A city within a city

By Paula Taylor (JIN Magazine)
Updated: 2012-12-19

This year when I left for England there were three universities in my road. When I came back, 7 weeks later, two had been completely removed from the face of the landscape and one is in the process of vanishing before my eyes. If you have been here for several years you remember Shi Fan Daxue at Ba Lit Tai. This is a very important university and its speciality is training teachers. If you have learned Chinese here the likelihood is that your teacher graduated from this school. However about three years ago they started to knock it down and upon enquiring as to what was going to happen, I was told that they were moving to University City. Have you ever been to University City? Have you ever even heard of University City? In the near future all the universities will be located there and many have already relocated.

I already had experience of this place, as when I first came here I was studying Chinese at a university. One night soon after I arrived and had been out late, I got a taxi and told the driver the name of my university. I didn’t recognise where he was taking me, but I put it down to the fact that I was not yet familiar with the place. However when we arrived we seemed to be in the countryside, there was no-one around, just huge building sites full of bulldozers and cranes, and one completed darkened building. I was really nervous and told the driver he had taken me to the wrong place. I had visions of him murdering me and leaving my battered and bloodied body buried under the rubble, (this is what living in London does for you). However I need not have worried, there were two branches of my university, the new branch was at University City, which was where he had taken me, I just was not aware of that at the time. He apologised and took me to the old branch without charging me any extra. I can say that this is one of the few times I have ever met a decent taxi driver in Tianjin. Fast forward four years and there are now many universities there and the building sites have turned into huge thriving campuses. The landscape here is changing rapidly and already some buildings at Nankai University are empty in preparation for moving. I wonder what will happen to Zhou En Lai’s statues.

Cheap and Cheerful

Property prices are rising higher and higher in Tianjin so as far as the universities are concerned, it is much cheaper for them to be located outside of the main areas. Each university itself is like a small town, with restaurants, supermarkets, hairdressers and myriad small shops and businesses. One university even has a veterinary surgery, which no doubt comes in handy as there are many stray dogs and cats that roam the campuses. They offer reduced rates at this surgery so if any kind student finds an injured animal, they will be more inclined to seek medical help for it.

Dormitories are extremely cheap with some costing just 800 yuan per year. However for that you would be expected to sleep 8 to a room and many do not have air conditioning. Toilets and shower rooms are communal, so Chinese students get used to living with many other people. Personal space is a luxury and many people here do not have such a requirement anyway.

The shops on campus are also cheap as their customers are students and they know they cannot charge exorbitant prices. I often frequent these establishments as anyone can take advantage of what is on offer, discounted goods are not limited to students.

I visited the optician and bought several pairs of glasses at 100 yuan a pair. I even took some back to England with me.

Food For Thought

I came here to learn Chinese so originally I lived on campus. At first I found the food awful, the student canteens were full of unrecognisable things covered in slime and oil and everything tasted like cardboard, a full meal cost around 3 yuan so truly I was getting what I paid for. I rapidly lost weight. I remember one day I sat in the canteen with a bowl of slop in front of me and I almost broke down in tears. I pushed it away in despair, I just could not force it down my gullet. I didn’t really have cooking facilities in the dormitory so I didn’t know what I was going to do. The next day a fellow student invited me to lunch. “No thanks I can’t stomach the food in the canteen” I replied. She said “Student canteen? We don’t eat there it is disgusting, we eat in the restaurants”. That started a love affair between me and university restaurants. I hadn’t realised there were other options, the canteens were at the very lowest end of the spectrum for cash strapped students. Universities are full of regular restaurants too, with the advantage that although they offer the same food, they are much cheaper. They also tend to be clean as the universities want the students in class and not off sick because of eating bad food.

The students often bemoan the fact that University City is in an inconvenient location. There are regular buses but they are always packed, hence there are unofficial taxis, which are really just men with cars who wait either outside the universities, or at bus stops at strategic locations looking for customers. I have used their services once or twice but patience and a very small body is needed, patience because it is only when you get in their vehicles that you realise they are waiting until they have enough passengers, which may be as many as eight, before they go, and with that many people in a little van it is very squashed. Small Chinese people don’t mind this but for lanky westerners, it makes for a very uncomfortable journey. If I avail myself of their services I arrive at my destination bent double and I always have to unfold my limbs before I can actually walk.

Apart from the fact that it is much cheaper for the universities to be situated at this location, there is another reason for it. Chinese people like to have everything placed in boxes, so having all the universities in one location satisfies this ethic. The students have everything at hand that they need and they don’t even have to leave the campus. This means that they can put all their efforts into studying without any of the distractions of outside life.

Now that we have line three on the Metro, you will find a stop almost at the end of the line called Da Xue Cheng, or University City. The new line has made life much more convenient for the students. When you have an hour or two to spare hop on the metro and go and have a look at University City, it makes for interesting viewing. It really is a city within a city.