We tried a few different restaurants in Harbin and our favorites were the German micro-brewery and a Russian restaurant.


We stumbled upon the German restaurant by accident and decided to give it a try. It was packed with Chinese people clinking giant steins of sweet, wheat beer. The restaurant was a buffet, sort of. You went up to get your side dishes and desserts but several roasted meats were brought directly to your table.


We dined on hearts, livers, beef, chicken, tongue, roasted corn on the cob, lamb, pig ear and a few other things that I couldn't identify. The food was good (and plentiful), the beer was delicious and the whole thing only cost about 35 RMB each.


Another restaurant that we liked was called Cafe Russia and offered traditional Russian food. We tried the cabbage rolls and the piroshki (cabbage, potato and meat puffs). Everything was delicious and it felt good to get warm and fill up on something besides rice. We also enjoyed the table full of Chinese girls next to us who were extremely skeptical of the food and were obviously not well-practiced with a knife and fork. I imagine that this is what Sean and I look like pretty much every day here in China as we examine new dishes and work on our chopstick skills.

Besides the tigers, there were many other animals to be seen in Harbin. Near the edge of the downtown, by the river, you could take a dogsled ride or a sleigh ride.


At the Snow and Ice World I got to hold a snow fox and Sean rode a yak.


There were also sleigh rides with furry ponies who were constantly snorting to get the snow and ice out of their noses.

Some of the sculptures downtown were of animals and instead of being filled with lights, they were actually made of colored ice like this orange fish. It was pretty cool!

The main reason we wanted to go to Harbin was to check out the famous Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival that Harbin has every January. It was a bit expensive to get into (200 RMB) but totally worth it. Each year the festival makes huge sculptures out of ice from the nearby Songhua river. The sculptures are usually famous buildings, castles, churches or monuments and this year was no exception with the Great Wall, the Colasseum, and the Forbidden City. You can walk inside and around the sculptures and many of them even include ice slides.


One of the coolest things about Ice and Snow World is that in each block of ice there is room for a light so the buildings are constantly changing color. Except for the fact that it was really really cold, we had a good time hanging out in this crazy, frozen fairyland.


The scariest ice slide was one that curved around steeply inside the Great Wall sculpture. To be honest, it was terrifying, as you reached breakneck speed screaming down a steep and long slide made completely out of ice, slammed from side to side in a tiny, cheap, plastic sled, and finally stopped by crashing into a snowbank. Sean said that it was the most afraid he had been so far in China. This is what Sean looked like after he collided with the snowbank:


The trouble with Ice and Snow World was that it was freezing. It was so cold that my camera quit working many times but fortunately there were many little warm shanties for hot (and overpriced) refreshments.



I think what impressed me most about the festival, besides the obvious construction of a city made of ice, was all the tiny details that went into it. They even made their own trees with tiny flower lights wrapped around them.


I don't know how much ice was used, how many men worked on the project or how long it took, them, but Ice and Snow World was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I have a feeling that from here on out, traditional ice-carving contests might just not be the same.

One of the coolest things places we visited (upon recommendations from Ken and Daniel) was the Siberian Tiger Park. The Siberian Tiger Park is a reserve with many tigers living in large pens. Visitors take jeeps safari-style through the reserve and can see the tigers close-up. As soon as we got there Sean and I were able to hold a baby tiger which was awesome!


The tiger park was quite different from anything you might find in America, however, as visitors were encouraged to buy live chickens and cows to feed to the tigers and to watch them hunt. PETA would have a field day with this kind of thing I am sure. Fortunately/Unfortunately we didn't remember to buy the prey before the tour started and nobody else in our van bought anything either. If you check out Daniel's blog from last year, however, you can see some pretty cool pictures of his experience at the tiger park including this picture (Daniel I hope it is ok that I am using your picture):


One of the most entertaining things was watching how excited the Chinese people in our van got whenever we got really close to a tiger. They would rush to that side of the van and start snapping pictures and taking video. I was half-tempted to stop watching the tigers and start taking pictures of them. I can only imagine if it were pandas instead of tigers!

In Harbin we stayed at the Little Fir International Youth Hostel which was very cheap compared to the other expensive hotels in town. Though it was located in the university district and a little ways outside of the downtown, the staff were very friendly and provided maps and bus routes along with helpful advice about what to see and how to get there. The hostel also provided day trips to a nearby ski resort which Sean and I decided to try.


At 7am we were picked up by a tour group and immediately realized that we were the only non-Chinese people in the tour and that the day trip was going to be entirely in Chinese. Fortunately, that weekend Harbin was one of the sites for an important English exam as well as graduate exam so there were several students in town with their families who helped us with some of the more important translation of the guide. We spent three hours on a bus with stops for lunch and to pick up snow suits and then headed to Yabuli ski resort.


Yabuli ski resort is the biggest ski resort in China and the lodge and slopes were a bit chaotic. All of the people on our tour had never skied before and were anxious and nervous to try. We had the choice of only skiing in the afternoon or taking a cable car to the top of the mountain and then skiing after. Sean and I opted to see the top of the mountain and we were glad we did. The views were awesome as we climbed higher and higher and the weather become colder and colder.


Everything was covered in white crystals and it created a really beautiful and pristine panorama. Getting up to the top took about 45 minutes and by the time we got there I was so cold I didn't think I was going to make it. Fortunately, there was a little hut with overpriced coffee and tiny stoves to warm your feet. It was fantastic and felt good to get warm again before the ride down.


After we made it down we got our equipment and didn't have much time at all to ski before we had to start back home on the bus. We still had fun though and I remembered how horrible I am at downhill skiing and re-awakened some muscles I hadn't used in years. Most of the Chinese people on our tour hired "coaches" who skied backwards down the hill in front of each of them to try and teach them how to ski. It made for an interesting backdrop while heading up on the lifts. In Michigan we had ample opportunities to downhill ski but I was raised on cross country skiing. After struggling with the bunny hill, I was more than ready to go back to cross country skiing.

One of the first places we visited in Harbin was a historical one - the Japanese Germ Warfare Experiment Base - 731 Division. Unit 731 was a secret biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Japanese Army that performed lethal human experimentation during the Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious and horrible war crimes carried out by the Japanese. Unit 731 was initially set up to develop weapons of mass destruction for potential use against Chinese, and possibly Soviet during the forces (according to Wikipedia, my guidebook and the translations in the museum).

I had never heard of unit 731 before but the description I read in the guidebook made it seem like conditions were similar to those in concentration camps. Here, according to my Lonely Planet guidebook, "Chinese prisoners of war and civilians were frozen alive, subjected to vivisection or infected with bubonic plague, syphilis and other virulent diseases. Three to four thousand people died here in the most gruesome fashion including Russians, Koreans, Mongolians and, it is believed, a few American airmen."

There is only the main building that remains from the once very large unit. Much of it was destroyed by the Japanese when they left because they didn't want it to be discovered. Visiting the main building, now a museum, is free and contains photos, sculptures and exhibits of the equipment used by the Japanese. It had a lot of captions in English which was a huge plus. It was definitely eerie being able to walk through one of the actual buildings and see examples of some of the real things used. The museum made me want to read more about what happened at 731 and if it interests you too, check out the link here to the Wikipedia page for a brief introduction. I think the article will disgust and horrify you with what humans are able to do to other humans for power, money, fame and success in war.

To get to Harbin we had to take a train north - a trip that lasted 30 hours. The cool thing was that we didn't have to change trains; our train went straight from Shanghai to Harbin making several stops along the way (including Changzhou). Thirty hours on a train is a long time but fortunately China has several options for passengers traveling on the rails. The classy option is the "soft sleeper" which is four bunks to a cabin with beds that are softer and larger than the other options. The second option, and the one that we chose, is "hard sleeper" which is six bunks to a cabin and the beds are a little smaller and harder than the "soft sleepers." The third option is seats and the last option allows you to buy a ticket to ride on the train without a seat. That being said, we saw many people boarding the trains with sturdy buckets and tiny collapsible chairs which they would use to sit on in the aisles.


China's train system is great except for one thing: you can't buy round trip tickets. For example, Sean and I could buy our ticket to Harbin, but we couldn't buy our ticket home to Changzhou until we were actually in Harbin. This can create some problems and frustrations if the tickets sell out before you get there. If you have to be home at a certain time (which we did) it can add a little anxiety. Many Chinese can simply ask someone they know in the city to go and get tickets for them days before they arrive to solve this problem. As foreigners, we don't really have that luxury and Sean and I were relieved when we arrived that they still had tickets home available for the day we wanted to leave. A ticket for me to travel to Harbin from Changzhou on a hard sleeper train cost 452 RMB which is about $66.


We packed with 60 hours of traveling on a train in mind and included games, books, music, magazines, food, crossword puzzles, Chinese practice and journals. The trip was fun (at the beginning) and it was nice to watch the scenery, relax, read and attempt to make conversation with our very friendly Chinese cabin mates. The people watching was intense and being cramped in a train with lots of Chinese people was an interesting slice of humanity. Everyone wore slippers and most passengers stripped down to different layers of long underwear and it gave our car quite an intimate feeling with everyone walking around in their skivvies. The hardest things for me to adapt to (especially when I was really ready to be off the train) was the squatter toilet, the smoking, the constant sounds of loud cell phones and text messages (even late into the night), the overwhelming smells of instant noodle spices, the lack of places to sit down, the shrieking kids running around, the guy who spilled his peanuts and shells in the bunk above mine which rained down on me periodically during the night and the loud and enthusiastic music that was blared on the train' speakers at 7:00am to wake us up. One of the things that I found most interesting was that the loudspeaker would inform us of when we should take our afternoon nap and go to bed by saying things like "the announcements will stop and the curtains will be closed so you can enjoy your afternoon nap. Please take care of your belongings before your rest".


The highlights of the ride included watching the scenery, talking to people, listening to the book "Born to Run" on my ipod and beating Sean 7 games to 6 in Cribbage.