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¢ñ.Natural Geography ¡¡¡¡The city covers a total area of 11,919.7 square kilometers, of which, its plain as a part,accounting for 94 percent.It is situated in the Northeast part of the North China's plain,with the Yan Mountains on the north and Bohai Sea on the east. It runs more than 130 kilometers in its coastline from its north end located at Jianhe to the south one at Qikou and lies in the temperate zone with a semi-humid and continental monsoon climate, beautiful in the sight-seeing within the different seasons. Lying near to Beijing, it is a port through which exports from a vast area of North China and Northwest China could be made available oversea.Its main rivers include Haihe river, the South Canal,the North Canal, Ziya river,Daqing river and Yongding river,etc. ¢ò. Population & Administrative Division ¡¡¡¡The permanent registered population of Tianjin was 9.2600 million in 2003 , of the total, those living in the districts under city administration were 7.5878 million.It has 15 districts(Heping, Hedong, Hexi, Nankai, Hebei, Hongqiao,Tanggu,Hangu,Dagang,Dongli,Xiqing,Jinnan,Beichen,Wuqing and Baodi)and 3 counties(Ninghe,Jinghai and Jixian). ¢ó.Places of Historic Interest and Scenic Beauty ¡¡¡¡In Tianjin, there are some places of historic interest and scenic beauty had been unearthed, of which, 37 have been in major preservation by the state and the local government.It has over one thousand years history since the Temple of Dule was built in Sui Dynasty with a large scale and the oldest-existing wooden structures in Jixian; more than 1,000 peculiarly-shaped forts with ancientry are in the 41 -kilometer-long Great Wall at Jixian county's Huangyaguan,looking ridgy, grand and marvellous, which are known as the key to the lock in northern part of Jixian county. Panshan Mountain is reputed to be grand and be "the First Mountain East of Beijing", with its peaks rising higher and more beautiful than another. Local buildings have been integrated with rivers and mountains. The Tianjin-based historic interest and scenic beauty also comprise Tianhou Temple, the Temple of Confucious, Dabei Buddhistic Monastery, the Grand Mosque, Tianzun pavilion, Dagu forts, Wanghailou Church, Guangdong Guild Hall, Zhou Enlai & Deng Yingchao Memorial Hall where exhibits their revolutionary activities they had gone in for when they were in days of their youth.The buildings in Tianjin keeping the ancient, mordern times and modernized style have been considered as "Multi-country Architectural Museum". Within Tianjin stand over a thousand of Xiaoyanglou (2 to 3-storey buildings foreigners built) in the different styles of the western and eastern countries during the days from the end of 19th century to the earlier 20th century one, when the land in Tianjin was on lease to, but actually seized by foreigners from nine countries and put under their colonial rule, in the earlier opening of the Tianjin-based port abroad. ¡¡¡¡Tianjin is famous for its 4 folk arts: the painted clay figures by"Clay-Sculptor Zhang" as known well to all parts of China and of the world; "New Year" pictures produced in the town of Yangliuqing with a long history, that find favour in foreign friends' eyes; Wei-made kites popular so much to win a gold medal at the Panama International Fair in 1914 ; the carved bricks by "Brick-Carver Liu" being uniquely of Tianjin's folk arts put into use of buildings-related decorations in China. ¢ô. Food Culture ¡¡¡¡In Tianjin, there are over 1,000 - variety dishes being fresh,smooth and soft, and saltish with a rich taste, in more than 300 -year history, which are prepared by local cuisines, from local perfect raw materials for cooking, together with good flavouring. The traditional dishes have included the fried and stewed carps, meat braised together with carps,deep fried and sauteed birds,"tiger skin" pork elbow, etc.And the excellent dishes have shark's fins braised and brown sauce, sauted shrimps, cooked prawns, shark's fins with crab roe, shredded chicken and mushroom,braised scallops, braised abalone,sourish purple crab paste.In addition, 8-style cookeries as accepted generally by all Chinese have been made in Tianjin, in spite of their being originally from respectively Shandong, Suzhou, Sichuan, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Hunan, Fujian and Anhui, and also it has over 90 varieties of specially-flavoured and ordinary dishes, 45 varieties of cold dishes and over 90 snacks with the local flavor. In the case of Tianjin flavour, besides,3 "second-to-none" foods are well-known to parts of China and foreign countries for: Goubuli Baozi, Erduoyan Zhagao, Guifaxiang Mahua. In 1998 ,"Maobuwen" Jiaozi, another food in flavors, was awarded in China the title of the 4th "second-to-none" food in Tianjin. Still,other locally-known snacks include: Zhang's Guo ren, Cao-cooked donkey meat, Dafulai Guobacai,ShiTouMenKan Vegetable Baozi,Zhilanzhai Gaogan, Tiebobo Aoxiaoyu.However, Tianjin people are accustomed to breakfasting necessarily on Dabing, Bangchui Guozi, bean curd with flavorings,Guoba Cai, soya-bean milk,Huntun,Jianbing Guozi. ¢õ.Production Fields ¡¡¡¡Tianjin is the largest opening coastal city of North China and the economic center of the Bohai Coastal Region. Its gross domestic product (GDP) was 244.766 billion yuan in 2003 , of which, the primary industry reached 8.966 billion yuan of the value-added, its share in GDP was 3.6 percent; the value-added of secondary industry was 124.529 billion yuan,its share in GDP was 50.9 percent; the value-added of the tertiary industry was 111.271 billion yuan,its share in GDP was 45.5 percent. The per capita GDP was 26,532 yuan in 2003 . ¡¡¡¡Involved in its suburban and county-oriented agriculture,Tianjin has been in production not only of both grain including wheat, corn, rice and economic corps related with peanut, cotton, but also of fruits i.e. apple,pear,peach,date,grape, tomato, chestnut, walnut and haw.Located at the west tip of Bohai Bay, however, Tianjin is rich in such sea-resource products as hairtail, yellow croaker,little yellow croaker, prawns and scallops and,also,in the fresh water-resource products as river crab, carp, clam from its 9 rivers there within. And it has a great number of agricultural products renowned at home and abroad, for example, "Xiao Zhan" rice with the up-to-date quality spelt out by the state, that is available for export to Japan, Cuba and to the Southeast Asian countries. ¡¡¡¡Moreover,persimmon from Panshan Mountain, purple crab and white bait, all have come to a long-standing fame within China,too. As the origins in the development of China's modern industry, meanwhile, Tianjin is in a position to have a large variety of industries and supply their own parts and components for their multi-purpose needs; in 2003 , its total industrial output value reached 404.961 billion yuan from 5,341 industrial enterprises, which total annual sales exceed 5 million yuan.A large number of new industrial departments and products had gradually grown to a reasonable scale so variously that they appeared with mini-vehicles, color TV sets, motorcycle, elevator,the big-sized seamless steel pipe,ethylene and electric communication equipment. It has further been able to develop its high and new technology industry as involved not only in electronic communications but also in the biology and medicine, and in new-found energies and materials, with their output value accounting for 30.5 percent of total industrial one. ¡¡¡¡Tianjin as a commercial port with a long history has developed more rapidly in commerce, catering and services. In recent years ,more than 10 large business establishment including Gulou Trade Street have been reconstructed. Thus there are more than 50 shopping centers with an area of more than ten thousand square meters. Business mode of retail trade above designated size 242 ,department store was 55 ,supermarket was 26 .Of the top 500 enterprises in the world,\{22 had developed business in Tianjin.The retail of whole social consumer goods reached 107.405 billion yuan in 2003 in the city. ¢ö.Infrastructure ¡¡¡¡By having made every effort on construction and transformation of infrastructure for several years, the people in Tianjin had its harbor linked up all-sidedly with the railway, the air and the highway as well as with the sea, which appeared a well-developed network of the traffic to and from all directions by way of the above said transport. Tianjin Harbor, as the largest comprehensive and commercial one in North China, boasts China's biggest containerized cargo dock consisting of 108 berths including 54 over 10-thousand-ton ones to make it convenient to contact 300 harbors, for the business, in more than 160 countries and regions all over the world, thus handling 161.82 million-ton cargo in 2003 . Tianjin Binhai International Airport is dealing in several tens domestic and international air routes. It has carried out the strategy of passenger and cargo transport in coordination and its target is to be Cargo Air Transport Center(Logistics Center)in North China. At the junction of the Beijing-Shanhaiguan and Beijing-Shanghai railways is the Tianjin Railway Transit Hub as the railway transit hub of North China. It has highways accessible to all directions.There is 6 state-run highways (Beijing-Tangshan, Beijing-Haerbin, Tianjin-Chongqing, Beijing-Fujian, Beijing-Zibo and Beijing-Datong) to link up their traffics between Tianjin and regions both of North China and of 9 provinces(Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Zhejiang,Jiangsu,Shandong,Guangdong and Fujian). A urban traffic net has been developed of 3 circulating roads built within the city and of 14 the key streets widened and lengthened in Tianjin city. The Information Transit System has been established to consist of urban districts and its counties call, the long-distance call together with microwave and satellite to form a complete sets of post and communication. The turnover of the posts and telecommunication services in 2003 was 11.57 billion yuan at 2000 constant prices, the total capacity of phone call exchange amounts to 4.025 million lines, that of the automatic long-distance exchange to 265,427 circuits and telephone as installed to 7.619 million sets. ¢÷. Foreign Economic Relations ¡¡¡¡By now, the foreign-funds investment has been made in Tianjin by firms from 110 countries situated respectively in Europe, Asia, America and Australian Oceania. In top 500 strong corporations, for example, there are 98 corporations establishing 228 investment projects in Tianjin. There are 15,990 foreign-funded and joint-venture enterprises approved locally by the end of 2003 . Total amount of foreign capital to be utilized through the signed agreement and contracts totaled USD 45.301 billion. Total amount of foreign capital actually used totaled USD 31.809 billion.Therefore, a wide opening to the world region in Tianjin has come into being through which a quite number of fields at all levels and different localities are all presented toward their march to the world. In 2003 , total value of imports & exports reached USD 46.167 billion including USD 14.37 billion for exports, through Tianjin Harbor, garments, electrical-machinery products, textiles and chemicals are exported to Japan, HongKong, U.S.A. , South Korea,Germany and the U.K. ¢ø.Education, Science & Technology and Culture ¡¡¡¡The education and culture affairs develop quite good, Tianjin is one of regions which own a lot of talents in North China, Nankai University and Tianjin University are well-known at home and abroad.In 2003 , there were 2,070 schools at all levels, with 1.6320 million students respectively inclusive of 37 institutions of higher education with 245.0 thousand students and of 664 ordinary middle schools with 615.0 thousand students. And the proportion of enrollment of primary-school-age was 100 percent. There are more than 465.0 thousand technicians in specialities of natural science in state-owned units of the city;on an average,there were 460 technicians per 10 thousand population and 2,435 technicians per 10 thousand staff and employees.Throughout the city,there were 16 sets TV programs and 48 public libraries and museums open to the public. ¢ù. People's Life ¡¡¡¡In 2003 , per capita annual disposable income of urban households was 10,313 yuan and per capita living expenditures for consumption was 7,868 yuan, per capita using house space was 16.7 square meters in urban areas. The number of color TV sets owned by per hundred households was 134.5 , refrigerators was 98.5 , micro-computer was 34.7 , telephones was 95.2 ,mobile telephone subscribers was 77.8 . The average net annual income and expenditures of peasants was 5,861 yuan and 3,015 yuan respectively, the per capita dwelling space in rural area was 24.44 square meters. The number of color TV sets owned by per hundred rural households was 110 , refrigerators was 75 , washing machines was 90, motorcycles was 45 ,micro-computer was 7,mobile telephone subscribers was 54 . |