Tiānjīn History

History

Historically, Tiānjīn’s fortunes have always been linked to those of Běijīng. When the Mongols established Běijīng as the capital in the 13th century, Tiānjīn rose to prominence as a grain-storage point. With the Grand Canal fully functional as far as Běijīng, Tiānjīn was at the intersection of both inland and port navigation routes. By the 15th century, the town had become a walled garrison.

The British and French settled in, and were joined by the Japanese, Germans, Austro-Hungarians, Italians and Belgians between 1895 and 1900. Each concession was a self-contained world with its own prison, school, barracks and hospital.

This life was disrupted only in 1870 when locals attacked a French-run orphanage and killed, among others, 10 nuns – the Chinese thought the children were being kidnapped to be eaten (confusion over the meaning of the sacrament and the consumption of the body and blood of Christ). Thirty years later, during the Boxer Rebellion, the foreign powers levelled the walls of the old Chinese city.

The notorious Tángshān earthquake of 28 July 1976 registered 8.2 on the Richter scale and killed nearly 24, 000 people in the Tiānjīn area in the same year that Mao also shook China by dying (a synchronicity of events hardly lost on the Chinese). The city was badly rocked, but escaped the devastation that virtually obliterated nearby Tángshān, where an estimated 240, 000 residents died.