Tianjin Tours & Travel Guide 2026 | Concessions, Haihe River | JoyoTour

Tianjin is the city on Beijing's doorstep that most visitors skip, and that is exactly why it is worth the detour. It is one of China's four directly-administered municipalities, a working port of 13.6 million on the Bohai Sea, and it wears its history on its surface: after the Second Opium War a dozen foreign powers carved out concessions here, and a century later the city is a grid of European villas, banks and churches set beside a Chinese old town.

The Haihe River is the spine of it. It runs through the centre under 24 bridges, each different, and along its banks sit the Italian Style Town — a square of Tuscan villas and cafés — the century clock, and the Tianjin Eye, the only Ferris wheel in the world built on a bridge. At night the whole river lights up, and a short cruise is the single best introduction to the place.

Inland from the river, the Ancient Culture Street wraps around the Temple of the Empress of Heaven, the oldest of the three great Mazu temples in China. This is where Tianjin's folk crafts live: the clay figures of Niren Zhang, the woodblock New Year prints of Yangliuqing, the Wei family kites. Around the Drum Tower and the South Market food street you get the city at its most ordinary and its most alive.

You can come just to eat. Tianjin is the home of goubuli baozi, of the crisp-sweet eighteenth-street mahua, of ear-hole fried cakes, and above all of the jianbing — the mung-bean pancake folded around a fried cruller that is northern China's morning ritual. Pair the food with a walk along the river and a half-day among the villas, and a stopover becomes a proper short break.