【城市印象】之——哏都 · 天津City Impressions: Tianjin, China's Punchline Town

Over the next few installments I'll be running a City Impressions series. "City" isn't quite the right word, though — "province impressions" would be more accurate. These days I'd rather sum up a region through the traits of its provincial capital or a representative city. Everything here comes from an honest attempt to be fair and even-handed: some praise, some criticism, no thumb on the scale. Today, let's talk about Tianjin.

"We hold an iron rice bowl and a steel spatula — eat as many bowls as we please, and if we don't feel like it, we go home and light a cigarette." That's about as accurate a portrait of the Tianjin native as you'll find.

Tianjin is a very peculiar city. It's a little like Chengdu, or Sichuan more broadly — and yet nothing like the southwest.

Tianjin is one of a kind.

Politics

One of China's four municipalities under direct central control. Geographically it sits right under the emperor's nose, so Tianjiners tend to be steeped in officialdom worship — yet they're strikingly short on ambition. That reverence for officialdom runs deep: the fixation on state-owned enterprises, civil-service jobs, and other "iron rice bowls" borders on obsession. The whole of the north still runs on this official-first mindset, but compared with neighboring Henan and Shanxi, Tianjin's version feels heavier.

The leadership is mostly made up of outsiders who come to Tianjin for a short spell of gilding before moving up the ladder. Getting anything done means a convoluted, bureaucratic slog — though pulling a few strings speeds it up considerably.

Government agencies, and just about every service industry, have a poor sense of service. There's little instinct for treating people as equals, and often a plain lack of respect: either you're the boss and I'm the underling, or I'm the boss and you're the underling. This isn't unique to Tianjin — service across the whole north is weak, probably tied to how underdeveloped commerce is. Overall it's still far behind the south.

Economy

Tianjin's economy has always done fairly well. In 2015 the city's GDP was 1.653819 trillion yuan, up 9.3% year on year. The tertiary sector added 860.408 billion yuan, up 9.6%, accounting for 52.0% of the city's GDP — surpassing the secondary sector for the first time and giving Tianjin a "three-two-one" industrial structure.

Before that, Tianjin's industrial structure was actually quite lopsided: state-owned enterprises came first, manufacturing dominated, and the city was slow to embrace emerging industries. You can count on one hand the number of big-name companies from any field with an office in Tianjin. Growth leaned heavily on investment, and there was a huge concentration of chemical and chemical-adjacent heavy industry clustered in the Binhai New Area — yes, the same area that blew up last year.

Traditional commerce is dominated by every kind of monopoly and exclusive arrangement. There are plenty of new commercial districts, but foot traffic is thin, the commercial atmosphere is flat, and competition is naturally not fierce.

Prices really are quite a bit lower than in Beijing, housing especially. Downtown prices run high; per 2014 data, the city center was around 20,000 yuan per square meter, while much of the outer six districts came in under 10,000. Serviced apartments in the center at around 10,000 are becoming more common. Differences between districts aren't large, with development weighted toward the south over the north, and high-rises going up by the day.

Tianjin's economy keeps improving, living standards have risen, and people are more cultivated. But as long as the capital is next door, a truly first-rate Tianjin basically won't happen — in the planning scheme, the entire Bohai Rim economy is bound to be led by Beijing. It lags the Yangtze River Delta by anywhere from five to ten years.

Culture

The single most vivid and, to me, most remarkable thing is how fiercely attached Tianjiners are to home — quite possibly the most home-bound people in the country.

I said Tianjin is a bit like Chengdu or Sichuan because the pace is slow, life is easy, and it's comfortable to live in (air quality aside).

But unlike the southwest, wherever you go — for school, travel, work, or business — you almost never run into a Tianjiner who's settled, striving, or grinding it out somewhere else. Don't believe me? Go look for yourself. Ask a Tianjin friend what their plans are after graduation, and the answer is almost eerily uniform: stay in Tianjin — why on earth would I go anywhere else? (Read that in a Tianjin accent.)

Tianjiners look down on country folk but not on outsiders; they admire people with real ability, yet they themselves neither love nor much tolerate hard work. They like taking shortcuts, they're down-to-earth and matter-of-fact; they're pleasure-loving, they instinctively reach for connections and favors to get things done, and they love ribbing and needling people — but they're also honest and conservative. Between best friends, the standard Tianjin greeting is "the hell are you up to, dumbass" and "call me daddy, son."

Tianjin has some genuinely bad tendencies. Tianjiners crave stability and are content once they've got a little money. And there's a thick air of petty-bourgeois small-mindedness. Mostly it shows up in the endless neighborhood gossip: whose kid deserves a smack, whose elderly parents are being neglected, whose kid took up with someone no good, cabbage went up today, there's a milk promotion at the supermarket tomorrow, my friend is so-and-so, I know somebody who's a big deal. The women are loud around-town aunties, the men can be called dopey blowhards — bragging all day (bleep), corduroy pants in purple paired with knockoff Prada from the cheap-shoe street. Tianjin dialect has an affectionate term for this type: da bi lao.

Trace it back and you have to return to Tianjin's industrial era. Workers back then basically had no housing, and much of the city was still unplanned, so ordinary people started building their own homes — more and more of them, packed ever tighter. Tianjin's hutongs aren't like Beijing's: Beijing hutongs enclose courtyard houses, while Tianjin hutongs enclose slums. A whole family crammed into a few square meters is a shared memory for many old Tianjiners. If you can't get rich and live large in a big bright house, all that's left is to adjust your attitude. Self-mockery, easy contentment, using a happy life to make up for what you lack materially. Feng Gong has a film called Keep Cool (No Trouble, We're Happy), and it's the finest expression of that Tianjin petty-bourgeois spirit.

The traditional cultural atmosphere is thick. Crafts and crosstalk have barely changed over the years; there's real respect for old customs, but little in the way of cultural innovation. Still, people here broadly love a good time, they relish humor, and it's a great place for a slow life and retirement.

City Development

On education: as a directly governed municipality, Tianjin has two 985 universities — the oldest of them all, Tianjin University (formerly Peiyang University), and Premier Zhou Enlai's alma mater, Nankai University — plus four 211 schools. Respectable across the board. The overall education level is above average, though the philosophy still carries a planned-economy tint and a heavy dose of exam-oriented schooling (much the same across the north). The old campuses of traditional universities are being pushed out of the urban core by commercialization. For residents, education costs are far lower than in Beijing, and you basically never hear about the school-enrollment scramble.

On transportation, it hardly lives up to the "municipality" title. Right now there are two ring roads and one expressway ring; the urban subway is just three lines, plus a light rail out to the Binhai New Area, most of it crossing near the city center. The network is decent — it links the main urban nodes effectively — but ridership isn't heavy: outside rush hour you can usually find a seat. Judging by the plans, rail construction should move fairly fast. Tianjin's subway build-out is respectable, but to me it still falls short of Nanjing's.

Public safety is actually quite good — not because the government pours resources into it, but because Tianjiners just don't like making trouble. When conflicts arise, people lean toward settling things privately. Tianjiners would rather curse each other out than throw fists, and you basically never hear of an armed assault.

Local Customs

The things that make Tianjin one of a kind — "the scenery here is uniquely fine":

1: No matter their age, you call every woman "big sister" and every man "big brother."

2: The most intimate way to address a friend is "son." The generational-hierarchy gag never gets old.

3: The Tianjin BK is the local equivalent of Beijing's "ya" (a needling term of address).

4: If a Tianjin friend tells you, "God, why do I love [dote on] you so much," trust me — don't flatter yourself and do something stupid.

5: As far as I can tell, Tianjin is the only place in the country that holds wedding banquets in the afternoon. The story goes it's because the city grew up as a shipping port, and mornings were for work.

6: Tianjin funerals are one of a kind in China. Tianjin Fan (the rapper) has a lyric: "Born in Tianjin, a lifetime of eating, drinking, and good times; die in Tianjin, and our funeral is absolutely unique."

7: Want to get on a Tianjiner's good side or break the ice? A line badmouthing Guo'an (the Beijing soccer club) works every time. (No offense to Beijing.)

8: This is a city where everyone turns into a Virgo about their jianbing guozi. You're allowed to bring your own eggs; any attempt to stuff lettuce or ham into a jianbing guozi is treated by Tianjiners as rank heresy.

9: There's a saying: "Borrowing money to eat seafood isn't bad budgeting."

10: Their highest aspiration in life is contentment.

In a sentence: this is a city that isn't especially unwelcoming to outsiders and is well suited to rest, recuperation, and having a good time — but not to grinding it out or chasing a career.