I guess it's suitable to start from the beginning of the trip on Friday night. I packed a few crucial items in my one backpack. Change of underwear and socks, long johns, a sweatshirt, Ritz crackers etc. At the last minute I decided to throw my headlamp in there. It turned out to be very helpful. We were split into taxi groups. Nash, Lauren, Sheffin and I hailed a cab and headed to the train station we were told to go to - Beijing Bei Zhan. Half way through the cab ride we get a call from Max, the student in charge of the logistics, saying that we were going to the wrong station. Apparently they named two train stations almost the same thing. There's Beijing Bei Zhan and Beijing Zhan, meaning Beijing North Station and Beijing Station respectively. So after a very confusing conversation with the cab driver that to an untrained ear like mine just sounded like " beijing zhan beijing bei bei bei zhan beijing beijing zhan beijing bei zhan beijing" Somehow we managed to figure it all out just as we were passing a subway stop. We got out and jumped on line 2. This took us directly to Beijing Zhan. After all the discussion and confusing it appeared that we took the fastest way possible by accident. We were the first taxi group to the station. It was incredible.
Equally incredible was the immense number of people in the train station. We waited inside a restaurant because we were hungry and wanted to sit down. This restaurant solved both problems. We boarded our train without incident. To be honest, the cheapness of the tickets confirmed my suspicion that this train ride would be the worst traveling experience of my life. Not so. This was the best train ride/journey ever. There were six people to a "room". A room was just two walls near each other with six beds hung on the walls. No doors. It was very communal. But very pleasant. I can't do a side by side comparison to my bed in my dorm but I would argue the train bed was more comfortable. It was certainly more cosy. You could tell the other passengers hated us. Who would want to spend a 10 hour overnight train ride with 30 American college students? The train hand (? the guy who check tickets...we just used the generic fuwuyuan) insisted on climbing all over us and our bags to simply close the window curtains as we started to depart. He was very insistent on doing it himself when it would have been clearly easy, even with our language barrier, to ask us to do it ourselves. Leaving Beijing t night was a little disappointing. I kind of wanted to see the sprawl of factories and housing. Oh well.
We played electronic Catch Phrase, the game where you have to describe something without using the words. We got pretty rowdy naturally, but eventually hit the hay. The train was a little chilly but we had HUGE blankets. The movement of the train was actually very soothing so I fell asleep quickly. At one point I could feel us slowing down in the night, presumably to go safely through a station. In the morning we looked out the window to fields of snowy fields, crumbling buildings, piles of coal and chimney stacks. This is the communist experience I've been looking for. Once I found it, I had had enough. I see now why people have thrown off the ideals of communism in search of financial success in any form possible. We were definitely between Eastern Russia and North Korea. If the sprawling snowy decay outside hadn't tipped me off, the thick ice forming around the window on the inside confirmed my other suspicion that Harbin would be cold. Very cold.
We collected our belongings and jumped off the train. Leaving any large building or event with Chinese people is an experience. Lining up is not really..done. You just walk forward as far as you can, in any direction until you get where you need to go. You'd think young people would be the most eager and fit to be "rude" but no. The old people are much more willing to give you an elbow in the ribs to get that subway ticket before you. This mindset they take to the road. Beijing taxis hadn't been too bad so far. I've heard horror stories of scary cab rides, but I experienced my first 3 heart attacks in Harbin. No one seems to have right of way. If you can get to where you need to be on the road before the next person, do it. If your side of the road is full there's a perfectly empty on coming traffic lane right next to you, use it! I can see why foreigners are not allowed to drive here.
We lived. We got to our hotel, which again far surpassed my expectations. While it didn't have the biggest rooms, it had a bed, a shower and a toilet. All I needed. I'm not certain but I think every piece of furniture came from an Ikea liquidation sale.
It felt like noon but it was only 8:30. We split up to find breakfast. I wasn't particularly hungry for some reason, so Molly and I decided to explore this old Russian orthodox church we passed on the way to the hotel. Harbin has a large Russian influence. A lot of people (particularly Jews fleeing WW2) emigrated early in the 20th century. This church was no a museum. It was filled with old pictures of Harbin and stereotypical Christian accoutrement. The paintings and decor in this church were to a real western Church as Outback Steakhouse is to Australia. They had the right idea but I don't think Di Vinci's last super is kept in a Harbin museum.
Outside were some people playing this cool game. It was like a cross between tennis and lacrosse. They tossed this soft rubber ball to each other with rackets also made of rubber. It was a fluid motion so as to keep the ball attached to the racket. It was a high school physics problem in action. Maybe I'll post the video later when my internet is running faster.
We hung around the hotel until we departed for the tiger park. Let's just say this place and PETA would not be friends. It had started to snow as we got to the park - Harbin is really cold btw. We all got on a caged bus and drove though a big fiber glass tiger mouth, Jurassic Park style. We all pitched in and bought five chickens and two goats to feed, live, to the cats. I was under the impression there for a few big cats. This place had to have had maybe 50 tigers and half as many lions. In addition a few jaguars, white lions and leopards. Tigers are huge. They would walk past our bus and I was genuinely a little scared. Nothing in China has filled me with confidence that it would work and the cages on this bus were by no means an exception. We drove around from section to section, Jurassic Park style. Another little SUV covered in cages would follow us around sporadically throwing livestock to the cats. I would have expected a complex animal dispersing safety mechanism to ensure the people in the car were as safe as possible. It turns out there was one person driving the car who would just open his door and toss out a chicken or goat. The chickens made a valiant effort. The would give the tigers a little chase, but the goats had no idea what to do. They basically laid down and got eaten. Big time. It was actually interesting to see the difference between tigers and lions and how they feast. The lions shared their meat whereas the tigers caught their food and ran off with it to enjoy in solitude. My hands got so cold trying to film all this as snow blew in through the window. We took the bus back to the wood floored high speed internet capable hotel after we were done feeding our primal urges of bloodlust.
A few of us ate at a mall food court. They had this weird system I have yet to see in Beijing but saw twice in Harbin. To buy food at this court you have to buy a card, put money on it, spend the money then return the card for your money back. I don't understand the middle man. Perhaps it's so the money only goes through one person. As always the food was delicious, stir-fried and noodley.
After dinner we left for the Ice Festival. Yes it requires capital letters. This was The Ice Festival. I have no idea how to describe this. Imagine, if you know it, Zilker Park covered in snow with a dozen or so castles, yes castles, made out of ice. Immense buildings made entirely of ice and a little bit of steel for safety. Then imagine all this ice with neon lights in it. Then imagine sleigh rides, arctic foxes, camels, ice slides, frozen port-a-potties and hot cocoa. All in one place. It looked like a level from Mario Galaxy, or some other insane Asian fantasy game. My favorite thing were the ice slides. It was the little kid in me. OH. On one side of the park in front of a castle, weird asian/polka techno was playing. As we always do when we go somewhere we started dancing and all these Chinese people joined in with us. We roamed this dreamworld until our noses started to harden on the inside. Yeah, it was so cold our nose-liquid(??) was freezing.
After a quick recovery at the hotel we left for a club/bar. We got the name from the hotel lobby staff. Babi Jiuba. Sounds fun, right? When we got their we read the English name below the characters. Club Barbie. To be honest it was the "coolest" club we've been to. This weird fat guy came on stage and started singing and dancing and getting undressed. Nash and Bo decided to leave without jackets to get some chuanr. We didn't know, so when we left we couldn't find them and had to take their jackets with us. They had a very cold taxi ride home.
In the morning/mid afternoon we went to another ice festival - this one doesn't deserve capital letters. It was Disney themed (sweet?) This one did have a much bigger slide and ferris wheel. There was a section of ice sculptures. Apparently it was an international competition because each sculpture had plaque with a team name and country. The Chinese ones were impressive, even more so were the Russian entries. But the U.S. one sucked. It wasn't even a sculpture. It was some freeform blobs. I had no idea what it was supposed to be. The Thai team was by far the most impressive. Do they even have ice in Thailand?! Come on America. Step it up. I have a sneaking suspicion it was intentionally bad. To make America look bad. Who knows.
After a bowl of what was essentially chicken noodle soup we headed back for the hotel and eventually the airport. The plane ride was fantastic. It was a really empty flight so we all had two seats to ourselves. Movies, in English, on demand on screens behind the seats. AND it was Air China. I flew Air China from San Francisco and it sucked. They redeemed themselves.
One of the students, Max, with the help of a few IES people here, arranged this whole trip for us. It was the most impressive impromptu assumption of responsibility I've seen from someone my age. Props to him. And props to you if you read all of that.
I'll post pictures and/or video later.
The way you describe driving there sounds exactly like Kathmandu. Except there they were seriously pros. Like Jason Statham in The Italian Job, except everyone in the city. From the outside it looked like chaos but they were pros man, absolute masters of the road.
ReplyDelete"Nothing in China has filled me with confidence that it would work." Too funny. I'm actually getting that impression as well! And I also wondered what the hell was going on with the 美国队 ice sculpture.
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