Where Tianjin Began

Sanchahekou means the mouth of three channels, and the name is a precise description. It is where the Ziya River, the South Canal and the Hai River meet, and it is the point at which the Hai River begins; the north bank belongs to Hebei District and the south bank to Hongqiao. The Sui Grand Canal made this junction the earliest birthplace of Tianjin, because joining the southern and northern canals created a place where goods had to be transferred from one waterway to another, and transfer points generate towns. In 1214, in the second year of Zhenyou under the Jin, a stockade called Zhigu was built here, and in 1316 the Yuan renamed it Haijin Town.

The two banks carry different histories, and the sources list them side by side. On the left bank stood the Yaowa temporary palace, Wanghailou Church, the Li Gong shrine, since demolished, and the Dabei Monastery; on the right bank stood the old walled city, since demolished, the Tianhou Palace, the Yuhuang Pavilion, Guyi Street, since rebuilt, and the needle market street, since demolished. Also here is the Jangang Bridge, the great iron bridge that was dismantled and rebuilt. Read as a list, it is a catalogue of what a Chinese city keeps and what it loses: temples and churches survive, palaces and market streets do not, and the bridge is replaced.

The junction is not where it was. Between 1901 and 1923 the Hai River Engineering Bureau straightened the channel, cutting off loops, and after that work the Sanchahekou moved nearly a kilometre to the north-west. A place that is defined as the meeting of three rivers is therefore defined by a position that engineering has changed, which makes the name a record of an older geography rather than a description of the present one. In 1986 a monument to the Luan River diversion project, which brought water into the city, was erected here. The oldest birthplace of Tianjin is now also the point where the modern city's water supply is commemorated.