General Introduction

One of the four centrally administered municipalities, Tianjin is the gateway to Beijing, situated along the Haihe River near the shores of the Bohai Sea. It is 70 kilometers from the Bohai Sea in the east and 120 kilometers from Beijing in the northwest.

The building of the city began in 1404 in the second year of the reign of Emperor Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty. Known as the Tianjin Garrison, it was a military base and an important economic center. Tianjin was opened to foreign aggressors as a trading port under the Convention of Peking in 1860. Later it became a "settlement" of eight imperialist powers.

Tianjin covers an area of 11,305 square kilometers, of which 190 square kilometers belong to the city proper and 11,100 kilometers to the suburban counties. It has a population of 7.51 million, of which 66 percent live in the city and 34 per cent in the rural areas.

Scenic Spots

Garden of Tranquility (Ningyuan)
Great Benevolence Temple (Dabeisi)
Palace of the Goddess (Tianhougong)
Panshan Tourist Area, Jixian County
Park on the Water (Shuishanggongyuan)
Solitary Joy Temple (Dulesi)
The Great Mosque


Topography

Tianjin is a typical estuary alluvial plain, which is part of the North China Plain. With a gentle terrain studded with lakes and ponds, most of it is three meters above sea level.

The Haihe, formed by the confluence of the Yongding, Daqing and Ziya rivers and the South and North canals, flows through the city and heads southeast towards Dagukou, where it empties into the Bohai Sea. The efforts to control this unruly river in the past decades have basically ridded Tianjin of the menace of floods.

Climate

Tianjin has a temperate continental monsoonal climate. The city areas have a mean annual temperature of 12.3?, and a mean annual precipitation of 550 mm. which occurs mostly in July and August.


Communications

Tianjin has easy communications. It is linked with Beijing, the northeast, the east and other parts of the country by the Beijing-Harbin and Beijing-Shanghai railways. Tianjin is an important port of ocean and coastal transport. The city is also the largest inland river port in the Haihe basin and can be reached by ships of 3,000-ton class through Xingang Harbour and the Haihe River.