One of the perks of teaching English abroad is the amount of vacation involved. Although our salary is good by Chinese standards it wouldn't cut it in America. But nobody teaches English abroad for the money, they do it for the experience of meeting new people, learning new things and seeing new places. That being said, having a long vacation (this year about 7 weeks for winter break) is a huge privilege and opportunity to do some traveling. Sean and I decided to spend the first week in a city called Harbin in the north of China.
We decided to go to Harbin because we had heard other teachers who had been there rave about the Ice and Snow Festival that is held there each year in January. But there are other things to do there as well like visit a Siberian Tiger Park, ski, and ice skate, take a sleigh ride or dogsled on the frozen Songhua river.
Harbin is a cool city and the 10th largest in China with a population of about 3.2 million. There is a lot of Russian influence in the city which can be seen in the architecture of some of the buildings and churches, in the food and in the tourist gift shops, of course. Walking in the downtown was fun because there are impressive ice sculptures scattered around. Walking at night is even more beautiful because everything is lit up.
The guide book calls Harbin "mind-numbingly cold" and it was. Before going I remember thinking, how bad can it really be? I am from Michigan where we see 5-6 months of winter so I felt plenty prepared. Turns out, I was not. Harbin was FREEZING. I don't think I have ever been that cold in my entire life. Even with an incredible amount of layers and protection you could only stay outside for about 1.5-2 hours before you would absolutely have to go inside and warm up. Upon stepping outside, the tiny hairs inside my nose would instantly freeze and my eyelashes would crystallize so any movements of the face would create a storm of tiny cracks and fissures.
It was brutal to have any piece of skin exposed and I dreaded having to take off my mittens or gloves in order to take a picture because my hand would physically hurt and it would take about 10 minutes to warm it up again. Even my camera was behaving a little wonky due to the extreme low temperatures and would only work again after warming it up inside. During the day the temperature was about -2 F but at night it would get down to -12 F (not including any factors for windchill). One of the hardest adjustments was the walking. Everywhere you stepped was ice and I almost wiped out 18 or so different times. It was really interesting to watch the flow of traffic as everyone was an expert at driving on ice. Taxis and buses knew just how long they could skid before coming to a stop and not crash into the line of cars ahead of them. I was impressed but also continually frustrated as the walking and the driving in ice made for slow moving and traveling.
We arrived in Harbin on Saturday night and stayed there until Tuesday afternoon. It was a really fun (though ridiculously cold) trip though I am happy to be back in Changhzou where the temperature of about 40 degrees today felt like summer.
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