Ancient Culture Street [Tianjin]

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For anyone who is in Tianjin for the first time and wishes to see its old cultural traditions and customs, the best place to go is the Ancient Culture Street.

The Ancient Culture Street, in the northeastern part of Lanjie, extends to the north and south of the Mazu Palace (Tianhou Gong). The square in front the palace is big enough to hold a thousand people. Built around the square are arts and ballad halls, where fine performances are given on almost all festival days. A spectacular "Imperial Festival" is held in and around the square every year on the 23rd day of the third lunar month.

A giant archway inscribed with the words "an Old Neighbourhood of Tianjin" stands at the entrance to the street, and behind the archway is a street of 600 metres long lined with buildings in the Qing-dynasty architectural style. There are so many different buildings that the eye cannot take them in all at once. Walking by these buildings with grey walls and decorated with colourful streamers is like walking into the past. Past. The most note-worthy things are the boards inscribed with the names of shops and with couplets at the shop fronts, which are written by famous calligraphers.

Walking through the archway, the first shop that comes in sight is the shop of Zhang, the Sculptor of Clay Figurines. There is also a special shop selling the famous New Year pictures of Yangliuqing.

Studio of Living Stone is the name of another eye-catching shop because it is decorated with a long string of multiple national flags and advertisements written in both Chinese and English. Most of the things sold in the shop are curios, including portraits of emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Next to the studio is a stall selling "cha tang", a soup made with millet flour and brown sugar. To attract patrons, the stall keeper demonstrates his skill of holding four bowls in one hand while pouring boiling water into them from a huge pot with a dragon-shaped spout.

Within the confines of the street is the "Mazu Palace" (Tianhou Gong), paying tribute to the Goddess of the sea. The temple was apparently built in 1326 AD in deference to the heavenly Goddess and in hope of protection for Tianjin's ocean going population. Since then the temple has been renovated a number of times. In 1984, it was turned into a museum displaying local customs, including some fine examples of the Tianjin clay works and woodblocks from the nearby village of Yangliuqing

There are much more interesting stuff on this Ancient Culture Street for you to discover.

2.2 km from Tianjin Railway Station 82.9 km from Langfang Railway Sta.

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Ancient Culture Street is a slightly less than apt name for one of Tianjin’s biggest tourist attractions. The first bone of contention would be that the locale is something marginally short of ancient having being around five years ago. It is also not lavishly endowed with masses of Chinese culture. Part of Tianjin’s riverside redevelopment Culture Street is more of a tourist trap than anything else, which is slightly bizarre considering Tianjin is a city that does not attract vast swathes of sightseers. It takes on something of an updated hutong type persona – hutongs being old-style single-storey Chinese streets that formed mazes of tiny courtyards and houses. Gone though is the squalour of traditional hutong living, replaced clean well-fronted souvenir shops. Ancient Culture Street reminds the visitor of the Qianmen area in Beijing where many of the hutongs have been modernised almost beyond recognition to allow tourists to browse at pace and to barter for traditional souvenirs and counterfeit designer goods. Watches and handbags sit next to stores fitted out with calligraphy and hand woven shoes. The only authentic glimmer of the culture mentioned in the title is a small reconstruction of a temple in the centre of the street. All-in-all Culture Street may prove to be a pleasant walk, but it is something of a charlatan.

Rating by Paul Bacon    Review at: 2006-11-13    Source: Luopan

We went to Ancient Culture Street by a shuttle bus of the hotel. This is the place where they restored the street in the end of the Qing dynasty. You can get all ranges of souvenirs there: clay figurines, Chinese paintings, seals etc. etc. Since the place is absolutely for the tourists, please be careful of the prices they offer. They don't show any price on the products. We bought a clay figurine of Peking Opera (170 yuan) in the store very near Tianhou Place. I like the store very much, since prices are written on all goods. I saw many local Chinese tourists flocking there to buy something. If you plan to buy a clay figurine, this store or the Clay Figurine Studio are the places you should go. You can also buy them at many souvenir shops in Beijing. But they have very limited collections.

Rating by Sakura    Review at: 2001-09-29    Source: Luopan