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Harbin Ice Festival 2008 Part 4

September

I almost forgot to finish off my adventure to Harbin!

The final day in Harbin was spent sleeping in. Before going to Harbin, we were so adamant about waking up at a decent time so that we could spend more of our time on the streets of Harbin rather than in the hotel room… We didn’t take into account the freezing cold weather that makes you want to snuggle and stay in bed.

We started out in search of sustenance and stumbled upon a cozy Chinese looking Korean joint. Unfortunately the menu didn’t have any pictures so we had to make do with our broken Mandarin telling the 复员 we wanted rice/noodles and a chicken/pork/beef. Thankfully it turned out quite yummy and it was spicy enough to warm us up on the inside.

Having come from Beijing where taxi’s were abundant, we were a little surprised at how long it took to hail one down. Then off we went to the Japanese Germ Warfare Base Museum which is a little out of Harbin. The drive was fairly long, I can’t remember if it was around 30mins or longer, and the taxi driver even had to stop to ask for directions.

The Japanese Germ Warfare Base Museum commemorates the hundreds of lives lost at the site. These POWs, civilians or not, were experimented on by the Japanese army’s Unit 731 (其三一部队). Perfectly healthy civilians were injected with viruses, burnt alive, frozen alive, dissected alive… the list goes on, all for the name of research and science.

It was creepily quiet, dark and felt a lot like a dungeon. Definitely felt some eerie vibes. I was a bit thankful the actual site where the experiments took place was in the building down the road… I would have been more freaked if I was standing where hundreds of people were tortured to death.

There were a few times I lost track of my travel buddies and freaked out a bit… Especially in the areas where they have statues and models depicting the various forms of torture.

We felt quite subdued on the taxi ride back.

As a pick me up, we went shopping around Zhong Yang Jie. They have very nice shoes and the fashion is not typically Chinese (I think it’s because they cater for the Russians around the area). We also decided to try a Russian restaurant for dinner but there were so many restaurants on Zhong Yang Jie, we didn’t know where to start!

My cousin told me that I must try the Harbin sausages because they’re supposed to be the ‘best’. I don’t know if maybe we ordered the wrong sausage but I wasn’t that impressed with it. But then again, compared to the pathetic Chinese sausages (long wieners) I would have to agree. At the end of the day, nothing beats the nice fat artery-clogging sausages found at every Aussie BBQ =P

And this then brings my Harbin trip to an end!

Category: Travelling in China Tags: China, Family, harbin, Japan, Russia 2 Comments

Harbin Ice Festival 2008 Part 3

July

Selina Lai

I initially wanted to stay in Harbin for about five days so we can see the Ice Festival, Snow World, Tiger Park etc etc and just take our own sweet time with the place. But because it was so troublesome to get our hands on the train tickets, we figured the length of our stay will depend on the availability on our train ticket back to Beijing.

In the end we decided not to stay so long because the cold was really getting to us, plus there was a bit of tension during our whole trip since it didn’t exactly start off on the right foot. So the next day we planned to go to the Tiger Park in the morning and then see the Harbin Ice Festival in the late afternoon and evening. Our friends who visited Harbin the week before advised us that it was best to go during that time so that we can see the ice sculptures during daylight as well as lit up at night.

They also warned us with stories about frozen eye lashes and how the vapours of our breath would freeze once it left our body! And so I was thankful that the temperature in Harbin when we were there was ‘warmer’ going as low as -25C. I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to wear my contacts – no one wants to have their contacts frozen onto their eyeball!! At -20C I found that although my breath did freeze a little on my scarf, it didn’t freeze on my eyelashes which in turn meant my contacts were safely moist on my eyes =)

I was actually quite excited to go to Tiger Park to see the endangered species and just to get a chance to be up close to them. We caught our breaths as we stumbled out of the taxi – we still weren’t used to Harbin taxi drivers speeding on ice slick roads!

The Tiger Park was quite depressing and uneventful after the first few tiger sightings, instead I couldn’t help but think of how bored out of their minds these tigers were… The enclosure isn’t tiny but I can’t say that it’s that big either. I was a bit disappointed that the only white tigers I saw were a couple of cubs in a tiny enclosure…

Although going to the Tiger Park was quite easy, coming back however is a bit trickier because it’s pretty far from the city – which is understandable in case one escapes or something… This means that the taxi drivers are not so easily found to get a lift back. We ended up hitching a ride with some other Chinese local to get us dropped off at the Harbin Ice Festival!

The Harbin Ice Festival is definitely right up there with Zhongyang Jie of places you just have to visit when you’re in Harbin. I would have liked to stay there a bit longer, I don’t think I had the chance to look at everything or even had enough time to appreciate everything. Had I been wearing the appropriate clothes for freezing climates, I might have even gone down on their ice slide, gone curling or one of their other activities they had.

Nonetheless, the two coffee/milo/hot chocolate/soup breaks did nothing to keep our fingers, toes and ears from going painfully numb. Speaking of breaks, in the center of the biggest tent was a tiny enclosure with a couple of tigers in it…. Talk about mood killer!

Anyway, I’ll let the Video and photos speak for themselves… The photos are on my Facebook album =)

Category: Travelling in China Tags: China, harbin, ice festival, tiger park, Travelling in China Leave a Comment

Harbin Ice Festival 2008 Part 2

July

Selina Lai

To continue one from Harbin Ice Festival Part 1, we finally arrived in Harbin and arrived at the hotel around 5am. The hotel was thankfully close by to the train station and there was no trouble getting a taxi at that time in the morning.

However, I still had a bit of trouble with booking our hotel because:

I couldn’t tell them when we were arriving (we didn’t have train tickets at that time)
I couldn’t tell them how long we were staying (I wasn’t sure what day we could get train tickets back to Beijing)
There’s actually TWO JinJiang Hotels in Harbin
I simply just couldn’t understand them…. oh the shame!

So arriving at 5am, we had to wake up the receptionist and she told us that we can’t check in until 7am when some of their patrons checked out. Being as tired as we were, we slept in the lobby which was freezing cold even though the doors were closed.

Thank goodness the Harbin JinJiang Hotel at Sophia Plaza had a really good manager on staff, she was extremely helpful and could understand our broken Mandarin. The best thing about Harbin is that their spoken Mandarin is the easiest to understand, even the locals agree =)

The manager helped us organise our room, she helped with the breakfast tickets and she even helped us buy our return train tickets when another staff member told us to go call them ourselves! (Plus it only took her 5mins to do)

So we went into our rooms, passed out and woke up sometime near noon… we didn’t exactly have much sleep on the painfully long and uncomfortable journey to Harbin. The good thing is that we did our research and we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to see and where the tourist spots all were.

With a spring back into our steps, we headed off in the direction of the St Sofia Orthodox Church. The St Sophia Church itself seemed to be a little smaller than I had imagined it, probably because of all the giant buildings surrounding it. I was most surprised by the birds still hanging around the church, I thought they would have flown to warmer climates or froze to death by now…

Once we had our share of photos, we found our way to Zhongyang Dajie (Central Ave) which is well known for the beautiful Russian architecture. There were ice sculptures spaced out all down the cobble stone road, and the whole street made me feel like I was in a dream when the lights turned on. Absolutely breath-taking.

Below is a short clip I took just as the sun was setting and the buildings started to light up

As it got darker, we found ourselves extremely thankful for the many shopping complexes available to shelter us from the cold. In fact, if we weren’t running around outside in the freezing cold, we would be sweating it off in the well heated shopping complexes and stores.

After a final round of hot coffee and Russian imported chocolate (which by the was is more expensive at the Ice Bar), we started off back to the hotel. On our way back, we even stumbled across some slides made of ice and a Christmas tree they forgot to take down =)

Below is a short clip I took of St. Sophia Church that night as we walked back to the hotel.

Harbin Ice Festival Trip:

Category: Travelling in China Tags: accommodation, China, harbin, Russia Leave a Comment

Harbin Ice Festival 2008 Part 1

July

Selina Lai

I’ve finally gotten around to finish typing up a large portion of my trip to the Harbin Ice Festival in January of 2008!!! YaY! But I just discovered that I totally killed Part 2 of the Harbin Trip by saving Part 3 over it!! >=( I’m so distraught right now… it was such a long post too. This will just mean that Part 2 will be delayed, I’ll attempt to get it up by the end of this week though =) Note to self: Always type posts up in Word for backup!!

After our last exam at BLCU (Jan 15th), most of us international students went off on our mini holidays to other parts of China or back home to see family and friends. After months of preparation and continuous discussions about where to go and what to see, we decided on going to the Harbin Ice Festival!

We had actually prepared an itinerary to travel all the way to Guilin and Chengdu to see the pretty landscape and cute pandas (did you hear about the Pandas who escaped because of the earthquake??), even going through Xi’an and Pingyao to see the terracotta warriors and ancient city, but we realised it was a bit too hopeful since it was a right before Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) and we were most likely going to have trouble with train tickets!

We weren’t wrong! Talking about our plans to Harbin was one thing, to actually get it done was another! Firstly, just to buy the train tickets to Harbin were a huge hassle because you have to fight half of China just to get to the ticket counter. The whole ticketing system was so that you can only buy your tickets 4-5days before the departure date, and you can’t book any tickets ahead of time. Although, I’m sure you could if you knew someone at the ticketing office!

We had to line up several times in the super-long Chinese style queues, where it’s just one big free-for-all wrestling match to get the ticket officers’ attention only to be turned down and told “明天回来 come back tomorrow“. We ended up delaying our trip by a few days because of this, which meant our hotel bookings had to be changed and our hopes of getting our hands on 3 hard sleepers were dashed. Instead, out of pure desperation, we got ourselves hard seaters.The train ride to Harbin was extremely memorable.

First of all, China rail sells standing tickets for those who, as the ticket suggests, remain standing throughout the whole journey. During peak season, these passengers are shoulder to shoulder blocking your way from the door to your seat. If you arrive late to your seat, expect some locals to be sitting in your seat. That is, if you even make it to your seat in the first place!

The train had already started moving and we were stuck in the mass of people trying to make our way to our allocated seats. Several locals happily help by pushing you on your way (some more aggressively than others). I’m quite sure I ended up stepping on people and random luggage in the aisle, as well as practically sitting in some strangers lap.

We found entertainment in just observing and commenting on the appearance and behaviour of the local Chinese. One girl in particular looked every part Japanese with her hair and make up, even her giant teddy bear. We watched her almost get run over by the lunch cart (she bought a standing ticket), we watched her steal the seats of other patrons when they went to the toilet and we also watched her practically sleep in the aisle.

It was only until near the end of our journey that the crowd ‘thinned’ out so those standing had space to sit/sleep in the aisle. It was also towards the end of the 18hour train ride that the locals found great humour and entertainment with us foreigners. Chinese are easily entertained if you just simply speak broken Mandarin to them and teach them some English.