The Buildings Loom Tall

TIANJIN, China – How important is a city's architecture?

Based on an afternoon wandering around China's fourth largest, buildings have the ability to transform the way people live.

Tianjin is a city of over 10 million on the Sea River – a delta that leads into the Pacific Ocean. It serves as Beijing's port, its strategic location playing a role in decisive moments in Chinese history. Here a six-nation force began its march toward Beijing in 1901, shooting and killing their way to rescue a few dozen foreigners surrounded by thousands of angry Boxers, eager to drive foreigners
from the Middle Kingdom.

The Boxer Rebellion failed, and western influence continued in Tianjin. The city had a large foreign concession, an area of the town that served as a giant embassy, a place where the laws of China didn't apply. The Japanese, Germans, French and British all lived here.

There were other concessions, in Beijing, Xiamen, and Shanghai, but many of these buildings were destroyed by development in the People's Republic of China. In Tianjin they remain largely intact, thanks to local preservation movements and a city with few other tourist drawcards.

Today the foreign concession is governed by the Chinese, but they here they must bow to West. The streets are still narrow two-lanes with tall trees shading the sidewalks. There are no huge avenues or ring roads that cut through the center of most Chinese cities, a massive concrete strip that can take more than a minute to cross. On a 95-degree day, I prefer the shade.

I visited on a weekend, and the streets were nearly deserted. The types of tenants in these buildings – a mix of banks and foreign-Chinese joint ventures – were so different than the places that occupied them a century ago. Each building had a preservation placard on the outside, which listed the business, former occupation and preservation status. Several times they aligned. An old Japanese bank is now the Bank of China, the British bank the Construction Bank. And people in the concession still keep business hours, not showing up on evenings or the weekend.

The old foreign concession is a just part of Tianjin. Elsewhere, the city sprawls as the rest of China does. On one side of the concession is the Sea River, elsewhere it is bordered by huge roads. But here among the old marble and brick buildings, stately architecture and shady trees have created a quieter, more peaceful alternative.