Tianjin
— — a port city built in nine different European styles.
Not only on a wall.
“Tianjin is the port city for Beijing, where the Hai River bends toward the Bohai Sea. After 1860 it was carved into nine foreign concessions, and the riverbanks still hold their European blocks: Italian arcades in one quarter, Tudor brick in another, a French quayside, German villas above the water. The high-speed train from Beijing South takes about half an hour. The old concessions run right up to the steel and glass towers of the new financial district.
Tianjin, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Tianjin is one of four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China, on the Bohai coast about 130 kilometres southeast of Beijing. The Hai River runs through the centre and drains into the Bohai Sea at the port of Tanggu. The city grew up as the river port that supplied the imperial capital; the Grand Canal's northern terminus is at Tianjin. The municipality's population passed 13 million in the 2020 census, and the high-speed Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway connects the two cities in about thirty minutes.
After the Second Opium War, the Treaty of Tianjin opened the city to foreign trade, and from 1860 onward nine countries held concessions along the river: Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Japan, Russia, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Belgium. Each built in its own idiom. The Italian Concession, the only one outside Italy of any size, holds about two hundred preserved buildings around Piazza Marco Polo. The British Concession's Tudor and neoclassical blocks line Jiefang Road; the French quayside runs along the Hai. Many of the buildings are now protected and house cafés, museums, and boutiques.
Tianjin Binhai International Airport sits about thirteen kilometres east of the centre; most visitors arrive on the high-speed train from Beijing South into Tianjin Station, about a thirty-minute ride. The Tianjin Eye Ferris wheel, set on the Yongle Bridge above the Hai River, stands 120 metres tall and is the only major Ferris wheel in the world built over a river. The Five Great Avenues district holds the largest concentration of preserved early-twentieth-century European houses in China. April through October is the most comfortable season; winters are dry and cold, with January averages near -3°C.