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Other entries in Tanggu

Tanggu, Port City #1

On Sunday we embarked on our first venture outside of the safety of big city Beijing (with a higher concentration of English speakers). The train station was our first reality check, with hardly anyone speaking English and absolutely no information on the schedules in English. As we've often lucked into, a nice person behind us in line helped translate for us and somehow we got a ticket for a train to Tianjin on a train leaving in 40 minutes. We would have to switch to a bus for the last 30 km to Tanggu. We crammed through the doors to the station with about 50 others, pushing our bags through the security scanner and luckily finding them on the other end. The train was very nice, clean and smooth, but packed. I think there was probably a place to check our luggage, but of course we didn't know that and the only place for our bags was in the aisle. The attendants came through offering yummy goodies like processed pork in a tube, pickled egg, sour sweet baked goods, and a big bowl of ramen noodles. Stacey and I passed on that and ate our oranges and pears instead while discussing whether we really were on the right train to Tianjin. We weren't real sure until we arrived.

We arrived at the Tianjin station and stopped at the first restaurant we could. I like that Stacey is decisive on things like that. When you need to eat, you need to eat. So we laughingly pointed at the pictures of the food we wanted that were posted up on the wall. Stacey was impressively able to communicate no meat in her fried rice and we ate heartily while being stared at. I've never quite experienced this level of being novel. In a culture where staring is not rude, it's quite fascinating to be stare-worthy. We usually just smile and wave back, which generally gets a smile and a laugh.

We managed to cram onto an overpacked bus to Tanggu, once again not sure we were heading in the right direction. A compass I just happened to have on a NOAA survival whistle confirmed the right direction, which reassured us.

Arriving in Tanggu, we were left off in the center of town, right on the riverfront (more on this spot later). We got a taxi and tried to head to a cheap hotel near the Ferry terminal (our plan was to take a ferry to Dalian the next day) that was listed in Lonely Planet. Only to find out that it and the three following entries no longer exist. China is changing that rapidly that the Lonely Planet of 2002 is completely obsolete. Our driver dropped us off at Victory Hotel, a three star totally fancy hotel with marble floors, revolving doors and a doorman. Not what we were looking for. But things always work out in the end. After negotiating with the hostesses for a bit and explaining to them that we really didn't want to pay more than 200 yuan ($25), she pointed us next door to a no star hotel with rooms for 128 yuan ($15). Perfect!! We used all the amenities of the 3 star hotel and stayed in the totally decent no star. We spent the night hanging out in the coffee shop having real coffee (tea for stacey) and salads.

Monday morning we headed to TEDA, the Tianjin Economic Development Area, a totally surreal experience. We had no idea what we'd find, but stacey was interested in seeing the factories and maybe workers. We picked a place to start, Pacific Village, and were planning to walk around from there. Pacific Village turned out to be a housing development for foriengers working with companies in TEDA. We pretended to be interested in renting a house and got a tour of these huge 4 bedroom furnished homes around a pleasant lake with views of high rise office buildings. All going for $3000 a month (I'm sure could have been negotiated down).

We couldn't quite figure TEDA out. It seems to be a government designated area for Economic and Technological development. But other than seemingly vacant office buildings and temporary homes, nothing was going on. There is a big park in the middle, with a tropical plant garden that we visited, but it was a surreal experience being there. Large empty spaces.

We grabbed a late breakfast/ early lunch at a place with no english abilities, which was actually fun. They made a great chicken dish for me, egg and tomato dish for stacey, and a vegetarian noodle dish to share. Totally good.

Then we found out the ferry was not running at all to Dalian. Lack of language abilities prevented us from knowing why. Ok. Plan B. We would take the light rail to Tianjin and then an overnight train to Dalian. Fine.

We wandered around the riverside area, a overbuilt boardwalk with fake beach, piped in sappy boy band music, a statue with a boy peeing into an abalone shell (we were told later that this boy somehow saved the town), arcade, and lights and spouts for a huge water and light show which must happen in the summer. There was also a 30 square foot model of a new apartment development being built on the other side of the river. Across the street from this affair was a huge mall which we wandered through. I've been learning all sorts of insights into the world of labor issues by travelling with stacey. We hit alot more department stores and international 'big box' stores than the average traveler. This time we visited Hymall, we think a Chinese owned big box. Fascinating to try all the different foods and snacks and to see vacuum packed chickens feet, piles of livers, tube worms, seacucumber and turtles for sale.

Ah, now on to the most memorable story of Tanggu. We retired back to the hotel for a relaxing night and decided to try and find the leisure center with swimming pool, hot tub, etc. When we walked into the front lobby of the leisure center, we were accosted by the attendants and convinced to have a nice bath. So we signed up for a traditional chinese scrub and foot massage. First comes the bath. We joined about 10 other naked women and one child in the communal baths. We washed up, brushed our teeth, and jumped in the super hot sauna. We were following the mimed instructions of the attendants. They practically pushed us in the right directions. They mimed to us that the sauna was important before the scrub. So we exited the sauna and in rushed our personal scrubbers, clad in black bra and underwear. They laughed at us, made us lie down on the plastic covered beds, and wrapped thier hands in scrubmitts. Starting on the neck, they worked their way all over our bodies, ridding it of dead and dirty cells. Stacey's scrubber showed her the pile of dead skin- ewww! I'm glad mine didn't show me!

So they worked away, everyone in the room participating in a hillarious conversation except stacey and myself. Eventually we realized they were totally laughing about us! So we laughed back at them. Maybe they were saying how dirty americans are, or maybe laughing at my hairy legs, it didn't really matter. Then they started miming to us whether we wanted a foot massage or whole body massage. I won't describe the gestures, but you can probably imagine it. Finally by going by price (30 yuan vs. 150 yuan) got the point across. So after scrubbing my neck, arms, chest, stomach, back, butt, legs, and feet, she washed all the dead dirty skin off with nice warm water and we were off to the foot massage.

They gave us tiny funny pant and shirt mumu type clothes to wear downstairs in the foot massage room. At first they led us into a private room, but that really wasn't what we were wanting. So we went to the large public room, laughing all the way with the attendants at our mistakes and misunderstandings. This room was huge, with probably 50 beds all facing one of three big screen tvs showing fashion shows, chinese soap opera, or karoke music videos. We settled into our beds in a little nook with comforters that matched our silly outfits. Our masseuses came in, both young women (25 and 21) and got to work. We laughed with them as much as we could. I just laughed at stacey snuggled up in the sheets matching her pajamas. The massage was good, if not alittle hard for my taste. But after all this we were more clean than we'd ever been and totally relaxed.

The last day in Tanggu we went to the Chao Yin Si Temple, an ancient temple (first established in 1404) built by Luis fishermen in honor of Guiyan, a godess they believed saved them from certain death in a really bad storm. We were very lucky to get a taxi driver who spoke alittle English and was interested in helping us learn about the area. He visited the temple with us and became a default guide, explaining about the beliefs and dieties and rituals for goodluck. We honored a woman to our mothers, prayed to Guiyan, and didn't touch the hand of a medicine woman which would mean we would have no daughters (the men readily touched her). On the way back to the city we rocked out with the taxi driver to Indian music and Annie Lennox.

Tanggu was a bit dissapointing marine activity-wise, but was quite enlightening regarding China's rapid economic development. The port was hard to access, but it was huge. Granted, it could only service smaller liners since it was on a river. But that didn't stop the activity. We saw thousands of containers moving to Tanggu by train or truck to be loaded onto the ships. The waterways were quite altered and polluted and I saw no animal life whatsoever.

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