Hi everyone,
We had a lovely day out last Friday as it was the May Day holidays so Jun was off Thursday and Friday,but she had to go back to work on Sunday to make up for one of the days ( you don't get to many days from the government)  We went to Tianjin which is a large city close to the coast  by bullet train which reached a speed of 290 km an hour ( the world zipped by),they are beautiful modern trains very comfortable and smooth. Tianjin is a lovely city and very different to Beijing with a less frenzied feel and a large river running right through it down to the coast and a very large seaport,with ferries running to Japan and Korea. In fact looking up and down the river and at the buildings including their own golden eye,bridges and a Catholic Church you would think you were in London. There is one lovely bridge called Liberation bridge built by the French in 1903,and you can take boat rides from there up and down the river even going  as far as the seaport although that one is an 8 hour round trip.
I find it strange though that if you travel by train you have to show your ID if you are Chinese, or in my case as a foreigner my passport in order to purchase a ticket yet i could drive our car there or take a coach without showing anything to anyone.I was talking to a Asian American couple in the queue  who had asked me if they could get a ticket with other ID i.e a driving licence  as they had not brought their passports with them,which of course they couldn,t  so they had to cancel their trip. We asked if we could get tickets on the next train to leave which was at 11.05 but the booking clerk said no it was sold out so the next one was at 1.05. We were sat in the station waiting and watching the busy world go by and happened to check our tickets at about 12 o clock and discovered she had booked us on the 11.05 which of course had long since left so we had to go back cancel those tickets and get the last two seats on the 1.05 (only in China ha-ha).
We had a long walk through a very large Antique Market  before going over to the area known as the Five Avenues which is where all the foreign delegations lived and is full of old preserved colonial buildings.Some are now private houses,restaurants,offices or empty awaiting refurbishment,plus two that have been converted in to visitor attractions with all the walls inside and out covered in porcelain and many other decorative furnishings.
We walked about till about 6 then went for something to eat and then made our way back to the river area near the station with lots of people walking about,taking photographs, selling goods on the pavements,and releasing loads of lanterns.We then caught the last train back at 10 o clock and just made the last bus from Beijing station back home arriving at 11.30 feeling very tired ha-ha.
 There is a lot of history attached to Tianjin It was Tianjin port that the Western countries using  as an excuse  the alleged boarding of a British ship by the Chinese surrounded the area with gunboats and made them  sign the treaty of Tianjin of 1856 which gave them access to nine concessionary bases on the mainland from which they could conduct trade and sell opium.This created lots of ill feeling and in 1870 a Chinese mob attacked a French Orphanage killing the Priests and Nuns believing that the orphans were being kidnapped and eaten by the foreigners.As a result 20 Chinese were beheaded and peace restored until the Boxer rebellion of 1900.