Asia's Tallest, for a While

The tower's record is a ranking tied to a year. The Tianjin Radio and Television Tower, known locally as Tianta, was fully completed in 1991, and at that time it was the tallest tower in Asia and the third tallest in the world. The city's own account adds that it was the tallest building in China when it was completed, one of the modern towers and skyscrapers built as the economy grew. Rankings of this kind decay quickly, and the sources are careful to date them: this was true in 1991, in a decade when Chinese cities were beginning to build tall structures in earnest and each new tower briefly held a title.

The tower stands beside water, and the water has a name. Tianta Lake is counted among the parks of Hexi District, listed with People's Park, Tuanjie Park, Tianjin Bay Park, Lüdao Park, Dongting Park and several others, and the tower itself is listed among the district's main sights together with People's Park. A tower reflected in a lake is a compositional choice as much as an engineering one: the lake gives the structure a second elevation and a public edge, and it turns an infrastructure object into a place where people walk in the evening. The pair, tower and lake, is the district's most recognisable image.

It is worth being clear about how thin the record is. The sources establish the completion year, the Asian and world rankings, the fact that it was China's tallest building at completion, its place in the district's list of sights and the existence of the lake. They do not give its height in metres, the design of its antenna, or the names of its architects, and those details are therefore not stated here. Metro line 3 stops at Tianta between Wujiayao and the next station south, which is the most practical fact a visitor needs. A tower that was briefly the tallest in Asia is, in the record, mostly a date and a ranking.