Blow by Blow- 12 march

12/3/11

First Saturday spent in Tianjin city. We boarded the bus together, much to the horror of the bus driver, who noticed that there were so many foreigners squeezing themselves up the bus, many of them speaking mandarin with a strange accent and mispronunciations aplenty.

Taking the bus in Tianjin is very much like in Singapore. There are numerous bus lines, and fares, just that all the signs are in Chinese and I don’t know any of the places the bus drives to. Fortunately, we stay in the city suburbs, and getting around the city will not be a problem, given the many different bus routes that pass through the area.

Where is the picture of the bus?
Oh ya, here

That's how the bus looks like. Inside? No photos. Sorry. Imagine SBS/SMRT with older seats, movable windows and single card entry point at the entrance. The place to drop coin stays. Some people staying here get about the bus using this card, which I bought as well

The card is cheaper than paying by cash. I think I saved quite a bit of money by paying discounted fares on the bus rides. This card, however, does not entitle rides on the subway. Feel free to purchase the card if you're staying in TianJin of extended period beyond 2 months or you would need to take the bus regularly. I still have about RMB 10+ leftover which I haven't used yet.
 

Our first stop today was the city’s food street. We got off from the bus stop and walked through the city streets to the food street. As we walked through the streets together, curiously there were no people looking at us, unlike in other places, we would have drawn stares all around. I believe the people here are used to seeing foreign students coming to Tianjin to study; some have taken the liberty to guess where we were from. Along the way, the bus passed by a few universities within 30 minutes, showing the number of universities set up in the area.

Tianjin is starting to look like Boston to me. Boston is an American university town, with many of the prestigious Ivy League schools located in the vicinity, whereas Tianjin is a Chinese city with many education avenues and high end research facilities as well, making it a university town with history. I guess there’s where the appeal of studying in Tianjin is. The visitor attractions mostly have something to do with history and culture, which promotes an overall culture for learning, which is beneficial to anybody, even if they’re not caught up with studying.

After writing that I felt that was quite true of me. Photo of the streets

News agency office. Pity I didn't manage to take the whole building. Another

I don't know what this is. I thought the short old building in front of it looked kinda cool, so I took it. Looks like a bunch of shophouses

So we walked through the food street, sampling the wide variety of food available, eating the popular food along the way.

Food street pictures! Here

To prove that we are not the only group of students who like to visit places that no tourists would go, this is a picture of a tour group making its stop in the food street. There are tourists too. 

The food street we went to was called 南市食品街， which means south city food street. After being intially overwhelmed by the number of people who would visit such a place,a photo of the interior. I liked the use of wildlife in the advertisement. 

While a dangerous animal feeds itself with its prey, another feeds itself too. It's pretty deep. Sorry if you don't get it, cause it's not relevant. 
Slacking.

And more slacking. Came from a chap who was selling taiwanese oyster omelette. Hopefully his boss doesn't catch pictures of these: 

A "honey art" master who set up his own small stall in the food street. He was interviewed once in a magazine for his craft. 

More food street photos. We only managed to walk the first level of the street, leaving about 2 levels to go. 

 

Next we walked through the relatively quiet city centre to get to the old street.

Stopped by a post box on the way. They open the box 4 times a day just to handle the amount of mail they receive each day. No wonder Singapore Post has to resort to opening loans to keep in business. Too many people email and text, they don't write letters anymore. And people still buy envelopes. Why would you buy so many if you're not using them?

Some poor chap delivering stuff (which looks heavy) on his bicycle (looks overloaded). There was another guy who had more stuff on his bicycle compared to his, but his photo isn't here. Bicycles still take some percentage of the road, unlike Singapore. Explains all the cars with single drivers on the roads in the rush hour. Heck, what is wrong with cycling?

Relatively disused traffic light that we walked past. Traffic lights in Tianjin have just a single light for red, yellow and green, unlike Singapore, where each color has its own light. In Singapore you won't unused traffic lights, they're taken down as soon as the change in roads are complete. I liked the broken glass window on this one. Looked like a tie at some point. 

Abandoned street corner on the way to the old street. Liked the contast of the buildings, foreground old, short buildings, background tall, climbing skyscrapers. Awesome stuff. 

Some of us had self portraits done by an artist who charged 10 RMB for each one. Not only that, he was pretty fast too!

Gary getting his self portait done by the artist. The way he drew us was the way he saw us as a person. How true.

View of the old street. This is part of 古文化街, just that we walked a much quieter street, that's all. 

The section we visited didn't have much tourists, so the group could really buy and buy and buy, just within the first weekend. Nasty.

I’m coming back one day to these places. They are really, really beautiful

Guitar lessons on the street! I haven't seen that in Singapore yet. The teacher was some well known Chinese guitarist, but I haven't heard of him yet. Nice place to how music lessons, actually.

The outside of the street. The air is so dusty that we can't even see the colors of the sky when the sun goes down. 

Outside a restaurant near the street area. The same size in Singapore can be used as a fountain area, but this is the reception area of a restaurant. Imagine the sheer difference in land size. WOAH