Tianjin sits half an hour by high-speed train from Beijing, yet it feels like another country — which is precisely the point. As the treaty port at the mouth of the Haihe River, the city absorbed nine foreign concessions, and their banks, churches and villas still line the riverfront like an open-air architecture museum. Tianjin answers with its own assets: a legendary sense of humor that made it the home of crosstalk comedy, a street-food canon worth planning the day around, and a riverside best seen after dark from the bridges.
