Monday, March 05, 2007
The Magic of Harbin
When I first got my job in China and it was still from February to August before I would leave, I started researching places that I hoped to see while I was here for two years. Well, the list of places I must see has grown and grown and who knows how long I will need to live here to make a dent in my list. Several different dear friends sent me pictures of the same place that was a must see here in the region once know as Manchuria. It is not so very far away from Dalian and the pictures convinced me that this place was indeed a must see. The city is Harbin and is the capital of the northern province of Heilonjiang.
Each winter there is an ice festival in Harbin. In January when the temperatures can run from -10 degrees Centigrade to – 40 degrees Centigrade (!!!!!!!!), the city turns two separate parks into wonderlands. One is a snow sculpture park. There are teams of sculptors who carve large mounds of snow into individual works of art. There is a long mountain of snow that is constantly being sculpted throughout the festival and there is an area of snow buildings that house bars and eateries which provide a unique environment for a thriving night life.
The second park on the outskirts of town is multiple acres of huge buildings and slides that are made of giant ice cubes. Each structure is lit up colorfully. The effect is breathtaking and very surreal.
Leslie and I had spent a long time thinking about a weekend trip in January. So when we got back from our winter break travels, it was time to get serious and make arrangements. One of the teaching assistants, Qui (who goes by the name Ella, at school) is from Harbin and when she caught wind of our wanting to go to the festival she really wanted to go also and to help us make arrangements. Before we knew she had contacted the mother of a friend in Harbin and we had hotel accommodations. She navigated us through buying night train tickets; although much to her chagrin only hard sleeper tickets were available by the time we went to buy tickets. Hard sleeper meant that we had sleeping berths in a 6 person compartment area and there were about 20+ such compartments per train car. The excursion contingency grew to include Becky (2/3 teacher), Bill (middle school teacher) and his wife, Blanca (who is setting up and running the library as well as working with my k-1ers). While we were taking the overnight train to Harbin on Friday night we all agreed that perhaps it was too much to take the overnight train back arriving in Dalian on Monday morning and then hightail it out to JinShiTan to teach so we settled on flying back to Dalian on Sunday afternoon.
What an adventure. The night train was an experience. Our car was packed with people and the parade of long underwear was amazing and a bit frightening as we thought perhaps we could be
underdressed for the cold. We had long underwear and heavy coats and scarves, but we did not have the layers and layers of such that the natives had. Would we survive the cold? While outside was probably very cold, the train itself was stiflingly hot! What with the heat and all of the sleeping or roaming the car people noises, it as nigh on to impossible to sleep. We pulled into the Harbin rail station and piled off the train with the other hordes of travelers. There was Qui, who had come on the night train Thursday night so that she could spend the day with her elderly grandmother before playing tour guide for us.
At the hotel we were treated as so kindly. Qui’s friend’s mother who had arranged the hotel would not let us pay for our rooms. The management company that she worked for wanted to treat us to the hotel. No amount of talking was changing things and finally we decided that it would be rude to keep yammering about it so we gratefully accepted the two rooms offered and later bought gifts for the mother and for the hotel desk staff and left them with Qui to deliver after we were gone!
We spent a magical Saturday and Sunday at the snow park, ice sculpture park and wandering the streets of Harbin looking at all of the various styles of architecture. It is a beautiful city. To get to the snow sculpture park we took our first of many long ice slides down onto the frozen Songhua River. We then trooped across the river to Sun Island where we sent the afternoon wandering the park and seeing all of the snow carvings.
Saturday night found us at Zhaolin Park in a wonderland of ice and color. We spent the evening staring in awe at the enormous, beautifully illuminated ice structures. There were many more grand ice slides to zoom down and ice Great Wall replicas to hike. Amazing and awesome and my enthusiasm for the experience did not even wane when I hobbled away at the end of the evening with a bruised tailbone when I hit a large ice divot on the last slide of the night. Even as I have spent the last month recovering from said injury, I remain thrilled that I had the ice adventure.
The temperature was a mild -10 degrees Centigrade (the locals said that were so fortunate to be there in a warm spell). My feet were especially cozy as Leslie and I each invested in fur lined boots. We both are set for next winter’s cold in Dalian and any cold weather adventuring that should come our way. New scarves and a fabulous Russian inspired hat meant that I was warm
and adorned!
Each winter there is an ice festival in Harbin. In January when the temperatures can run from -10 degrees Centigrade to – 40 degrees Centigrade (!!!!!!!!), the city turns two separate parks into wonderlands. One is a snow sculpture park. There are teams of sculptors who carve large mounds of snow into individual works of art. There is a long mountain of snow that is constantly being sculpted throughout the festival and there is an area of snow buildings that house bars and eateries which provide a unique environment for a thriving night life.
The second park on the outskirts of town is multiple acres of huge buildings and slides that are made of giant ice cubes. Each structure is lit up colorfully. The effect is breathtaking and very surreal.
Leslie and I had spent a long time thinking about a weekend trip in January. So when we got back from our winter break travels, it was time to get serious and make arrangements. One of the teaching assistants, Qui (who goes by the name Ella, at school) is from Harbin and when she caught wind of our wanting to go to the festival she really wanted to go also and to help us make arrangements. Before we knew she had contacted the mother of a friend in Harbin and we had hotel accommodations. She navigated us through buying night train tickets; although much to her chagrin only hard sleeper tickets were available by the time we went to buy tickets. Hard sleeper meant that we had sleeping berths in a 6 person compartment area and there were about 20+ such compartments per train car. The excursion contingency grew to include Becky (2/3 teacher), Bill (middle school teacher) and his wife, Blanca (who is setting up and running the library as well as working with my k-1ers). While we were taking the overnight train to Harbin on Friday night we all agreed that perhaps it was too much to take the overnight train back arriving in Dalian on Monday morning and then hightail it out to JinShiTan to teach so we settled on flying back to Dalian on Sunday afternoon.What an adventure. The night train was an experience. Our car was packed with people and the parade of long underwear was amazing and a bit frightening as we thought perhaps we could be
underdressed for the cold. We had long underwear and heavy coats and scarves, but we did not have the layers and layers of such that the natives had. Would we survive the cold? While outside was probably very cold, the train itself was stiflingly hot! What with the heat and all of the sleeping or roaming the car people noises, it as nigh on to impossible to sleep. We pulled into the Harbin rail station and piled off the train with the other hordes of travelers. There was Qui, who had come on the night train Thursday night so that she could spend the day with her elderly grandmother before playing tour guide for us.At the hotel we were treated as so kindly. Qui’s friend’s mother who had arranged the hotel would not let us pay for our rooms. The management company that she worked for wanted to treat us to the hotel. No amount of talking was changing things and finally we decided that it would be rude to keep yammering about it so we gratefully accepted the two rooms offered and later bought gifts for the mother and for the hotel desk staff and left them with Qui to deliver after we were gone!
We spent a magical Saturday and Sunday at the snow park, ice sculpture park and wandering the streets of Harbin looking at all of the various styles of architecture. It is a beautiful city. To get to the snow sculpture park we took our first of many long ice slides down onto the frozen Songhua River. We then trooped across the river to Sun Island where we sent the afternoon wandering the park and seeing all of the snow carvings.Saturday night found us at Zhaolin Park in a wonderland of ice and color. We spent the evening staring in awe at the enormous, beautifully illuminated ice structures. There were many more grand ice slides to zoom down and ice Great Wall replicas to hike. Amazing and awesome and my enthusiasm for the experience did not even wane when I hobbled away at the end of the evening with a bruised tailbone when I hit a large ice divot on the last slide of the night. Even as I have spent the last month recovering from said injury, I remain thrilled that I had the ice adventure.
The temperature was a mild -10 degrees Centigrade (the locals said that were so fortunate to be there in a warm spell). My feet were especially cozy as Leslie and I each invested in fur lined boots. We both are set for next winter’s cold in Dalian and any cold weather adventuring that should come our way. New scarves and a fabulous Russian inspired hat meant that I was warm
and adorned!Weekend trips have a way of feeling like you have spent a lot longer away than just 42 hours. The pictures posted here hardly do justice to the beauty of the snow and ice in Harbin. What a magical and spectacular place to have gone.
# posted by Sidney @ 11:41 AM 
