Though Tianjin may not be a household name among Americans like neighboring Beijing, the northern port city played a role in U.S. history as the place where a young Herbert Hoover made his fortune.The future president came to Tianjin in 1899 to work as an engineer for the Chinese Bureau of Mines and later as general manager for the Chinese Engineering and Mining Corporation.The Hoovers stayed at Tianjin’s Astor Hotel for some time. The hotel, built by a British Methodist priest in 1863, currently offers a “Hoover Room” and a “Herbert Hoover meal” to commemorate his time there.”Later the family moved into a foreign community in Tianjin’s British concession, where they lived for almost a decade,” said Luo Shuwei, a fellow researcher at the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences.Hoover had made a fortune worth $4 million before he left Tianjin for the United States in 1913 to start his career as a politician.Hoover and his wife Lou Henry also learned Chinese during their stay in Tianjin. It is reported that they would speak Chinese at the White House when they wanted to prevent people from eavesdropping.Tianjin, one of China’s most modern cities in the early 20th century, was home to not only those who came in search of opportunity like Hoover but also to asylum seekers, such as Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.The population of Jews in Tianjin reached 3,500 in 1935, according to The Heavenly Ford: Jews in Tianjin by local author Song Anna.While Jews in Europe suffered the horrors of the Holocaust, those who fled to Tianjin lived in peace and prosperity.Eventually they would go on to develop their own institutions, such as the Jewish Kunst (Arts) Club, a hospital in 1937 and a synagogue in 1940, according to Song’s book. The synagogue stands almost intact today.Benjamin Kabuliansky, born in Siberia in 1919, moved to Tianjin in 1924 and later settled down in Haifa, Israel.In Song’s book, Kabuliansky said Jews never faced religious prejudice and racial discrimination in China like they had in Europe and Russia. In a letter to Song, he wrote, “Jews, for long periods of time, have had a great respect for the Chinese people, and we can expect that the remarkable friendship will continue.”Some others made the country their home for the rest of their lives, such as journalist Israel Epstein.In 1920, Epstein came with his parents from Siberia to Tianjin at the age of 5, and he lived there for 16 years.He started work as a reporter at local English-language newspaper Peking and Tientsin Times in 1930. He also covered the Japanese invasion of China for the United Press and other Western news agencies.In 1951, Epstein was invited to be editor-in-chief of the forerunner to the magazine China Today by Soong Chingling, widow of the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen.

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City’s international legacy alive today