In an age of video calls, all-night restaurants and high-speed trains, we often forget that the world was not always as interconnected, brightly lit or fast paced. A visit to The Astor Hotel, a 150-year-old establishment in Tianjin, can serve as a reminder of times gone by.

The hotel, located in the city's former British concession, boasts of being the first in China to have adopted certain technological advancements of the 19th century.

On one wall of its old lobby, beside a wooden staircase dating back to the hotel's inception in 1866, hangs a wooden phone from the 1920s. At one time, the Victorian building had even older models. In 1877, just a year after American scientist Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, The Astor became the first hotel in China to use the device.

A decade later, it became one of the first buildings in the country to install an electric generator. In the mid-1920s, it was the first Chinese public building to use an electric bulb.

Before then, you can imagine guests having dinner conversations over kerosene lamps, or writing letters by candlelight. Without electric lights, many would turn in earlier and wake up with the sun.

In 1924, the hotel constructed a new, four-floor wing and there installed one of the first elevator systems to be found in China. The elevator, a steel cage model with wooden interiors, still works - but it's only used for VIP guests to minimize wear and tear, says Li Yuanyuan, The Astor Hotel's marketing and communications manager.

"It is in perfect condition," Stephen Showers, corporate archivist of the Otis Elevator Company, which constructed the elevator, says. "The system would be an excellent addition to our elevator museum, but I do not know if we ever made a formal offer to purchase."

A plaque beside the elevator doors on the first floor reads that it is now the oldest operating elevator in China. Among Otis elevators - the American brand that invented passenger lifts - the oldest known to survive can be found at the Raj Bhavan (Government House) in Kolkata, India, installed in 1892.

The plaque also mentions some of the historical figures who have stayed at the hotel, such as Peking Opera star Mei Lanfang and former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai.

Other notable guests included Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, United States President Herbert Hoover, as well as China's last emperor Puyi, who apparently loved to dance at the hotel ballroom with his empress Wan Rong, when they resided in Tianjin.

A number of important visitors are commemorated with their namesake set meals at the hotel's Western restaurant, the 1863 The Astor Bistro and Terrace. The menu items, says marketing manager Li, were dishes these guests frequently ordered while at the hotel.

Within Tianjin, The Astor holds the record of being the first hotel to offer running water (1899) and one of the first to set up central heating (1905).

With data that involves comparative research, how has the hotel established these facts about its history?

"We've checked old newspaper articles and public records," Li says. The Astor Hotel's State-affiliated owners, she says, employed a team to study the property's history before it was relaunched by Starwood Hotels and Resorts as a luxury hotel in 2010.

For almost a century starting from 1860, following China's defeat in the Second Opium War (1856-60), Tianjin became home to the biggest number of foreign concessions in the land: British, American, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Austro-Hungarian and Belgian.

It was The Astor's earliest shareholders, including British and German nationals, who brought to the hotel the latest Western scientific innovations of that time, according to information found in the hotel museum.

In 1963, The Astor Hotel was classified by the government as a "nationally important historical relic". This has helped preserve its original architecture and old interiors, which create an atmosphere that sweeps visitors back in time.