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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 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: