the world, apparently. Yay government-required support for SOEs I guess?) the next morning. What they lacked in having an ATM 2 minutes away from my dorm, they made up for in being seemingly more legitimate, having english-speaking ATMs, being able to actually process non-Chinese names, and having a generally more appealing red-ish tone in their logo than the agricultural green in ABC’s. As usual, this process took another few hours, partially because in general in Beijing the average wait to see a teller at a bank as a private customer is never under an hour, and opening a bank account requires the signing of over 12 similar-looking documents probably giving away my first-born (you know, usual banking practice). To avoid a mistake I made with ABC (something I didn’t bother elaborating on to not make this terrible Odyssey any longer in print), I specifically asked for online banking, and after several other signed documents, I received my little electronic sign-in dongle, a USB device used to authenticate (?) online banking (??) logins. 

10) The end is in sight

My heartbeat quickened. I rushed back to my dorm room and went to Taobao, triggering its authentication desires. I quickly passed through the registration pages, uploaded my passport, put in my name (which I had to try a few times, because of course “Kevin Schwarzwald” by itself doesn’t work, but “SCHWARZWALDKEVIN” does - always make sure it’s the same as what’s written on your bank account) and my bank account number, SUCCESS. Within a few days, so Alipay tells me, a small amount of money will be deposited in my account, and I just need to tell them what it is. The next day, 0.14 kuai landed in my bank account. I told Alipay. They told me to wait another 1-2 days for final verification.

I was excited.

11) Glorious, glorious victory

Finally, I received the beautiful message from Alipay that my authentication had gone through. After a crazy emotional rollercoaster that wouldn’t throw me off for over 8 hours spread over at least a week, I was now integrated into the world of Chinese online shopping. My first purchase was an air filter (by these guys —> they’re cool, apparently they’ve made one that’s just as effective as the ‘professional’ 5000kuai+ ones for just 200) that’s now derpily gracing my desk. Socks and a diplomacy board are on their way. If there is any moral to my story it's that just as you become complacent as a foreigner, China will find a way to surprise you. Also that the bureaucracy is great as long as you are exactly the target audience that it wishes to speed through, and if you are not part of that group, even the simplest of things, like signing up for online shopping, might turn into a multi-hour/day/week affair. (Also that consumerism is bad or something? Probably?).

Derpy air filter, meet desk

PS: 

As far as I can tell, everyone who has attempted this process has a different story. One friend apparently even managed to get it done with ABC, and many spent far less than 8 hours trying to set this up. Regulations and procedures seem to change on a relatively frequent basis as well, meaning that the process is basically a crap shoot anytime you try it. 

Orange Skies in the Morning, Sailor Stay in Bed with a Mask On

My first memory of Beijing was a literal bad taste. Two years ago, on a four-day trip North from Hangzhou, where I was staying for much of the summer, we stepped out of the airport terminal to head to the waiting tour bus and I made the mistake of opening my mouth. I instantly perceived a stale, metallic taste, as if the entire atmosphere had spent too much time in the shut basement of a power plant. This taste followed me around the entire trip, despite our best efforts couldn’t be washed out with water, overly spiced chuar, or even baijiu, and didn’t truly leave my mouth until we landed back in Hangzhou.

This is my sexy face.

So far, we’ve been hit with similar experiences. The AQI on a normal day in Beijing seems to hover in the low three-digits, technically in the ‘Lightly Polluted’ range (according to the Chinese ministry of health – comparisons between countries is difficult due to the different types of particulate matter included and the different calculations used). It's easy for me to tell without even looking at my phone's AQI forecast because the sunlight hitting my white bedsheets, naturally close to white as well, leaves a light orange color. But, for example during the last day of the National Day Golden Week (a week-long state holiday) when pretty much everyone that had a car was in it driving back from vacation, this index jumped up to almost 450 – “severely polluted,” essentially, stay home, board up your windows, and wait for the zombies to come. China watchers (or just people anywhere near a facebook news feed last week) might remember the ’50-lane traffic jam’ from that day. We didn’t leave without industrial-strength 3M masks on our faces, but our throats were still in pain if we made the mistake of breathing in too deeply, visibility was one (admittedly large) Beijing street block, and we developed a cough so common among foreigners in the area that it has its own Chinese name – the 北京咳 (Beijing Ke).

 

Pollution in an outer Beijing suburb

Of course, we all hear legends of the air pollution in China, we’ve seen pictures of 100-yard visibility and masses of people wearing surgical masks, but it’s quite different to actually feel the pollution in person. You may have noticed, if you’ve been following my facebook, that most of my pictures of the trip so far have featured blue skies, infinite visibility, beautiful landscapes, basically the kind of weather that would come from a nice late fall trip to Southern California. Well, readers, do you remember how (if you went to college in places with real winters) on the first non-winter day of the new year, when suddenly the main quads were filled with students basking in the first rays of happiness in months? And how suddenly the entire admissions department’s photo team came crawling out of the woodworks to create that year’s admissions booklets? Well, my pictures so far have about as much to do with the full Beijing experience as your college admissions booklets do with your winter quarter.

Everyone has an air quality
app on their phones....

See, Beijing is the center of a vast plain containing some of the most polluted cities on the planet. Sure, part of the reason that a blanket the color of chaogan often floats over the North China Plain is geographical. When 3000 years ago the city-state of Ji first built a walled settlement in present-day Beijing, those mountains surrounding the city on two sides and decent access to the sea probably seemed like great strategic assets. Well, one industrial revolution later, the prevailing Easterly winds from the ocean work together with the Jundu Mountains and the Xishan Hills to effectively trap much of the locally produced smog in place.

But the real core of the problem stems from the rapid industrialization that China has undergone over the past few decades. Though the primary cause of air pollution in Beijing proper is vehicle exhaust, it is also severely affected by the industrial output of surrounding Hebei province, home of over a quarter of China’s steel output, almost a third of China’s coal-burning, among other fun polluting things. It doesn’t help that Beijing has been pushing its own factories and industrial plants to the province to better the air quality in the capital.

The results are staggering – over a million people are estimated to die prematurely every year in China due to air pollution (for context, that number is roughly 1/7^th of the total death rate). And there doesn’t seem to be much of a chance for any near-term reprieve from the deadly smog. Though China is legally very progressive with regards to environmental legislation, little of the in theory legally binding pollution standards are ever respected. Corruption is rampant (as long as it’s cheaper to buy the inspector than to buy an air filter, this problem will never get solved) and often the central government’s authority is diluted through the massive layers of bureaucracy between the Politburo and local officials. In addition, China is far from being a modern, post-industrial society. It’s GDP per capita is still at most 1/4^th the level of that in Western Europe and the United States, and this type of pollution-heavy, industrial-heavy growth is still the only way homo sapiens has developed to achieve that higher number. It’s hard to convince the small industrial worker in Qinhai Province to care about environmental protection that might slow down economic growth when he’s still living in abject poverty. And, now that the world economic crisis is over, energy-heavy and pollution-heavy industries that China does better than the rest of the world (such as steel) will be roaring strong again.

There is some hope, however (well, at least for Chinese citizens). Smog has gotten better in Beijing, at least, over the past few years, and decreasing dangerous pollution to acceptable levels during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will require more than just short-term shutting off of industry to achieve (winter is traditionally the worst in terms of pollution, both due to temperature inversions due to the surrounding mountains and the peaks in energy demand due to heating requirements). The government does care - the optimistic will say because it doesn't want its people to die, and the cynical can note that the Chinese leaders stuck in Beijing's Zhongnanhai government complex have to send their kids to school in the same deadly smog as the rest of the country (pod-playgrounds notwithstanding). But the long-term “solution” will be the same that dumped all of the pollution on China in the first place. Europe’s industrial revolution culminated with such things as the “Great London Smog” of 1952, which killed 12,000 over a period of only 4 days before industrial capacity was outsourced towards developing countries, most notably China. And China seems ready to repeat this phenomena – labor costs are already too high to support industrial labor in such former industrial hot zones as Shenzhen, and factories in Hebei are already starting to move to the next frontier of development in Africa and South-East Asia. And so the great circle of industrial life continues.

If there’s one, small benefit to this brown mess, it’s that when the wind shifts from West to East and the cold gusts from Mongolia push out the smog over the ocean the city becomes truly magnificent. After a week of construction masks, there are few more uplifting things in the world than walking outside, taking a deep breath, and seeing the impeccably blue sky above you while being lifted up by a strong Northerly breeze. And that weather motivates you like few things in the world to go out and do something. This is the explanation behind my facebook album – the second the weather turns beautiful, plans are made almost by themselves, and we rush towards the parks, the mountains, the natural and man-made beauty which Beijing seems to have in incredible excess… as long as you can see it through the haze.

“No Love, Do Not Take Away, Do Not Destroy Everything” – A Day in Tianjin

It’s a Golden Week, a week’s worth of vacation because of the National Holiday, and I’ve been stuck in Beijing. Sure, I’ve had damn good Peking Duck, wandered around Beijing Design Week, had some pretty bourgey Chuar, and took advantage of the some of the last beautiful days here by strolling around what would be a friggin gorgeous city if you ignored the orange tint of the air, but the traveller in me was getting incredibly restless. So, I, with an intrepid fellow voyager, went to Tianjin.

One of the greatest things about China post-2008/2009-stimulus is the amazing ease with which a poor-ish traveller can get anywhere. All three major train stations in Beijing are accessible by pretty direct subway paths from where I live (though it might take an hour. Have I said it before? This city is gigantic), and the Jing-Jin high-speed railway means that Tianijn, almost 100 miles away, is a 30-minute train ride. And it costs $8.50 each way!

Shanghai South Station was a minor madhouse. I say minor, because all in all it flowed pretty well. It was crowded, there were probably many thousands of people in it, but it wasn’t a rabid sea of people like it would’ve been had we travelled on the first day of the weeklong break.  The building itself was so big and the air quality so bad this day, though, that it was even hazy inside the dome of the waiting room. Train boarding procedures were annoyingly similar to those in America (line up at a “gate” some time before boarding to have your ticket checked, all rush onto the train at the same time despite it being parked there for a half hour), but at least they don’t bother check your tickets onboard afterwards (take note, silly boarding procedures at Chicago Union Station).

"Please note the location of the
50 emergency exits..."

 

Look! Twains!

We got on the train (ahh, technology “transferred” German technology), kicked our seats back a few notches, and were off. The train hit 300km/h (186mph) in a matter of minutes, but you wouldn’t notice it from the inside. The acceleration was perfectly smooth, and the train made its top speed seem like the most normal thing in the world – no shudders, no exhilarating rush of speed, just a pretty chill ride that just happened to be at 186mph. In a sense, it was normal. This high-speed rail line had a train in each direction roughly every 15 minutes during the day, and was paralleled by another a dozen miles to the West that hosted the same. It didn’t hit me how polluted this day was until we started gliding through the countryside ten minutes after leaving Beijing South. The weather was technically clear, with no clouds to speak of, but visibility didn’t extend further than a mile or two. All features beyond this limit faded into the gray-beige haze that lay like a blanket over the region.

 

Those aren't clouds....

Hey look, a development!

I was personally surprised, after the large amount of press given to the Jing-Jin-Ji (京津冀 – taken from the abbreviations for Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province) megalopolis project, at the amount of countryside still extant between the two largest cities in Northern China. A consequence of the more centrally planned top-down approach to city growth employed by the Chinese government meant that (recently, at least) development usually happened in clusters of high-rises instead of large areas of low-rise sprawl characteristic of American suburbs. So, despite the occasional slender, 30-story-tall building emerging out of the haze like the masts of old-timey ships through a heavy fog bank, the majority of the distance we covered was through fields, older villages, and the occasional small, planted forest. We passed the shells of two high-speed rail stations, half-completed in preparation for some future planned communities to rise around them. Currently they were surrounded by little other than the freeway that the rail line paralleled and the Beijing/Tianjin countryside.

Our first sign of leaving the countryside once more was passing through the first such development along the rail line to be completed – the city of Wanqing, composed as far as I could tell entirely of residential high-rises. It likely housed a not insignificant commuter population that relied on the 25-minute rail connection to the capital to make their home further from Beijing’s astronomical housing prices and oppressive congestion. Ours was a non-stop service, so the train flew by Wanqing’s station without a second thought.

Roughly a half hour after leaving Beijing South, we made it to Tianjin Station, a masterpiece of early neo-futurist communist architecture (yes, I made that up, but I can't find any (English) source for its construction and architecture, but it looks really cool) situated on a bend of the Hai River in central Tianjin. The effect of leaving the station was well done and not unlike the great placement of Venice’s railway terminal – leaving the station, we were treated with a magnificent view of the mess of architecture that defined Tianjin – the bend of the river across from the train station hosted the colonial-era Jinwan plaza building, with some of the city’s many supertall skyscrapers rising up behind it.

 

The view from the train station's plaza

Tianjin Railway Station and the Hai River

I’ll keep this “short” and focus on mainly two sights that we passed through: St. Joseph’s Cathedral and the Five Great Avenues. I’m not doing this because the rest of the city isn’t interesting—on the contrary, I could write another five pages about all the quirks and little things that make Tianjin worth a visit—but saving you, the reader, from what is probably a pretty boring bit of my diary, I will limit my discussion to the things I saw with what I thought were the most interesting backstories.

At the end of Binjian Street (Tianjin's main shopping street) was St. Joseph’s Cathedral (locally known as the Xikai (西开) – ‘open to the west’, I believe – Cathedral), the largest church in the area. It was built by French Jesuits in 1917 within a Catholic community likely still haunted by the Tianjin Church Incident/Massacre/Event/whatever it is currently called in 1870, in which a mob, angry about the Church’s alleged rather ‘active’ orphan collecting activities in the city (and also angry about missionary activities in general as a symptom of Western involvement) attacked the Catholic presence in the city. At the end of the day (This apparently included the French Consul ramming his ceremonial saber into the desk of the local Chinese magistrate in anger at a mob attack on the Wanghailou Church, and subsequently shooting his assistant. A different version of the story says that Consul Fontanier actually shot the magistrate himself in public, sparking the riot, while an entirely different one claims that Fontainer knocked on the door with his sword, then ran out yelling ‘I’m not afraid of the Chinese people’ before shooting a few and getting killed by the crowd. So it goes with history, I guess.), 60 people were dead, including the Consul and many church-affiliated people. Anyways. The context is given because I can only assume that this ‘incident’ is the background behind this pretty humorous (well, at least out of context) sign at the entrance of the cathedral (pictured below) – do not destroy everything, indeed (this isn't even a poor translation, as far as I can tell, the original Chinese says the same thing).

"No Love, Do Not Take Away,
Do Not Destroy Everything"

Catholic Power in China

Our third destination was the 五大道 (5 great avenues) area Southeast of the city center. This is the center of the lasting impact of the colonial powers that once ran this city. More so than anywhere else in China, the concessions were made into small versions of their respective home countries. Due to the Chinese defeat in the Second Opium War, the Treaty of Tianjin gave the usual suspects (England, France, Japan, Germany, Russia) and some unexpected new faces (Belgium, Italy, and, yes, Austria-Hungary, this is what sending one ship and a couple of marines to a war got you those days. The United States got a concession too, but not as a result of this treaty) large swaths of the city to do with what they pleased, and they went to town with ‘em (so to speak). A stunning array of massive British, French, and German-style mansions lined the streets, presumably built for various merchants and officials that effectively ran the city for several decades. Funnily enough, many of these became the private homes of some of the various warlords (or their concubines) that controlled China between the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and the (first) reunification by the KMT in 1928. There’s probably a weird, but fascinating story behind their moves to Tianjin. Will keep you updated if I find it.

 

Europe, China, who knows at this point

This place is *entirely* filled with yuppie restaurants and stores

There are even small cafes everywhere!

Tianjin has a completely different feel from Beijing, Instead of the ordered and almost oppressive feel of the Beijing grid and its state-dominated architecture, Tianjin gives off much more of an anything-goes impression, at least in terms of the evolution of the city. Massive skyscrapers unapologetically rise up between historic old colonial European buildings; the modern Chinese buildings dare to experiment with architecture more than their counterparts in the capital. Traffic lights are still a new concept that hasn’t seemed to capture the interest of most planners. And, likely as a natural consequence of the winding river through the center of the city, street patterns are laid out much less exactly in a grid, giving a more intimate feel to the older neighborhoods and a higher perceived skyscraper density (since they’re not lined up one after each other, more can be seen at the same time). Finally, the old-style European architecture is gorgeous, though its origins of course aren’t (take note, this douchey British colonial apologist – ironically enough, “like finding cold beer in a 2^nd-tier city restaurant” is how most people feel when they find a semi-decent restaurant in London).  

All in all, Tianjin is a great trip. A whole different character from Beijing, it’s a nice way to get out of the capital for a day and catch some sea air. 10/10, would go again (especially when the damn AQI isn’t at 250+…).

 

Hey, pollution makes for some kickass sunsets

#myfilterisorganic

(PS: The area of the insane chemical explosion is roughly 30 miles from the center of the main part of Tianjin, in the “Binhai New Area” by the Port of Tianjin, so this area isn’t threatened by this and similar terrible consequences of lax industrial oversight)