Whisenhunt: Visiting China's 3rd-largest city
By DONALD W. WHISENHUNT
Editor’s note: Donald W. Whisenhunt is an emeritus professor of history at Western Washington University. He is lecturing for several weeks at Nanking University in China and will share his experiences in this column.
As I write this, my wife, Betsy, and I have been in China for four days. We were amazed that we had no jet lag, something that was very serious the first time we came here. I begin my lectures Friday, so we will see how much energy I have this first time.
Since we were here the last time, there are so many changes that we can hardly comprehend them. Despite the growth in population and the existence of hundreds of new high-rise buildings, we feel very comfortable. Betsy commented that it seems we were just here a few months ago.
The campus of Nankai University, where we live, is a massive campus that has gone through as many changes as the city around us. Even so, we lived here for five months 14 years ago, we visited again for a long weekend in 1999, and despite the time between visits, the campus seems familiar and comfortable. We live in the same building where we lived 14 years ago, and the dining room where we took so many meals still seems the same. The building has been renovated since our first visit and is much more comfortable.
We feel as safe and secure in this city as we have anywhere in the world we've lived. We seldom see another Western face, but most of the Chinese ignore us. They are very friendly and helpful if we ask, but they do not bother us. As we stood in line at the Tianjin airport to go through passport control, there may have been as many as 300 people standing in line. We looked around, and Betsy and I both observed that there was not one non-Asian face.
The city of Tianjin is a city most Americans we meet know nothing about. That's interesting since it's the third-largest city behind Beijing and Shanghai. It has somewhere between 10 million and 13 million people, depending on which source we use. Tianjin is about 75 miles southeast of Beijing and serves as the port city for Beijing.
Our friend and guide, Xiao Jun, continues to refer to Tianjin as a "traditional" city. He means that the people here are as interested in development and profit as any people in China, but, at the same time, they hold more to the traditional values of China than the people in Beijing or the industrial development areas of South China.
Tianjin was once known as Tientsin and was the location of many foreign concessions. Xiao tells us that Tianjin had 13 foreign countries with concessions, while Shanghai had only nine concessions. Concessions were areas of China that were controlled by foreign powers after they forced the Chinese government to give in. This was in the days before the fall of the last emperor in the revolution of 1911.
On the third day we were here, we went to the area where the Italians had their concession. Today, the Chinese have rebuilt it as a tourist attraction with Italian, French, and Bavarian architecture and restaurants. It's a strange experience for those who know the way the concessions were run by the foreigners; now they are attractions for locals and tourists alike.
We know all of our days to come will be as interesting as these last few days have been.
• Donald W. Whisenhunt lives in Sycamore. Reach him by e-mail at donw69@comcast.net.
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