Household gods

天津 Tianjin is one of China's four "first tier" cities but not a tourist destination - at least for international tourists. The city seems to produce no tourist information, at least none I could find. I improvised an itinerary from assorted websites, learning on my way. Like many a Chinese city it has bleakly vast public plazas, messy-looking low-rise neighborhoods, shiny skyscrapers which shimmer with light shows in the evening, megamalls and forests of identical residential towers. But, like Shanghai, it also has a significant number of western-style buildings,

erected during the time when many western powers (and Japan) carved out colonial "concessions." (Above is 起士林 Kiessling, the oldest western restaurant and bakery.) At least in the Tianjin Museum's exhibition on 中华百年春天津 Tianjin's representative century (before the revolution), however, this is presented mainly in terms of the national humiliation narrative. (In the big diorama below you can relive an 1859 battle when the Qing army sank four British warships, a won battle in wars lost until liberation.) But Western-style buildings seem to be Tianjin's main

attraction now. (As in Shanghai they may be the only ones protected from demolition.) In the 五大道风情旅行区 Five Great Avenues tourist area (the former British concession) many have signs commending the harmonious combination of western and Chinese styles. I'm not sure what the exclusively domestic tourists I saw here made of it. I didn't venture into any of the villas except one, the 天津瓷房子博物馆 Porcelain House which is, er, western-style with Chinese characteristics! Since 2000, one Zhang Lianzhi has been encrusting a French-style villa with shards of broken antiques, and wrapped it in 200m dragons. Every surface is covered in old china or crystals, including the roof!
It's more gaudy than Gaudí, but all the visitors were clearly enchanted by it. I seem to have been the only gripped by the screen of headless Buddhas (presumably victims of the cultural revolution) protecting the house from the street, its back side coiling with a snarl of dragons (above), but there was definitely a strange spiritual energy flowing through this manic project. On entering the house I found it jam packed with antique Chinese furniture, some of it family legacy but the rest - like most of the plates and cups and vases - presumably castaways. Among these were many religious objects, household shrines, etc., and every one sat atop a large pile of fresh 1 yuan bills left by visitors.

What was going on? While I didn't feel the place was haunted, I found myself haunted by the thought of the long forgotten lives of all these household objects - including, of course, the porcelain. (I sensed the hands which had held them, the lips which drank from them: very intimate.) The houses in which all these things resided are surely long since gone along with the people who used them. Their current reincarnation engulfing a French colonial house with the characters 中国梦 "China dream" over the door is at once magical and grotesque. What intentions will have attended those bills left for the household gods of lost houses, anonymous ancestral tablets, compassionate bodhisattvas?