Harbin, China

Spiro and Joe visiting the snow sculptures in Harbin, China.

On December 30, Spiro and Joe headed to Harbin, China.  The trip was originally planned to be a family trip, but Peter fell ill.  Stella took Peter to the doctor.  Spiro and Joe went to the airport in the morning, but when they heard Peter’s illness could be serious, they returned home.  By the time they returned, the doctor had confirmed that Peter’s illness was not serious, but Peter could not travel.  Thus, Stella and Peter stayed behind and Spiro and Joe went back to the airport and got on a later flight.  Due to the first of many language barrier issues, getting on a later flight turned out to be quite difficult.

The flight from Hong Kong to Harbin is about six hours, but there is a lengthy layover in Beijing to go through customs.  Thus, the total travel time (if Spiro and Joe didn’t make two trips to the Hong Kong airport) would have been around 8 hours.

Although there were settlements in Harbin dating back over 1,000 years, it did not become a city until founded by Russians building the Chinese Eastern Railway in 1898.  The majority of the residents of Harbin were Russian until World War II.  After that, the Chinese took over and the Russians all left.  Today, out of a metropolitan population of more than 10 million, less than 1,000 are Russian.  

Harbin, located in Manchuria, about 600 miles northeast of Beijing, has the most bitterly cold winters of any city in China.  In fact, Harbin is famous for its cold.  Spiro said, “It was below zero degrees Fahrenheit every single day."

We arrived at our hotel, the Shangri-La, late in the evening.  Check-in was fine, but the English of the people working at the hotel was very limited and our Mandarin non-existent.  We got in the elevator to go to our rooms and noticed it was full of puke.  We then got out and took another elevator.  The music in the elevators was, in the words of Spiro, “I have no idea how to describe that.”  Perhaps if one could imagine a five-year-old pop star, one could begin to understand what this music sounded like.

In the morning, we bundled up in preparation for a day on the town.  We wore two layers, two coats, snow pants, wool socks, boots, scarves, gloves, ski masks and hats on top of the ski masks.  In our pockets, we had hand warmers.  We then waddled over and got in the car with our supposedly English speaking tour guide Lisa.  Lisa was very nice, but did not appear to know much about Harbin and could not even say the word Chicago, despite practicing quite a bit.  Once she found out we were American, she was able to communicate “You USA.  I love Beyoncé.  If Beyoncé comes China, I see Beyoncé.” 

Spiro and Joe at St. Sophia,
a beautiful Orthodox Church
built by the Russians.

After expressing our great pride in being citizens of the same country as Beyoncé, we arrived at our first stop.  We saw St. Sophia, a beautiful Orthodox Church built by the Russians in 1906-1907.  After that, we went to Center Street, a tree-lined cobblestone street with Baroque architecture also built by the Russians.  There were numerous shops selling Russian souvenirs and food, especially sausage, for which Harbin is famous.  The Chinese tourists were eating sugar-coated fruit shish kabobs and ice cream bars.  The ice cream shop dates back to 1906 and had a huge line outside, despite the temperature being about minus four degrees Fahrenheit.  Center Street is over 1,400 meters long and has numerous roman style statues at every corner.  The street was also lined with art students making ice sculptures.

One of many ice sculptures
being created by art students.

Spiro on Center Street.

Spiro and Joe on Center Street.

One of the many sugar-coated fruit shish kabob stands. 

Spiro noticed that many passing cars had red ribbons on their wheels.  He asked Lisa.  She said that the ribbons were for good luck.

After a long walk up and down Center Street we were excited to get back in the warm car and take a long drive to Sun Island to see snow sculptures.  Spiro learned the hard way that a hat (and a hood) were required at all times.  The snow sculptures were simply amazing.  There were numerous smaller square ones that were 10’x10’x10’.  Then, in what is normally a pond, there were three sculptures that were much, much larger.  “They were massive,” said Spiro.

Numerous artists working on
an enormous snow sculpture. 

Harbin theatre.

After a long stroll through the snow sculptures, we were once again very happy to get in the warm car.  We drove a while and stopped at the Harbin theatre, which Spiro noted has architecture reminiscent of the Sydney Opera House.

Spiro feeding a huge tiger.

After a brief visit to the theatre, we drove on to the Harbin tiger park.  According to our tour guide Lisa, the Harbin tiger park has over 1,000 Siberian tigers.  There are more tigers in the Harbin tiger park than there are in the wild.  It is a vast area, with numerous fenced parts.  Upon our arrival, we got on a bus covered in caging.  Even the wheels were covered with cages.  Our bus drove around the park.  There were tigers everywhere, wandering around and snuggling together to fight off the cold.  The bus stopped and the driver gave Spiro a bucket of meat.  He opened the window and handed Spiro some tongs.  “He wants you to feed the tigers,” Lisa said.  Spiro put the meat on the tongs and hung it out the window.  In a couple minutes, a huge tiger jumped up and snatched the meat from the tongs.  It was way cool.

There was also a circus at the tiger park.  The coolest thing at the circus was probably right at the beginning when five crazy guys drove motorcycles around in a round cage.  The circus ended with eight tigers doing tricks.

Our driver took us back to Center Street, via the wrong way on a one way street.  After the terror subsided, we had a late lunch at a Russian restaurant and local Harbin beer, which isn’t very good.  From there, Lisa returned us to our hotel.  

It being New Years’ Eve and our hotel being dead and boring, we decided to try to go out.  We asked the concierge if there were any nearby bars, but the language barrier gave us little confidence in the answers.  We then discovered via the internet that there was an English Pub at the Holiday Inn near Center Street.  We asked for a taxi.  You would have thought that we asked to meet the Queen of England.  There was great confusion.  Several hotel employees were involved.  After 30 minutes, these employees told us that it might not be possible to get a taxi.  

Chance favors the bold, so we bundled up and headed out into the street to try to catch a taxi ourselves.  After 20 minutes, we realized we might freeze to death before we caught a taxi.  Defeated, we returned to our hotel.  Much to our surprise, the excited crew at the hotel finally got us a taxi.  In only took an hour.

Ten minutes later we arrived at the Holiday Inn.  The pub, the Red Lion, was excellent.  It was a beautiful woody pub that didn’t feel like a hotel bar at all.  The bartender was the best (and only) English speaker in Harbin.  He also sang some outstanding Chinese karaoke.  

There were only about four tables with people at them.  A table full of rowdy karaoke-singing Chinese with a huge stack of cans of beer that winnowed away to nothing by nights end, a Russian couple, and two tables of westerners of unknown origin.

We had some German beer (which was much better than Harbin beer), and a couple whiskies to ring in the New Year.  We face-timed Stella and thus got to (sort of) celebrate together.

At 1am, the bar closed and we were asked to leave.  We wandered out into the street looking for a taxi.  It turned out that everyone else in Harbin was looking for a taxi as well.  We decided to try to walk back to our hotel.  Joe mentioned that this was the way people freeze to death.  Just then, a taxi pulled up and let someone out.  We asked the driver to take us back to the hotel.  He waved us off and was pulling away when Joe thrust a card at him with our hotel’s address in Chinese on it.  He became confused and spent a few minutes looking at his GPS to determine whether our hotel existed.  Once he was satisfied, he waved us in his warm taxi and we lived.

Spiro at the winter fun park.

The following day, we relaxed and played video games until 1pm, when Lisa and the driver showed up to take us out again.  Lisa took us to a winter fun park located on the frozen river. According to Lisa, the river freezes 4 or 5 meters deep.  That’s where all the ice for the Ice and Snow World (more on that later) comes from.  The fun park had giant slides made of ice and snow.  It had a snow maze.  It had four-wheelers you could drive on the ice.  It had mini-tanks you could drive in the snow.  It had archery (Spiro hit the target twice and Joe only once, but Joe’s was a bullseye).  Finally, it had a hovercraft that drove you up and down the icy river bed.  After two or three hours of this outdoor fun, just as we were complaining about how cold it was, Lisa took us to a rectangle that had been cut out of the ice.  There were two small dressing rooms on either side.  Out jumped a lady in a swim suit, and then another.  They greeted the cheering crowd.  Then a couple guys came out, jumped in the water and went for a swim.  Totally insane.

Spiro driving a mini-tank
at the winter fun park.

The giant snow slides at the Ice and Snow World.

We finally returned to the warm car and drove to Ice and Snow World, a giant display of numerous castles and buildings made of ice.  By the time we arrived, it was already dark.  Ice and Snow World was lit up and we are told it is better to see at night anyway.  Ice and Snow World was surrounded by a huge wall of ice maybe five stories high.  For some reason, our tour guide had arranged for us to go in with a Chinese tour group, who were all very surprised by our presence and tried to push us out of line.  Once inside, we ditched them and marveled at the life-sized replicas of famous buildings made entirely of ice.  To give you a sense of scale, Ice and Snow World covers 600,000 square meters (148 acres).  In the back, there are eight or ten giant snow slides.  Since we had already been sliding all day and the lines were long, we elected not to go down the slides.  After Ice and Snow World, we returned to our hotel and enjoyed some warm and relaxing conversation and cocktails. 

Spiro under an ice bridge.

 

Spiro waking up one of the ice buildings.

The following day, we got in a taxi to go to the airport.  Unfortunately, due to the language barrier, when Spiro said we would like to go to the domestic airport, our concierge told the taxi to take us to the international airport.  It is of course very easy to confuse the words “domestic” and “international” when you don’t know what either word means.  Our taxi dropped us off at a very small and secluded building and left.  Inside, there were a number of police lined up with someone speaking to them in Chinese.  The airport was otherwise completely closed.  The single monitor showed that there would be only three flights:  two to Seoul and one to Bangkok.  Since we were headed to Beijing, this was alarming.

We wandered out into the cold and through a miraculous stroke of luck a taxi happened to come by 10 or 15 minutes later.  Even more miraculous, the taxi driver seemed to understand us when we asked to go to Beijing.  At first, we were a little concerned that he would be driving us 600 miles to Beijing, but then, to our great relief, we saw signs for the domestic airport.  The domestic airport was of a size one would expect for a 10 million person city.  We caught our flight just in time and returned to Hong Kong without further incident.

The night before Spiro flew back to Indiana University.
Happy New Year from the Athanas FAMILY!