Journey of rediscovery

By Pauline D Loh (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-16 13:38

Just like in the good old days, no one leaves Tianjin without a box of mahua, or sugared dough crullers.

Tianjin is a bustling city with pristine edifices of modern commerce. From Beijing South Station, it takes a mere 25 minutes by bullet train, a journey completed before you get a chance to quaff the complimentary bottle of Tibetan spring water.

It is a city polished spick and span with neat streets and gilded bridges, but underneath the shadows of skyscrapers, certain parts of the old city still resonate with memories of another era.

It harkens back to an age where ladies took tea and couples waltzed as string ensembles played. It was an era where gentlemen walked out togged in bowlers and gold-tipped canes, and the women on their arms led dainty dogs on leashes.

My mother-in-law, a venerable 86, vividly remembers being a little girl in Tianjin in the British concession. And recently, we took her back on a pilgrimage to her childhood home.

It was an eye-opening journey of rediscovery as our little group - three generations of women in the family - saw Tianjin through her eyes.

Most of the old roads have been renamed with revolutionary fervor, and many are foreign to her memory. Fortunately, Qufu Road, after the hometown of China's most celebrated sage Confucius, had been preserved. But it, too, had undergone a sea of change from her descriptions of genteel town houses and tree-lined pavements.

Instead, Heping Qu is now a bustling business district, with an eight-lane thoroughfare lined with neon-topped malls. The old redbrick terraced houses where our mother spent her early years are now boarded up and probably marked for demolition.

The old mansion of the "Young Marshal" Chang Hsueh-liang is sadly unmarked. This colorful character from China's revolutionary past had lived there with his wife, Edith Chao, who later joined him in Taiwan after he was coerced into exile by Chiang Kai-shek. Their romance is almost as famous as his military feats.

Further along the road is the Xiao Bailou or Little White House district, where the original American concession had been. (This was later amalgamated into the British concession.) It is this area that draws us, because this is where the Kiessling Restaurant stood, and still stands, although it is now dwarfed by towering bank and hotel blocks.

This was China's most famous Western restaurant north of the Yangtze River. It had enjoyed patronage by many historical figures, not least of whom was the last emperor of China, Puyi, who reputedly used to enjoy Kiessling's famous tea dances.

The restaurant opened in the 20th century's infant years, when the former chef of the deposed German emperor came to Tianjin after his boss fled to the Netherlands. Mr Kiessling decided to open a little caf but soon expanded to include a restaurant as his reputation as an imperial cook spread. Soon, China's most illustrious of that time were dining and dancing here.

Those aristocratic days are now as faded as the building's facade. But the Kiessling Patisserie on the street level and the first floor Russian Tea Room is a must-visit for those after refreshments from a more civilized age.

Tender sponges are cut into petit fours and piled high with fluffy butter cream sculpted into intricate flowers and animals. Unlike inferior copies, these cream cakes are light as air, and the cream tastes like cream and not some plastic non-dairy concoction.

The larger cakes on display at the counters are works of art, showing off a skill in cake decorating that is fast becoming obsolete, even in the West.

In the upstairs tearoom, immaculate white tablecloths are paired with striking red placemats, which in turn, matched the chairs. We ordered ice cream sundaes, and my mother-in-law swears they tasted the same as they did 70 years ago.

To our more modern palates, the ice creams did indeed taste homemade, and while they were not as creamy as their American cousins, the sundaes were more like sorbets and were very refreshing.

Tea and nostalgia over, we trooped toward the Nanshi Gourmet Square to stock up on edible souvenirs. No one leaves Tianjin without a box or two of mahua, or sugared dough crullers, a local speciality that is famous throughout the country.

If you are a dedicated gourmet, you may also want to take home a jar of Tianjin shrimp paste - intensely pungent stuff that ranks up there on the aromatic charts with Filipino bagoong or Malaysian belacan.

But then, you may take just one sniff and keel over.