Back from the Cold
Just got back from Harbin this morning. All semester long we heard how cold it was in Harbin, so we went prepared. I wore 8 layers on top, 5 layers on bottom, a big long down coat with a hood, 3 pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves, two scarves, ear muffs, and two hats. Needless to say, we looked pretty ridiculous.
It turned out Harbin wasn't as cold as usual this weekend (high -18C, low -25C), but it was still colder than any weather I've ever been in. The first bad sign was that as we were preparing to get off the train in Harbin I noticed the windows had frosted over on the inside. When we got off the train things didn't seem so bad until we felt something funny going on in our noses. It turns out the snot in our noses was freezing. Takes a bit of getting used to..
The first day we joined a tour for convenience. We went to this old Russian church, watched old people swim in the river, a snow sculpture park, two ice sculpture parks, and a couple of places to buy overpriced goods.
The swimming exhibition was a bit freaky. Maybe it is healthy like the swimmer claimed (she said swimming for 15 seconds is like swimming for an hour in normal water), but it just feels cold watching them. The highlight of this stop was the ice slides. They have these long slides made out of ice and you sit on a bamboo cushion to slide down. You go surprisingly fast and it's way fun.
The snow sculpture park was bigger than I expected. The tour guide said the sculptures were made of man made snow because regular snow just wouldn't hold together enough. Weirdly, most of the sculptures in front were all western looking (mostly Greek), except for the gigantic dragon and rooster ones. In the back they had the sculptures made for a competition and these were a bit more fun to look at. The Russian teams had the most intricate designs. If a design was abstract and modern (simple to create), then you knew it was French. They also had some odd combination of countries for teams, like Singapore, Korea, and Switzerland collaborated. The US team's sculpture was a dove being released by two hands and was called "Peace." Not to be too judgmental, but can you get any more cliche? Let's be more creative like the Canadians with their "New Life" entry, an egg with a human baby head coming out on one side and a bunch of sperm stuck to it on the other.
The ice sculpture parks were less sculptures and more structures built from ice blocks. The first one was the more extravagant one with futuristic buildings (some space ship like ones) as well as some built to resemble famous structures in China, like the Temple of Heaven. Instead of just having plain ice blocks, they also embed lights in the ice so at night the structures can be lit up from within (hence the name ice lanterns). This is fairly neat, though the colors and patterns they use are distinctly...Asian. The park also had a bunch of games like an amusement park, but they were games like funny bicycles on ice, chairs on ice, ice rinks, small ski slopes, etc... The second park had some sculptures but they were just plain weird. Not that the small ice navy and ice army there was not. They had a few battleships, fighter jets, and tanks, but the queen bee was definitely the air craft carrier. If you climbed to the top you could take the ice slide down. Here I have to enter a complaint...Ice is hard. If you build a turn in your ice slide, it'd be nice if there was a bit more of a bank to help the slider turn before the force of running into the wall made them turn. The second ice slide (the air craft carrier was the third) we went on was this massive one near some park. It was two stories tall with multiple turns (to the right), traffic lights to help with the flow of people, and instead of ghetto bamboo cushions, they gave you a plastic sled and elbow guards. How exciting! As per my custom of falling off things in China, I hit the wall on the first turn and was thrown off balance, as I tried to regain my balance I hit the wall of the second turn and was knocked off the sled. I got back on and finished the slide, but not without losing my precious down mitten and gaining a few bruises. One of the slide attendants was nice enough to walk the entire length of the slide to retrieve my mitten. So yeah, you'd think I'd have learned a thing or two before sliding down an air craft carrier, but no, maybe the cold weather slowed my brain or something, but down I went and yes, unfortunately their slide turned to the right too, so I got another nice reminder of how hard ice can be.
At night we left the tour and went to a Russian cafe that friends recommended. Since Harbin is fairly close to the border, you can see the Russian influence on the city. The food at the cafe was pretty good, though given the fact that I have never had Russian food before, I have no idea how authentic it was.
The next day we ate dumplings for lunch since apparently that's what you are supposed to do in Harbin, and plus, I never turn down the chance to eat dumplings.
Afterwards we went to the tiger reserve. For only 50RMB you can ride a bus into the park to see the tigers. According to the guide they have over 300 tigers in residence. Also, in a stroke of genius, the park makes available live animals tourists can purchase to feed the tigers. It's a win-win situation. The park saves money on food for the tigers by having the tourists pay for it, and the tourists get to see predators in action, because seriously, tigers just sitting around? Boring. No one in our bus at the start of the ride had purchased anything, so my friend was considering it, but I had made her feel bad about it and she hesitated. She was still considering it when the other tourists (we think they were from Hong Kong or maybe Shanghai) decided to buy 2 ducks and 4 chickens. Our driver radios the order over and the food car drives to us. This is where the scenario gets a bit ridiculous. The food car is a jeep completely covered by steel cages, but when the time comes to throw out a bird, the driver opens his door, gets out, and waves a duck around in his arms. When he gets the attention of the tigers, he throws the duck out, and gets back in the car. You'd think they would have come up with a better method. Meanwhile the duck tries to fly away but hits the fence and gets knocked down. On the second attempt to flee for its life, a tiger jumped up and grabbed it with his teeth (or paws, I couldn't quite see) and hopefully quite suddenly ended the duck's life. Now several tigers have gathered around the food car and the driver is unable to open the door much to let out the other duck and chickens, so he just opens his door a crack and throws them on top of his car. Of course the tigers jump on top of the car to get the food, so the man just has to wait until they are done and run off with their prizes. It's a bit funny to see tigers eating chickens. Maybe these ones have become pretty skilled at eating birds because they are quite systematic. Instead of just tearing it to shreds, it actually takes the time to rip off the feathers first. We didn't really get to see any of them finish their meal because the driver drove us away. I think this must have left some of the customers in our bus unsatisfied because they began to complain and wondered about buying more food. The driver said "I told you much earlier that if you wanted a sheep you needed to tell me sooner." In the end they decided to go back in to buy the sheep, but unfortunately we were at the end so we had to get off the bus.
The taxi driver on the way back to the city was telling us more about the ice parks. The ice blocks are cut from the big river, and construction of the park generally takes a month starting in December. Come spring when the ice looks like it is starting to melt, they knock over the structures and just let them melt there. It's strange to think that so much effort goes into building these very temporary structures. On the streets they cover the street lights with ice and in at least one place built up an ice wall where you can slide in advertisements or bulletin boards. I guess it only seems strange because in other places you don't expect the ice to last for 5 months.
It turned out Harbin wasn't as cold as usual this weekend (high -18C, low -25C), but it was still colder than any weather I've ever been in. The first bad sign was that as we were preparing to get off the train in Harbin I noticed the windows had frosted over on the inside. When we got off the train things didn't seem so bad until we felt something funny going on in our noses. It turns out the snot in our noses was freezing. Takes a bit of getting used to..
The first day we joined a tour for convenience. We went to this old Russian church, watched old people swim in the river, a snow sculpture park, two ice sculpture parks, and a couple of places to buy overpriced goods.
The swimming exhibition was a bit freaky. Maybe it is healthy like the swimmer claimed (she said swimming for 15 seconds is like swimming for an hour in normal water), but it just feels cold watching them. The highlight of this stop was the ice slides. They have these long slides made out of ice and you sit on a bamboo cushion to slide down. You go surprisingly fast and it's way fun.
The snow sculpture park was bigger than I expected. The tour guide said the sculptures were made of man made snow because regular snow just wouldn't hold together enough. Weirdly, most of the sculptures in front were all western looking (mostly Greek), except for the gigantic dragon and rooster ones. In the back they had the sculptures made for a competition and these were a bit more fun to look at. The Russian teams had the most intricate designs. If a design was abstract and modern (simple to create), then you knew it was French. They also had some odd combination of countries for teams, like Singapore, Korea, and Switzerland collaborated. The US team's sculpture was a dove being released by two hands and was called "Peace." Not to be too judgmental, but can you get any more cliche? Let's be more creative like the Canadians with their "New Life" entry, an egg with a human baby head coming out on one side and a bunch of sperm stuck to it on the other.
The ice sculpture parks were less sculptures and more structures built from ice blocks. The first one was the more extravagant one with futuristic buildings (some space ship like ones) as well as some built to resemble famous structures in China, like the Temple of Heaven. Instead of just having plain ice blocks, they also embed lights in the ice so at night the structures can be lit up from within (hence the name ice lanterns). This is fairly neat, though the colors and patterns they use are distinctly...Asian. The park also had a bunch of games like an amusement park, but they were games like funny bicycles on ice, chairs on ice, ice rinks, small ski slopes, etc... The second park had some sculptures but they were just plain weird. Not that the small ice navy and ice army there was not. They had a few battleships, fighter jets, and tanks, but the queen bee was definitely the air craft carrier. If you climbed to the top you could take the ice slide down. Here I have to enter a complaint...Ice is hard. If you build a turn in your ice slide, it'd be nice if there was a bit more of a bank to help the slider turn before the force of running into the wall made them turn. The second ice slide (the air craft carrier was the third) we went on was this massive one near some park. It was two stories tall with multiple turns (to the right), traffic lights to help with the flow of people, and instead of ghetto bamboo cushions, they gave you a plastic sled and elbow guards. How exciting! As per my custom of falling off things in China, I hit the wall on the first turn and was thrown off balance, as I tried to regain my balance I hit the wall of the second turn and was knocked off the sled. I got back on and finished the slide, but not without losing my precious down mitten and gaining a few bruises. One of the slide attendants was nice enough to walk the entire length of the slide to retrieve my mitten. So yeah, you'd think I'd have learned a thing or two before sliding down an air craft carrier, but no, maybe the cold weather slowed my brain or something, but down I went and yes, unfortunately their slide turned to the right too, so I got another nice reminder of how hard ice can be.
At night we left the tour and went to a Russian cafe that friends recommended. Since Harbin is fairly close to the border, you can see the Russian influence on the city. The food at the cafe was pretty good, though given the fact that I have never had Russian food before, I have no idea how authentic it was.
The next day we ate dumplings for lunch since apparently that's what you are supposed to do in Harbin, and plus, I never turn down the chance to eat dumplings.
Afterwards we went to the tiger reserve. For only 50RMB you can ride a bus into the park to see the tigers. According to the guide they have over 300 tigers in residence. Also, in a stroke of genius, the park makes available live animals tourists can purchase to feed the tigers. It's a win-win situation. The park saves money on food for the tigers by having the tourists pay for it, and the tourists get to see predators in action, because seriously, tigers just sitting around? Boring. No one in our bus at the start of the ride had purchased anything, so my friend was considering it, but I had made her feel bad about it and she hesitated. She was still considering it when the other tourists (we think they were from Hong Kong or maybe Shanghai) decided to buy 2 ducks and 4 chickens. Our driver radios the order over and the food car drives to us. This is where the scenario gets a bit ridiculous. The food car is a jeep completely covered by steel cages, but when the time comes to throw out a bird, the driver opens his door, gets out, and waves a duck around in his arms. When he gets the attention of the tigers, he throws the duck out, and gets back in the car. You'd think they would have come up with a better method. Meanwhile the duck tries to fly away but hits the fence and gets knocked down. On the second attempt to flee for its life, a tiger jumped up and grabbed it with his teeth (or paws, I couldn't quite see) and hopefully quite suddenly ended the duck's life. Now several tigers have gathered around the food car and the driver is unable to open the door much to let out the other duck and chickens, so he just opens his door a crack and throws them on top of his car. Of course the tigers jump on top of the car to get the food, so the man just has to wait until they are done and run off with their prizes. It's a bit funny to see tigers eating chickens. Maybe these ones have become pretty skilled at eating birds because they are quite systematic. Instead of just tearing it to shreds, it actually takes the time to rip off the feathers first. We didn't really get to see any of them finish their meal because the driver drove us away. I think this must have left some of the customers in our bus unsatisfied because they began to complain and wondered about buying more food. The driver said "I told you much earlier that if you wanted a sheep you needed to tell me sooner." In the end they decided to go back in to buy the sheep, but unfortunately we were at the end so we had to get off the bus.
The taxi driver on the way back to the city was telling us more about the ice parks. The ice blocks are cut from the big river, and construction of the park generally takes a month starting in December. Come spring when the ice looks like it is starting to melt, they knock over the structures and just let them melt there. It's strange to think that so much effort goes into building these very temporary structures. On the streets they cover the street lights with ice and in at least one place built up an ice wall where you can slide in advertisements or bulletin boards. I guess it only seems strange because in other places you don't expect the ice to last for 5 months.
posted by wchien at 4:59 PM
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