Happy New Year!

Finally a three day weekend! After months of cruising along the monotonous five-day-work-week trail, we got a chance to take an extra day to ourselves over the New Years break. To treat ourselves during this unaccustomed break we decided to head up to Harbin, a city of three million people near the Russian border.

Harbin is known for a bunch of things. It used to be controlled by the Russians in the early 1900’s so it has a rich architectural heritage unique to northern China. It also held the largest population of Jewish people in China around the same time, and has the largest Orthodox Christian cathedral in China. It is home to the Harbin Hongchang (Harbin red sausage- a garlic filled treat) as well as Harbin beer, spicy hotpot and candied haw fruit. It has the largest concentration of Siberian or DongBei tigers in the world (well over 100 reside at the breeding center and there are only approximately 400 everywhere else in the world) and is home to the world’s largest ice festival… think Carnival d’hiver on steroids.

Anyways we organized a group of eleven people who all wanted to head north to play in the cold, and Paul worked with Mody (a tour guide who helped us get tickets on our Gansu trip) to round up train tickets. We took an overnight train up to Harbin and enjoyed a few bubbly beverages as we rode north. As we pulled into Harbin in the morning it was apparent that we were entering an extremely cold environment as there was an inch thick layer of ice on the windows. Longjohns, ski jackets and a Russian style hat for Paul and we were ready to brave the -28 degree weather.

We were in Harbin for three days and had some awesome adventures, misadventures and undertook plenty of touristic ventures. Because we are busy with exams and really don’t have time to write up a play by play of the entire trip, here are some of the highlights:

-Skating on the frozen river: Ice four feet thick below us, hundreds of silly Chinese ice games (from sledge chairs to a spinning top that you whip with a piece of rope), the cold wind on our faces, dog sleds, old Chinese men playing hockey with Canada jerseys on and a smile on Kristen’s face that would have split her open if those big cheeks of hers hadn’t reigned it in.

Ice dancing, Paul's new hobby.

Kristen is working on a new martial art form... ice kwan do.

-New Years Eve: Individual hotpot at the fanciest restaurant I have been to in a long, long time; cold Harbin beers; carved ice sculptures; a walk down the cobblestoned pedestrian streets in the old Russian quarter and watching a paper lantern that we had lit sail off above the frozen river we were standing on.

Personal hot pot... best hotpot ever. (Kudos to Hayley for the pic)

-Tigers: Seeing 9 foot long Siberian tigers, watching one of the “ligers” (unfortunately not bred for their skills in magic…) scent mark one of our companions, having a leopard jump ten feet while taking a video, and feeding a live chicken to a hungry tiger at the DongBei Hu breeding center (“North East Tiger” breeding center).

Nine feet of agressive fury... and fuzz. Hope no one else wanted a piece of that drumstick.

"No Kristen, they would need more than just a litterbox and a scratching post in the spare bedroom."

The Great White Liger

Paul contemplating the circle of life. Notice how he is carefully cradling the chicken's lower limbs before callously throwing the fowl to its doom...

-The Ice Festival: Towers of ice bricks fourteen stories tall, hundreds of buildings and ice and snow sculptures, lights embedded in the ice glowing crazy neon colours, gliding around on ice bikes, sliding down ice slides and huddling together for warmth.

We took the overnight train back home to Dalian. We were supposed to arrive back at around 6:30 and a bus was waiting to take us straight to school. It takes about an hour to get back from Dalian, so as long as everything worked out perfectly we should have been there right on time. Unfortunately it started to snow that night. This meant the train had to slow down so we didn’t get in until almost 7:00. Then the bus had to take its time because Chinese snow removal crews consist of five guys shovelling salt out of the back of a moving pickup (not joking… we saw them on the way back in working their magic). We ended up rolling in a little late (8:30ish) but luckily we were just 11 of 23 people late or missing because of the snow!

It was a great weekend, and one that we would definitely recommend to anyone travelling in Northern China in January with snow gear, a little bit of Mandarin and some time to kill.

Other notable memories:

-Paul’s Mandarin improving exponentially as he was forced to use it all the time. His Mandarin was the best in the group and by the end of the weekend he was holding conversations with cab drivers and waiters… although the Harbin accent was so thick and different then the Dalian one that understanding each other was always a little tough. Case in point: Paul trying to order grilled mushrooms and instead getting stewed tripe…mmmm yum!

-St. Sophia’s Cathedral after dark was pretty damn cool!

-Borscht at a Russian café.

-Sausage that, unlike most Chinese sausage, didn’t smell/taste like wet socks.

(Sorry, we would love to put up more pictures, but the internet is fighting us... its been six hours and we have only managed to get up these pictures so far. You will just have to use your imagination for the rest! We might try to throw a couple more up later in the week if we have time... keep checking in!)