chineseginger:

Yesterday I returned from a (short) classmate-bonding train trip to the northeastern (once Russian) city of Harbin. My first semester in Beijing officially ended with the handing in of my Newspaper Reading exam last Friday, thus beginning my “Chinese New Year” month-long vacation. Our class had been planning for a long time to kick off the vacation/say goodbye to each other by celebrating with a quick trip to the famed Ice Festival city of Harbin.

We were lucky enough to get train tickets for the trip. The “Chinese New Year Movement” (春運) has already begun. This is when most of the migrant worker population begins to buy train tickets and return to their hometowns to be with their families and welcome the New Year. Train tickets are sold 10 days in advance beginning at 9am. B and I were the 2^nd in line at a train ticket office, we bought our tickets at 9:08am and almost didn’t get tickets. In fact almost all of our 9 tickets were in different train compartments because people had already bought tickets together in those 8 minutes.

For most of our stay in Harbin it was around -11F without wind-chill. Upon arrival we ate a very salty breakfast at a cheap Chinese restaurant near the train station, then made our way to the day rental apartment (all the hotels were already booked a month ago, but it turns out that a day rental apartment was a better deal). The floor heating was absolutely fabulous. I could have just laid on the floor for hours. Little did we know that all of Harbin’s floor heating actually uses hot SEWAGE to heat rooms and NOT water, apparently the sewage can hold heat better than water. Just don’t break the floor!

Harbin has a main street that looks remarkably European because of all the Russian architectural influence. Something about it made me feel much more at home than the streets in Beijing. There’s even a nearby cathedral that has a round onion dome reminiscent of Moscow’s Saint Basil’s Cathedral. The main street ends at the extremely polluted, yet completely frozen, 松花江 Songhua River. A few of us stupidly decided to ride down an ice slide on metal toboggans; it was so bumpy we’re lucky we didn’t bite off our tongues! The sun was already setting at 4:30pm when we walked across the ice to the island with the ice sculptures on the other side.

After negotiating with some illegal cabdrivers we finally got two drivers to take us to the Ice Festival from the banks of the river. Originally they wanted 60, we haggled down to 40. And then the drivers suggested we go to a fish restaurant before going to the ice festival (obviously they were getting kickbacks). I negotiated the price down to 25 yuan upon arrival at the restaurant, then we walked across the road to relax at an empty all pink coffee shop on the top floor of a completely empty department store before catching a 1 yuan bus to the Ice Festival.

The Ice Festival is basically an assortment of sculptures, castles, and slides made of huge ice blocks containing multicolored neon lights. We slid down a few slides, warmed up at the overpriced KFC in the park, took another look around and then left.

The next morning after a breakfast of steamed and fried dumplings our group split up. I accompanied three of my Korean classmates to a museum dedicated to the “Korean Ethnic Minority Group” that populates a portion of North Eastern China. Some of our other classmates went to see a “Dragon Tower” while others went to see more snow sculptures.

The strangest thing was running into my fellow American AFSer Lee in Harbin! We both went to China together three years ago for our exchange. We were two of the nine Americans that went. After the orientation in Shanghai we split, she went to Harbin, and I went to Chongqing. Since the end of our exchange we’d barely kept in contact. But by CHANCE, I somehow ran into her 3 years later by accident in Harbin. I went down into a store with my classmates, all of a sudden I heard a familiar (distinctly American voice), I looked up, lo and behold it was Lee! She has only been in China for a week. But the strangest thing is that she too was going to Beijing on the same night I was. She hadn’t heard back from her hostel yet, so I offered her my tatami floor. The whole time I was in Harbin I wondered what Lee would have thought of Harbin had she been with me. Would she have said it changed? Where would she have recommended us to go? I was so shocked to see her I almost took her number down wrong. We have been pleasantly reunited, reminiscing in AFS mishaps, and enjoying each others’ company in China. Her sister is here too, and I am getting to know her as well. It’s just such an incredible coincidence I can’t even believe it.
Top: I asked some of my classmates to help me take this “jumping” photo on the frozen Song Hua River (around sunset at 4:30pm).
Bottom Left: Daytime ice sculptures in Harbin City
Bottom Right: Ice Festival sculptures in the special Ice Sculpture Park