Tianjin is Beijing's coastal neighbour — a port city of fifteen million people about half an hour south-east of the capital on the bullet train. It doesn't try to compete with Beijing for sights, and doesn't need to. What Tianjin has instead is an unexpected European pedigree: the foreign concessions carved out after the Opium Wars left whole neighbourhoods of British, French, Italian, Russian and German buildings, many of them immaculately restored. Walking the Italian Concession on the north bank of the Hai River feels like stumbling onto a small piece of Verona.
The rebuilt Ancient Culture Street near the drum tower is touristy but good for calligraphy shops and shadow puppets. Bin Jiang Dao is the main shopping street. The Tianjin Eye Ferris wheel spans the river on Yongle Bridge — one of the few Ferris wheels built into a bridge.
Above all, Tianjin is a food city. Locals are mad about goubuli baozi (pork buns so good they "ignore the dog"), shibajie mahua (hard twisted fried dough sticks), and the ubiquitous breakfast jianbing guozi, a thin savoury crêpe wrapped around a fried cruller. Food Street, an enclosed three-storey mall of food stalls built to look like old Tianjin, is worth an evening.
Tianjin is half an hour from Beijing South station on the high-speed line, making it an easy day trip if you have extra time in the capital.