lili in china

Way back in Zhengzhou, whilst waiting for our train to Beijing Felix got talking to Any (pronounced Annie), a Chinese tour guide. It seems she knew better than to try to sell her services to us poor students, so we chatted for a while until the trains arrived. As well as telling Felix he had a big nose, she recommended that we go to Haerbin, as it really is beautiful there. Now, I have really wanted to see some snow this trip, and Beijing wasn’t giving up the goods, so why not? We got on the 12 hour train to Haerbin.

When I woke up on the train the insides of the windows were covered with a thick layer of ice. The combined frozen exhalations of the masses. The plains outside the window were dotted with sections of frozen ice and snow and the sky was clear. An hour later we were outside and freezing. Taking cover in a fancy hotel, we bought a map and found where we needed to go. Another dash outside and we were soon in a taxi to the hostel.

It was cold. Ice on the pavement, dirty snow under the trees. The normal invisible fog of the car exhaust was stained a bright white. First order of business? Put on all the clothes I brought. All of them. 7 or so layers on top, 3 pairs of socks and we were ready to explore. Hopped another cab back into town and we ducked in and out of shops thawing out so we could walk the cobblestone streets and see the russian architecture and ice sculptures that dotted the streets.

The river was frozen. There were ice slides and sleigh rides. We walked on the ice and sand and the frozen patterns were beautiful. The ice sculptures were less so. Mostly carved out of small blocks of ice and assembled they were blocky, mostly uninteresting, and really really cold.

To prove how cold it was here is a picture of the icicles that formed on my eyelashes.

After another thaw out we went to see the sculptures in a nearby park. Harbin has a big ice festival every year, but it hadn’t started yet, we got to see heaps of the works, and some being made.

AND I saw snow! Not falling, just on the ground. This trip had really been worthwhile!

Uhh. Well, I sort of saw snow, not sure if the manufactured stuff counts much.

We ducked into the nearest restaurant we could find, a weird mushroom hotpot place, and watched the sun set, at 4pm.

It was too cold, we wanted to go home. So we asked out hostel to book tickets for us. The phone call was placed, the answer came back, “Meiyou, ruanwo”. Only soft sleepers for the following day and the next! Luckily the hostel was warm, we slept, packed up in the morning and headed for the bus station.

Directly opposite the train station, the bus station in Harbin leaves alot to be desired design wise. The ticket offices are all upstairs, so to buy tickets you need to go through the baggage check, push past all the people waiting to board their busses and then deal with the ticket buying masses too.

Unfortunately, no busses straight to Beijing, so, after careful consideration we bought a ticket to Shenyang, hoping to be able to get straight on a bus from there. 7 or so hours later, the sun had set, and we arrived in Shenyang and managed to get tickets to Beijing leaving that night. A bowl of noodles later and we boarded a normal looking bus (not a sleeper, unfortunately), to get back to the capital.

After a restless night, dubbed version of Mission Impossible 3 played twice, we rolled into Beijing around 5am, it was snowing lightly and everything looked beautiful, clean and pure. Isn’t that the way? We go all the way to Harbin for some snow, and only get it upon returning to Beijing. But, had we not gone to Harbin we would have left Beijing by now and missed the snow anyway.

I don’t mind, it was fun. And snow is awesome! Slippery as hell, but so cool. It snowed for 2 days, today it stopped, but it is still covering the trees and roofs. All of the paths are clear now, there are people sweeping, shovelling and carrying snow all around. Hey, now I’ve seen real snow!

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