Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. River Kelvin. 2019. [Photo by Bruce Connolly/chinadaily.com.cn]

Soon I was being driven northwestwards toward a high-level bridge across the River Clyde, the waterway that opened Glasgow to the outside world and helped transform it into one of Britain's leading industrial and commercial cities during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed the city centre probably boasts some of the finest Victorian architecture anywhere, today used for film sets and much appreciated by photographers. I saw several Chinese tourists capturing photo images of the stately Museum of Modern Art with its classical-style colonnaded facade, indeed not dissimilar to what I now photograph on Tianjin's Jiefang Bei Jie. Both cities, major ports presently going through post-industrial transformation have much in common and one reason why I have become so fond of Tianjin. Incredibly, near that museum I came upon a group of around 20 young Chinese. Hearing them speak, with a northerly accent, I enquired with them where they were from. Tianjin? Indeed Tianjin No1 Middle School and there in the centre of Glasgow they met someone so familiar with their home city, even carrying images of their home city on his smartphone! As we say, 'a small world'.