I saw the woman step inside the ròubǐng (肉饼) place and come out a second later. She said a single word in a language I didn’t understand to the other woman waiting on the sidewalk, and they both sighed, shaking their heads.
I decided to do the politically incorrect thing.
I assumed.
“Are you looking for something to eat without pork?” I ventured in English.
The hijab was my clue, and so were the defeated looks.
“Yes!”
“Where are you from?”
“Bangladesh, but we live in Canada.”
“What you need is a lāmiàn place. The Hui minority…” I paused, wondering if my wording sounded strange. “Are Muslim. They serve halal food.”
“Do you know where to go? Our VPN doesn’t work.”
“Sure, just a block away. I’ll take you. Or I can show you a few places on Baidu if you want, but it’s in Chinese.”
“How do Chinese people do it? Do they all use a VPN?”
“I doubt it. They don’t need Gmail, Google, or Google Maps. They just use their own version of the web.”
The questions kept coming.
“Can you take a taxi to the Great Wall?”
“That would be… quite expensive. You can take the train.”
“How long have you been living in China?”
“I don’t… it’s a long story. Here’s the lāmiàn place. You can take a picture of the characters: Lanzhou Niúròu Lāmiàn, 兰州牛肉拉面.”
The boss stepped out.
“Salam!”
And they started chatting in Arabic. I had no idea that the Hui—or at least one of them—could speak Arabic as well as Chinese.
A day later, anyone looking at us would have immediately noticed we were lost in Tianjin. Not in translation—just lost.
The day before, I had been the person who knew where to go. In Tianjin, I suddenly understood exactly how those two women must have felt. We speak Mandarin. We know our way around China. Yet some cities still leave us completely puzzled.
We had travelled from Shenyang to Beijing. Sorry, no train station pics this time. The organized chaos has become normal to me.
We figured we would take one last day trip from Beijing and explore Tianjin, a 30-minute high-speed train ride away.
But Tianjin was hard to figure out.
We started on pedestrian Hépíng Lù (和平路). Feng was dead set on eating bāozi (包子), Tianjin’s specialty. This is the birthplace of the Gǒubùlǐ bāozi (狗不理包子) chain, after all.
Tianjin bāozi are smaller and supposedly juicier—not quite xiǎolóngbāo (小笼包), because they use dough rather than a thin wrapper, but not as bready as the Shenyang or Beijing versions.
“Don’t eat too much of them!” I warned.
I was expecting streets lined with bāozi stands, but we only spotted one, with weird fillings and a long lineup.
Eventually, a Tianjin bāozi sign led us to a side alley. We thought the restaurant was closed, but the boss opened the door and chased us as we were walking away.
Feng ordered a serving of bāozi, and we struggled to pay because the side alley had no signal.
“Let me try… how much?”
“48.”
“WHAT? My regular non-Tianjin bāozi are like 2 or 3 yuan each!”
“It’s Tianjin,” Feng shrugged. “It’s Gǒubùlǐ.”
“What do they taste like?”
“Like the ones at Gǒubùlǐ in Toronto.”
Feng ate his bāozi, we strolled down Hépíng Lù, and we reached the massive Tianjin World Trade Center.
Now what?
We had missed the famous Porcelain House, Cí Fángzi (瓷房子). We turned around and followed the crowd.
I saw a house with porcelain glued to the façade, but mostly I saw hundreds of heads and bodies trying to get the perfect shot in front of it—forget about actually stepping inside.
Two streets further, we faced what may be the biggest Tianjin mystery of all.
Three policemen in front of the police station were unloading giant watermelons from a police car packed to the brim with them.
“Either we got bribed, or a watermelon contraband network was dismantled,” I assessed. “What else is there to see in Tianjin?”
“Bridges. And an old town!”
“Let’s go to the old town!”
Ah. The “old town” turned out to be a fake, recreated pedestrian street with overpriced souvenirs and a few Tianjin bāozi—not even asking how much those cost. Not the untouched neighbourhood I was hoping for.
And yes, bridges. There were bridges nearby.
We took the subway back to Hépíng Lù, not quite convinced by Tianjin.
The best view we got was from the train station, minutes before boarding the train. With the late evening light, the architectural mix was lovely.
Still not adding Tianjin to my list of cities I want to explore deeper.
I don’t even like Tianjin bāozi that much.
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