Ancient Culture Street

Today we visited Ancient Culture Street in Tianjin. It was the perfect way to end the trip in Tianjin. The street was filled with shops and this is where I bought a lot of my gifts to bring back home. One item that I bought was a painting that I man painted right in front of you. You could either get your name in Chinese letters or your American name in small Chinese paintings. For example, I got Alexandra and the e resembles a fish swimming in a pond with lily pads, yet you can tell that the shape of the small art is in the shape of an e.
Also an interesting fact about China is that it produces 90% of the world's fresh water pearls. When you are in China you will notice that almost every shop sells pearls. Most of the time they are real, some places they are fake, but they are so beautiful! When you buy pearls the rounder they are the more valuable they are. In China the pearls were very cheap compared to the price of fresh water pearls in the US, I think this is because the abundance of them. When we were on Ancient Culture Street, we noticed some live Oysters in a bucket with water. Then man explained that for 50 Yuan you buy the Oyster and then you get to keep the pearls inside. Nolan bought an Oyster and it was amazing to see all the pearls inside! They are on the shell and they are in the body. They are all different shapes but it is amazing that many of them are perfect round circles. At the end, Nolan came out with about 25 pearls total.
Overall, I was happy to go to Ancient Culture Street as my last touristy thing to do in Tianjin. When we were there we got to also visit the Drum Tower. This part of Tianjin is the oldest and the Drum Tower significance is that before to help keep time in the surrounding villages every hour they would bang the drum. This would let the people of Tianjin know what time it was during the day. Now there are a lot of religious figures by the tower and there is always incense burning. So when we were there, there were many people praying to the gods. I had a lot of fun at Ancient Culture Street, not only because I got to buy a lot of gifts but also because learned a lot of history about Tianjin.