Step back in time

In an age of video calls, all-night restaurants and high-speed trains, we often forget that the world was not always as interconnected, brightly lit or fast paced. A visit to The Astor Hotel, a 150-year-old establishment in Tianjin, can serve as a reminder of times gone by.

The hotel, located in the city's former British concession, boasts of being the first in China to have adopted certain technological advancements of the 19th century.

On one wall of its old lobby, beside a wooden staircase dating back to the hotel's inception in 1866, hangs a wooden phone from the 1920s. At one time, the Victorian building had even older models. In 1877, just a year after American scientist Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, The Astor became the first hotel in China to use the device.