T'ien-ching

The great so-called seaport of T‘ien-ching (Tientsin), some 75 miles to the southeast, actually lies 40 miles from the sea on the Hai Ho, which is unsuitable for any but light navigation.

Thus, in climatic terms, many coastal stations in northern China display characteristics of inland stations; T’ien-ching, for example, lies about five hundred miles from the Pacific edge of the continental shelf East China sea, and is in effect, then, five hundred miles “inland.”

When P’u-yi arrived in Ch’ang-ch’un to take up his post as Chief Executive of Manchukuo, he was accompanied by only one wife, the Empress Beauty in Flower: his Secondary Consort, Elegant Ornament, had run off and divorced him in T’ien-ching the previous year.

The British invoked the clause of the Nanking treaty, which had agreed that foreign vessels and their crews would not submit to Chinese law, Britain and France joined forces, and in 1857 a combined naval force seized Canton, taking several key Chinese forts near T’ien-ching (now Tianjin) a few months later.