After two weeks in Tianjin, I have finally got over the bad air and general difficulty of life in China – and got my Chinese blog started.

I will publish photographs and reflections on 7 weeks in Tianjin, a Chinese coastal metropolis and historical concession town. I have chosen the title ‘the fake China’, because I’ve often heard people – Chinese or not – advise me to go west, or to the countryside, to discover ‘the real China’. And I took a different approach – trusting that the coast, the interface, the cosmopolitan, is no more real than the central, the inland, the monocultural.

The blog is published at thefakechina.wordpress.com – I don’t pretend to understand or know better; I’m just trying to make sense of what I observe, hear and read from the world’s new superpower. Comments are very welcome!