What would I see, walking in 1892 Tianjin? [Roleplay Setting]

by Clendor972

Hey folks. I intend to run a roleplay campaign for a couple of friends. The setting would be in 1892 Tinajin under the Qing, the area of many great power struggles and mystery.

As a history student, I want this run to be as far historically accurate as possible. Alas, this is not really my area of expertise. So I would like to use your help with the following questions:

When you walk the streets of Tianjin, what would you see?
What would you hear?
What would you smell?
What would you eat?
How different were the foreign privileges zones of the UK, France and Japan than the rest of the city?
What would one find around the city?
What is the level of poverty vs. richness of people?
How ethnically and religiously diverse was the city?
What was the level of crime? Were there significant organized crime? How corrupt are the authorities?
Who were the de-jure rulers of the city? Who were the de-facto ones?
What was the balance of power between the Emperor and the bureaucracy? What were their agendas?
How religious were people? Did they adhere to ancient mythologies?
How common were firearms?

In addition, any detail that you think would add "color" or accuracy to the game would make me very happy.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your RPG, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring game designers, based on past experience: some aspiring game designers have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.

Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a historical roleplaying game, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth or highly plot-reliant questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.