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Yesterday I had the pleasure of returning to Tianjin to attend a wedding.

The wedding was great, and included everything you wouldn't expect, from a caravan of red cars to the Imperial March.

The final segment of my Tianjin Sentiments (perhaps a fitting companion to another blogger's "Balkan Memories"?) is of the pollution in Tianjin. Tianjin is composed of two characters -- Tian meaning Heavenly or Sky, Jin meaning Ford. In a previous post I explained that I would translate Tian as "Heavenly" for beautiful things, and as "Sky" for more prosaic uses. Thus, this post on the pollution in Tianjin discusses contamination in Sky Ford.

The pollution in Skyford is everywhere. Our local guides explained that it was the result of the building boom that builds new offices, malls, and apartments everywhere. Certainly there was a lot of construction in Tianjin, as there was in Beijing.

The Soviet Aircraft Carrier Kiev, first of the Kiev Class and former mistress of the Black Sea Fleet, is now an amusement park in Tianjin.

Let the cruise begin!

This is a hard post to right -- in the physical sense. The pollution in Tianjin is worse than Beijing, and the combination of the air and the days have caught up to me. All day I have this ugly feeling of exhaustion without sleepiness.

There's a lot to see in Tianjin during this sidetrip, so I decided to break up my Tianjin photolog into a mini series. As this series completes descriptions & such will be added to the section titles below.

• Tianjiin: A Pictorial Travelogue
• Chinese Fast Food
• Cruisin' with the People's Liberation Army Navy
• Heavenly Ford: City of Beauty
• Historic Tianjin
• SkyFord: City of Pollution

These entries are thematic, as opposed to the day-by-day accounts in the rest of my Beijing photos, They aren't part of SummerBlog '06, but are a summer (mini) series nonetheless.

Enjoy!