Harbin - Ice and Snow World!

Because we are Canadian, we think we know what cold is, but Harbin, in the far north close to the Russian border, was an eye-opener. We were warned about the cold and we did prepare with warm clothes, but we were surprised by how cold it was. We were only there for the weekend but it was a solid -20 Centigrade the whole time. Luckily there was no wind and it was quite bearable for the most part but we were out for 2 and 3 hours at a stretch and if you didn’t keep moving, fingers and toes started to freeze.

We went to Harbin on a tour organized by the Chinese Culture Club. We took the overnight train up, sharing a sleeper with Don and Eve. It was fairly comfortable and we arrived at 7 am. We made a quick trip to the hotel to drop off our luggage and have breakfast, but we couldn’t check in until later in the day. Our first stop was to watch the ‘ice swimmers’ – a group of retired folks who are paid $10 US a dip to swim in the frozen Songhua River. The big attraction at Harbin was “Ice and Snow World” and we visited the snow sculptures next. The theme was Canada so we were pleased to see many Canadian symbols – Bonhomme Carnival, maple leaves and Dr. Norman Bethune. The largest was a huge replica of Niagara Falls – it must have been 200 yards long! Afterwards we had lunch at a restaurant in a botanical garden. The heat was welcome, but the chicken feet in the soup weren’t!

After lunch we went to a Siberian tiger park and saw tigers, lions, ligers, jaguars, leopards and just about every kind of big cat you can imagine. The highlight was the tigers taking down a live steer. I’ll save the photos of that! Later we checked into the hotel and afterwards we went to see the ice sculptures. They were simply amazing as the pictures will attest. I have never seen anything quite like it. The buildings were huge and all wired up with lights inside the ice blocks.

Sunday we visited a museum dedicated to telling the story of a Japanese biological warfare unit that operated near the city during WWII. This history helps to explain the dislike that many Chinese seem to bear towards the Japanese because the Japanese have not admitted responsibility for these horrible events. We returned to town somewhat quieter than we had been, but lunch at a noodle restaurant restored our spirits. After lunch we had free time to shop and then left for the airport.

Now there is a story to tell here – on Thursday before we left I gave our passports to our travel agent who needed them to get visas for our next trip to Cambodia and Vietnam. Of course I told him that we were going to Harbin on the weekend, but he promised that we didn’t need our passports. Now Brenda was not comfortable with us traveling without our passports and so I called him back and he assured me again that we didn’t need the passports and that he would call the hotel and the airport. Sure enough no one asked for our passports until the airport, but Brenda was nervous about it all weekend. When we got to the airport, our Chinese Culture Club guides took our photocopies of our passports and went off to some area of the airport. Though we were delayed checking in, sure enough we got on the plane. Not only that but because of the delay, they bumped us to first class seats. Now the flight was delayed leaving Harbin for several hours, but sure enough we got on and arrived home about 2:00 AM. So Brenda is still talking to me, but Harbin was not the only thing that was cold that weekend!