Concessions

Admittedly, my camera takes crap photos, but the prices here for a camera are about 150-200% of what US prices are, so I will wait for a better camera. I took a concession tour of Tianjin, which was a tour through the French, Italian, Austro-Hungarian, Japanese, German and British concessions. The photo depicted is obviously not one of the concessions. We ended at the Hongkong Club, which is (according to the guide) the largest traditional Chinese stage in China. He spoke for about 15 minutes on the intricacies of the decorations which you can't make out, but I thought it was cool. Interestingly enough, Tianjin had the most concessions in China.

Cool globes!

It's hard to blog when you're out doing, so I'm catching up before the office goes to play badminton (a weekly thing). Anyways, I have no idea what these things are called, but it was really cool to see this guy paint them. It normally takes him 2-3 days to finish one, and he carefully paints through a little hole in the base of the ball. He has quite a collection of themes and colours and he was also located in the Gulou (Old City) area.

What a Zoo!

Attached to the Water Park is the Tianjin Zoo and a small amusement park with a Ferris Wheel and bungee jumping. One of the cars fell off the Ferris Wheel some months ago, killing the occupants and an expat had a malfunction with the bungee cord, which ended his life, so visitors were reserved to the smaller rides. When I saw the kids area, I looked around and not a soul was in sight. The only movement was caused by the wind blowing rubbish around and I immediately recalled a scene in Stephen King's "It." I was just waiting to stumble across the clown who was drinking blood out of cocoons. If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, you will have no clue what I'm talking about.

Water Park

Not far from where I am staying is the "Water Park," which boasts a full-day's activities. The park itself can take almost a full day to walk around and in the center is a large tower, which I climbed up and took a few shots. It's a pretty cool lake and there are often activities around holidays here.

Exemplary construction

I was standing outside a building one day and thought this was a pretty cool wall...until I checked out the other side. Just think, an outdoor stage prop!

One billion

Can you imagine one billion? It was constructed from broken pieces of pottery/plates, over one billion in total. This building, called "China House," is made from China made in China, in China!

Refreshing swim

There's nothing like a swim to refresh you on a hot summer day, unless the swim is in a highly-polluted river which runs through the middle of a city of ten million people. The Hai River has been the dumping ground for raw sewage and industry use for decades and I truly believe the people swimming are completely insane. When asked, the focus for swimming is for good health. I suppose the good health comes from the barrage of bacteria for normal flora.