Harbin - Ice City

After taking Kelly to Thailand where we enjoyed beautiful, hot weather, I took Kelly to the opposite extreme in Harbin, the capital of China's Heilongjiang Province, which borders Russia. Harbin is known for its artic temperatures and its annual ice festival - an amazing display of ice and snow sculptures. It was freezing cold, with sub-zero temperatures at night and teens during the day, although the wind made it feel much colder. I can easily say I have never felt so cold in my life. But the experience was definitely worth it (although at the time I did question whether I'd ever feel warm again).

Kelly and I grabbed some Northeast Chinese food before heading off to the Siberian Tiger Park. The park houses several hundred endangered Manchurian Tigers as well as lions, rare white tigers, an extremely rare liger (a lion & tiger hybrid that was an incredibly beautiful animal), cheetah and leopard. The goal of the park is to breed tigers and save them from extinction. You ride in mini-vans that take you through the park, safari-style. We got to see the cats up close. People bought live chicken to feed the tigers - a man in a jeep covered in heavy-duty chains would drive into the park and release the chicken and everyone would watch the tigers rip the chicken apart. There is no way that these animals will every be able to survive in the wild since they probably associate cars and people with food. The tigers and lions followed the jeep whenever it came into their area. They know that jeep = food. They're fed and don't really hunt for their food. Apparently you can buy a cow to fee the tigers too. It arrives in a dump truck with then tips backwards until the cow falls off. Since cows are expensive, we didn't see anyone buy a cow. But we did see the tigers get fed - both live chickens and chunks of raw meat.

After the Tiger Park, Kelly and I hit Zhongyang Dajie, or Central Avenue. We lived in the Russian neighborhood, and Central Avenue is the center of it. Beautiful Russian buildings lined the street, which also had ice sculptures in the middle. Since it was the official opening day for the festival, hordes of people, Chinese and lots of Russians, were out on the streets. We had Russian food at a cute Russian restaurant that also served as a little museum. Kelly tried this sugar-covered fruit candy served on a stick afterwards and promptly became addicted to it. We had it several more times afterwards.

After dinner, we visited Zhaolin Park right next to our hotel for the miniature ice-sculpture festival. There were castles and pagodas and sculptures all made out of ice. It was incredible.

The next day, we went up to the top of the Dragon Tower, the 2nd tallest tower in the world, and the tallest in Asia. The tower housed the most random mix of stores and displays, including a dinosaur exhibit, pets for sale and a touch exhibit (like the ones you would find in a science museum), a display of old movie posters and a Tang Dynasty artifacts exhibit. From the top of the tower (we could go up to 180m, 190m, 193m, 203m and 206m), we could see all of Harbin, but it was a gray, cloudy day. It was also super windy and cold up there!

We also visited the St. Sofia Church, a Russian Orthodox Church built in a Byzantine-style architecture. It was magnificent - totally not something you would expect to see in China. The buildings around it were knocked down and a beautiful European-style square was built around it. After that, we went to the Songhua River, which is frozen solid (over 1.5m of ice we were told) where we say people swim laps in a pool surrounded by ice. It was so cold (-12 degrees Celsius), yet these people were swimming. It was unbelievable. I felt cold just watching them.

Kelly and I went to see the baby Beluga whales and polar bears at the Harbin Polarland Aquarium (in part because it gave us a bit of time to warm up) before heading to see the snow sculptures on Sun Island. The snow sculptures were incredible. The snow was packed so tightly that it might as well have been ice. Many of the snow sculptures were still not finished, so we saw sculptors chiseling and shoveling away at the snow. It was amazing to see. We went directly to the Harbin Ice and Snow World afterwards where we saw the big ice sculptures. The built Porsches, a Church, Greek Temple, Chinese pagodas and more, all entirely out of ice. And everything was light up at night. It was beautiful. However, by that time, I had already freezed into a block of ice and didn't try to go down the ice slide or seriously explore the buildings built of ice (you can climb them, go inside, etc.).

Before heading back to Beijing via our first overnight train experience, we had more Russian food. The Borsche was wonderful since it warmed us up. The overnight train was an interesting experience. It had 4 beds per small little room and each bed also had a little tv attached. Ear phones are provided. So I watched Armageddon on tv and then parts of Shaolin Soccer before sleeping. It was much nicer than I had expected.

Back in Beijing, Kelly was tired of visiting tourist sights so she left Beijing this morning without going to see any of the main Beijing sites like the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. I guess she'll just have to come back again...