… a city of 15 million people about 3 hours south of Beijing. Tianjin is a port city, which in the last ten years became a huge bedroom community, with endless apartment towers, seemingly brand new. We overnighted in Tianjin where it was snowing as we docked. Our Indonesian and Filipino crew had a blast bulidng a snowman and throwing snowballs until the wee hours. So the nose was a strawberry, the eyes small jam jars and the mouth a couple of sausages - it was still a snowman! Many crew members had never seen snow before.
We decided to take it easy the first day, exploring a mall accessible by shuttle bus. When we woke up, the ground had several inches of snow, and heavy fog obscured the view. The Chinese government had closed all roads, making the immigration process very late. All excursions were put on hold pending the condition of the roads. When the fog finally cleared a bit, the shuttles began running and the Aeon Mall was a great destination on a snowy day – sparkling clean and ultra-modern. It boasted a large movie theater, a place where kids could fish for beautiful carp, an arcade with a talking tree, a slot car track, the large Aeon anchor store, similar to WalMart, and more restaurants than we could count, most serving some version of the Chinese hot pot meals.
There were also clothes with a decidedly American bent, toilet seats with functions including the sounds of a mountain stream, and entire departments of Hello Kitty medications for kids.
Fascinating! And that was all before our chicken and beef hot pot lunches, where we didn’t realize the noodles were supposed to be stretched before they were popped into the pot … quite a bit sturdier than they were supposed to be!
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