Tianjin Day Trip from Beijing: Five Great Avenues and Hai River

If your knees need a break from imperial staircases and mountain ramparts, the port metropolis of Tianjin offers the sharpest architectural contrast to Beijing in northern China, and it sits just thirty minutes away by high-speed train. From the 1860s until the mid-twentieth century, nine foreign powers established contiguous riverfront concessions along the bends of the Hai River (Haihe), leaving behind an extraordinary open-air museum of Italian Renaissance villas, French Mansard roofs, British red-brick arcades and neoclassical bank halls. Intercity bullet trains (C-series and G-series) depart Beijing South Station every ten to fifteen minutes from morning until late evening, pulling right into downtown Tianjin Station directly on the riverfront.

A walkable one-day loop from Tianjin Station

Step out of the south exit of Tianjin Station onto Jinwan Plaza and you are immediately standing on the bank of the Hai River, facing the century-old steel bascule span of Jiefang Bridge (Liberation Bridge, built in 1927) and the ornate Century Clock:

1. The Former Italian Style Town (Yishi Fengqingqu): a ten-minute walk west along the north bank brings you into the largest surviving cluster of early-twentieth-century Italian villas outside Italy, centred around Marco Polo Square and the former residence of modern reformer Liang Qichao.
2. Porcelain House (Cifangzi) and Zhang Xueliang's Former Residence: cross the river south into the former French Concession on Chifeng Road to see a 1920s French villa whose entire exterior facade, balconies and garden walls were encrusted by collector Zhang Lianzhi with more than seven hundred million shards of ancient Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing porcelain, complete with porcelain dragons coiling around the roof.
3. The Five Great Avenues (Wudadao): five quiet, plane-tree-shaded parallel streets (Chongqing, Changde, Dali, Munan and Machang roads) lined with more than two thousand garden villas built in British, Spanish, German and Renaissance styles during the 1920s and 1930s; rent a bicycle or walk from Munan Park past the Min Gardens (Minyuan Plaza) sunken colonnade.
4. Ancient Culture Street (Guwenhuajie) and the Tianjin Eye: finish in the late afternoon at the fourteenth-century Tianhou Palace (dedicated to the sea goddess Mazu), watch cross-talk comedians (xiangsheng, Tianjin's beloved rapid-fire comic duets) in a traditional teahouse, and photograph the Tianjin Eye, a 120-metre Ferris wheel built directly astride the Yongle Bridge over the Hai River.

Along the way, sample Tianjin's famous street trio: crispy Jianbing Guozi made solely with stone-ground green mung-bean flour, sweet fried Ear-Hole Rice Cakes (Erduoyan Zhagao), and pleated Goubuli steamed buns.