In Tianjin this sign constitutes false advertising.

This weekend I made a quick jaunt up to Tianjin (or Tientsin for you British Imperial types) with friends for a mission with two primary objectives. This first objective was to examine a factory and make sure that the products they made didn’t spontaneously combust after one use; the second was to check out the Tianjin International Bicycle Expo.

It started when I woke at an ungodly 5:45 in the morning to meet my friends in order to catch the 7:53am train to Tianjin. We chose to travel on the fast train from Qingdao to Tianjin. Travel time was estimated to be about 5 hours. Thanks to my friend’s array of hookups and powerful guanxi unknown to the average expat, we bamboozled our way into the first class car. Then the fun began. Our breakfast consisted of horrible yet enlightening Brut champagne at 8:30am sharp. This was followed by petit dejune consisting of Yanjing beer at 9:00am through till 10am. Finally there was a brunch of yet more Yangjing beer from 10 onwards.

Here’s the damage:

You’d think that we would be pretty ruined by the time we arrived, but thanks to Yanjing’s miserly alcohol content at 2.8%, the only thing that was ruined was my desire to drink more Yangjing. When we arrived the air was like a combination of WW1 trenches and Mexican bean convention.

After checking into the hotel, and more beers, we made our way to the bike show. It was free to get in, which although nice, but should’ve rang alarm bells. The show was indeed lame but not without its highlights:

Front wheel drive bike!

Heart Wheels!

They had this old-school bike showcase, quite ironic as they were probably plucked fresh off the streets of Tianjin, cause I didn’t see anyone outside riding anything that looked built after the Cultural Revolution.

The bike made of bamboo (according to my friend these are not that rare)

The bike that will eat your nuts if you crash it.

Someone who’s nuts still haven’t been eaten decided to modernize that design.

This is an advertisement for bicycle seats, it’s double awesome because both the name and what it makes you think of. (hint: not bicycle seats)

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. (truck pic from stewsnews)

After the Bike Show closed and the security guards literally screamed at everyone to get out (at 4:30pm I might add), we decided to go on a mission for food, and then rest to prepare for our only night in the big T. We started off on Tianjin’s bar street. I’m not sure if this place actually has a name other than that, but if so, it doesn’t deserve one. Consisting mostly of KTV’s, and Chinese bars, we settled into a bar called Cooter’s. This place had a sign outside that claimed to be American owned and operated, and with rock emanating from the speakers we figured it was worth a shot. American owned and operated turned out to mean that there was an American guy who wandered behind the bar and poured a drink for himself before leaving to another bar, and the owner being the Chinese wife of some guy who lived in the states. Since we were the only customers in the place at about 10pm on a Saturday night, I asked one of the bar maids what time it normally got busy. Her failed attempt to save face was, she didn’t know cause it changed every night, and there were lots of people there the night before, maybe they were too tired to come out again. Right. Anyways, the bar was as lively as a cemetery, but the food was good, the drinks were priced ok, and the music stayed a consistent mix of classic and alternative rock. There was also soccer on the TV which helped assuage my friends from across the pond. I suppose it would be a decent dive to go if you’re stuck in Tianjin for the night and you want to escape from the hotel bar. When the American guy returned for more booze, we got him to tell us where in this city of 10 million on a Saturday might have some life (or people without penises). He directed us to two places, Alibaba, and Si Tong.

After the soccer game was over, we went to check out Alibaba. Damn well hidden, and there’s no real sign or people/taxis loitering outside, but my spider senses lead us in. The door was a wormhole to another dimension. A dimension filled with dirty hippies. Hippy students, but these days those two things are one and the same. I made one of my friends feel my rage in foosball, and we decided that instead of discussing Trotsky or Marx, we would rather be staring at boobs. It was time to try Sitong.

On arrival at about 1:30, the place was half full, they were playing hip-hop and I was instantly reminded of Jazz Club in Qingdao. Then the Filipino cover band came on. Ok, let me make this clear, I have no problem with cover bands, and I have no problem with Filipino people. But what I don’t understand is why every freaking band in this country is both. Also, why do they all play the same damn set list? Is there some high school course in the Philippines that teaches how to be a cover band as basic life skills? I understand that many Pilipino people are musically talented, but why the hell do they only do other people’s shit songs? Why can’t they try to make some original tunes? It would sure sound a hell of a lot better than the broken revisions of Hotel California, and the crap-hop of yesteryear. So I blocked them out, and tried to make a fool of myself with some Swedish girl, but realized that I was far too sober to do my awesome pick-up line that I was a three-legged traveling banana salesman from Madagascar.

The next day I was on my primary mission to the factory in the small city of Hebei. I was picked up in a black Audi A6, so that was good news. We had some trouble getting out of Tianjin because some clever engineer decided to rebuild all the roads at the same time. The poor driver who wasn’t from Tianjin was following his GPS screen and it kept taking us down these streets that would literally stop at a giant hole in the ground with a bunch of construction workers scrambling around as we honked at them for no apparent reason. I didn’t really budget enough time for the excursion, because the train out of Tianjin was at 4:50pm, and upon telling this to the salesman who was accompanying me, I could see the beads of sweat form on his brow and his voice start to shake. He suggested that Hebei was a nice place to spend the night. I reassured him by saying that I didn’t care if I missed the train, but I would definitely like to try to get back on time.

I arrived at the factory, had an amazing lunch that consisted of great Chinese food, more than a few beers and some wine as is typical of Chinese business lunches. We then did a quick tour, talked some business smack and we we’re on our way back to Tianjin. The ride is about 1.5 hours without traffic. Unfortunately when we got to the highway, it was closed because cause some douchebag Beijing politician was using it. Apparently this happens with regular intervals up in the Beijing highway system, so I have even more reason to never live there. Once we actually got on the highway, the driver told us that even if we were a plane we wouldn’t make it, but then he tried to prove it by driving an average of 180km/h the whole way back. Arriving downtown we got a cab as my salesman/guide said that a cab driver would know the best way to get to the train station. After almost running down a few cyclists, senior pedestrians and some amputees, we made it to the station. Just as I got to the gates where I could see the platform, I got the call. “It’s too late”, my friend told me. The train had just pulled out of the station. I was off by about 2 minutes. It’s strange how history repeats itself. With this epic fail, we “flew” to the airport, where I got a ticket to Qingdao, for the last flight out of the potato shack that is Tianjin International Airport.

After a mind numbing 3 hours of waiting, the flight was both on time and short, and I made it back to Qingdao so that I could get to work, and by get to work, I mean sleep for 12 hours.

For those that have never been to Tianjin, here’s the best advice you will ever get, don’t go. Take Beijing, subtract all cultural institutions, nightlife and dining, add a sprinkling of falling apart British architecture held over from the treaty days, and double the traffic and pollution. The only redeeming feature I could get from it is that the people speak a clear dialect of mandarin that isn’t difficult to understand for someone who’s Chinese is still junk. Everything is sprawled out, there is no downtown. When we were looking for a restaurant in one of the newly built up areas, it went something like this: Pizza Hut, McDonalds, KFC, repeat X number of times till you succumb to the grease gods. One of the best comments made on the trip was when we saw a Maserati parked outside of a KTV. One of my friends aptly remarked “If you had all that money to buy a Maserati, wtf are you still doing in Tianjin?”.

Filed under: tourist shit