Saturday, January 18, 2014

My Vacation, Part 1: Harbin

Hello everyone!

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting since Christmas, but a lot has been going on, so let me fill you in on the details.

First, after Christmas I was busy focusing on my final exams for my hanyu, kouyu, and xiezuo classes. As such, I wasn’t doing anything particularly interesting other than studying. I had a very quiet New Year celebration in my dorm room because I had to study for exams the next day. I have to say I’m glad they are over, and that I’m enjoying my month long vacation very much.

Before I get into that, let me give you all a basic idea of what the next few blog posts will be like. The first one, is going to be about my trip to Harbin, a city in northern China. The next post will be about my travels to Xining, the capital city of Qinghai province. After that I will be taking a break from posting about travels because I currently have a cold and will be resting in Beijing in an extremely boring manner. My next post after the one about Xining will be sometime after February 6th, and will be about my stay in Shanghai, where I will be celebrating the Chinese New Year with my mom’s friend Chang and her family, who graciously invited me to stay with them. After I return from Shanghai, I will be preparing for the next semester, and as such the next set of posts will be weekly like before, because I should have more to write every week at that point. Now, on to Harbin!

After I had my last exam I had one day to pack for Harbin. I went to Harbin with nine other girls, all foreigners like me (two Germans, two Italians, a Japanese, a New Zealander, a Singaporean, a Finish girl, and two Americans [me being one of them]).

At the Beijing train station we waited in line to go through security. While waiting, I said hi to a two year old baby girl who was adorable, and her dad told her to say “Hello” to the nice “aiyi.” Now, assuming most of you don’t know, “aiyi” is a term which means “aunt,” a term I have found is usually used for 40+ year old women here in China. Seeing as I am currently 21, people would typically call me “da jie,” which means “older sister,” rather than “aunt.” I must look too mature *sigh.*

After going through security, we found where our train was leaving, and decided to get dinner before boarding. So, seeing as everywhere else was crowded, we bought burgers from McDonalds. I would like to note that this was the first time I have eaten a burger, let alone McDonalds, since leaving the USA. And it was delicious! It tasted like home; beefy, filling, and satisfying.

Once we got our McDonalds dinner, we boarded our train, which would take ten hours to arrive in Harbin.

Here’s some pictures of our soft sleeper room:


(Some random guy who was taking pictures of us because we're foreigners)


(Dinner, yum)

(You might not be able to make out what this is, but it's Red Bean Pie, a sweet dessert found at McDonalds here in China)



(our upper beds)

(Laura)

(My bed)


Harbin is a city located in northern China, is moderately close to Russia, and is known for its cold temperatures and famous ice festival. It’s mostly a tourist site for Chinese people rather than foreigners, so while we were there most people assumed we were Russians due to being close to the boarder. For basic information about Harbin, I now provide the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbin

Here’s a picture of where it is on a map (from Wikipedia):

(The red is Harbin, the orange is Heilongjiang Province)

We arrived at about 6 am, and the temperature outside was -21 degrees Celsius (that’s about -7 degrees Fahrenheit). We all woke up early and bundled up before heading outside though, and walking around always gets the blood pumping. We were hungry, so we all went to a “xiao chi” restaurant (“xiao chi” is a place which serves small meals like Chinese buns and dumplings, porridge, or other similar foods). Needless to say, ten foreign women (seven of which had very distinct looking western features), walking in to a restaurant in a city which does not see many foreigners caused a bit of commotion. The laoban (boss) was extremely excited to see “so many pretty foreign women” in her restaurant, and the waiters and chef were also trying to get a good look at us too. The laoban put us in a back room since we were such a big group, and then she and one of the waitresses brought out their cameras and asked to take pictures of us. We agreed, and there were lots of flashing lights. Then she asked if she could be in the pictures with us. We agreed, and the next thing I knew she jumped over one of the girls sitting near me and sat in my lap before smiling at the camera. My brain wasn’t fully awake until that moment. The waitress to the pictures of us, and the laoban jumped away to tell the cook our orders. The food itself was very good, and probably the best baozi (buns with meat and/or veggies) I have had since I’ve been here in China. Honestly, I think the food tasted much better in Harbin. It tasted significantly less greasy than food in Beijing. But that’s just my personal opinion.

I don't have any pictures of the place, but I do have a small video:


After getting breakfast, half of us walked to the youth hostel, while the other half took a taxi. I was with the group that walked. The hostel was very nice. It was clean, warm, and the beds were softer than my dorm bed (yay!). There was also a cat there. It sometime went outside though and would then start meowing for people to let it back in (if I were a cat I wouldn’t go out in -21 degree Celsius weather, that’s too cold when you only have a thin layer of fur!).

Here's some pictures of our walk there:


(Christianna, the girl who was in charge of all of us, and who organized the entire trip. Thank you!)







Here's some pictures of the hostel:






and their cat:



After we settled in at the hostel, we went out to do some exploring. First we went exploring around the local area. At this time in Harbin, there are ice sculptures everywhere you look. Some of them are kind of silly, but others are pretty impressive. We think that the festival is mainly sponsored by Harbin beer, because there were quite a few sculptures of Harbin beer bottles around the area.

Picture Time!






(Coins for buttons?)

(Christianna with her monkey hat)







(Me with a violin)








(Yes, in these next two pictures we are eating ice cream. There's a famous brand which is really creamy and tasty, so we got some. Plus we were already surrounded by ice, why not eat some?)








(An ice maze!)

(from inside the ice maze)

(from outside the ice maze)





This is a snow amusement park:










More snow and ice!





We then decided to go see St. Sophia’s church in the Daoli district. For some more information, here’s a link with some history about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Sophia_Cathedral_in_Harbin















I also ran into a friend from PKU, Piotr, who I had no idea was in Harbin at the same time as me. He is currently studying at the same university as my two German friends, Kim and Teresa, in Germany (he’s actually from Poland though).

We then walked around some more, admiring buildings, etc., until we got hungry, and ate at a really great restaurant.

Here’s some pictures of our lunch:













After that we returned to our hostel to get ready to see the major ice festival. We were picked up by a bus at our hostel, and then after an hour or more on the bus, we arrived. And what we saw was like an ice version of Las Vegas, only without the gambling, heat, oh you get the idea.

Anyhow, enjoy the pictures!




(All ten of us bundled up!)







































































































The next day we got up bright and early to find breakfast, and eventually found a baozi place. I’ve never had so many different kinds of baozi in one sitting, but man were they good!

Picture time!




(breakfast: a baozi filled with veggies and noodles. Yum.)


After breakfast we decided to walk around town, and eventually walked on the Songhua River to Sun Island, and I mean that quite literally. The river had about a meter thick layer of ice, making it quite safe for us to walk across and jump on it (further down the river there were horse drawn sleds, and they were doing just fine so we thought we would be fairly safe).

Here’s some pictures:



































Once we got to Sun Island, I found this lovely Chinglish sign (hooray for translations!). But seriously, I have no idea what this was supposed to be:


This next one makes more sense though:



After that we walked around the island, enjoying the scenery and such. We also saw a cool looking temple, but it was closed so we could go see it. Here’s some pictures though:





















When we walked across the river back to the city, we also saw a man ice fishing. He cut a large hole in the ice and then dropped a net down, which he would then pull up with fish:






(The guys carving the snow from earlier finished!)

After crossing the river we went out to find food, and went to a lovely restaurant with great dishes. While there, we noticed that some people’s water bottles had frozen (my one friend Lisa had frozen tea), but the centers had remained slightly liquid, so they had literal ice cups:



(Peanuts. You need super chopstick skills to eat those.)








After lunch we split up into different groups. My group went off to see the bird, fish, and flower market. It wasn’t as impressive as I thought it would be, so I didn’t take any pictures. I did see a man plucking a pigeon in the street though. We then walked through a very dirty part of Harbin. We think it might have been the transportation district, with lots of factories and the like, because the snow was black. Everywhere. Once we left that area we went back to St. Sophia’s to rest, drink some coffee, and then meet up with everyone else for dinner.

Pictures!



















We decided to go to a hotpot restaurant, which was a lot of fun. We also met up with two other students from PKU who just arrived for the ice festival. Their names escape me at the moment though.

So Many Pictures!






After dinner we returned to our hostel to grab our back packs (since we were there for only two days all we packed were a backpack’s worth of clothing), and headed to the train station for a ten hour long trip back to Beijing.

All in all, this trip was a lot of fun! Next time I'll tell you about m trip to Xining. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures in this post!

Here's a car driving on the river: