Tianjin is a bustling city with pristine edifices of modern commerce. From Beijing South Station, it takes a mere 25 minutes by bullet train, a journey completed before you get a chance to quaff the complimentary bottle of Tibetan spring water.

It is a city polished spick and span with neat streets and gilded bridges, but underneath the shadows of skyscrapers, certain parts of the old city still resonate with memories of another era.

It harkens back to an age where ladies took tea and couples waltzed as string ensembles played. It was an era where gentlemen walked out togged in bowlers and gold-tipped canes, and the women on their arms led dainty dogs on leashes.

My mother-in-law, a venerable 86, vividly remembers being a little girl in Tianjin in the British concession. And recently, we took her back on a pilgrimage to her childhood home.

It was an eye-opening journey of rediscovery as our little group - three generations of women in the family - saw Tianjin through her eyes.

Most of the old roads have been renamed with revolutionary fervor, and many are foreign to her memory. Fortunately, Qufu Road, after the hometown of China's most celebrated sage Confucius, had been preserved. But it, too, had undergone a sea of change from her descriptions of genteel town houses and tree-lined pavements.

Instead, Heping Qu is now a bustling business district, with an eight-lane thoroughfare lined with neon-topped malls. The old redbrick terraced houses where our mother spent her early years are now boarded up and probably marked for demolition.

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