Most people do not think of Tianjin as a tourist destination, but I went recently and loved it. First, you get to be harmonized (hexie‘d 和谐) on the express train, and the female attendants wear luxurious red wool pillbox hats decorated with the party emblem. Secondly, Tianjin is the birthplace of the egg crepe/pancake (jianbing 煎饼), known as jianbing guozi 煎饼果子 there.
Imagine if Jean-Georges Vongerichten, in this passage from a New York Times travel piece by R.W. Apple and requoted in Evan Osnos’s New Yorker blog, had eaten his jianbing in Tianjin instead of Shanghai (which indubitably is NOT the birthplace of jianbing).