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Published: March 25th 2012
I made an impulse decision and made a weekend trip to Harbin right after our weekend trip to Beijing! I will only be in China for one year and I know that every holiday I plan for the rest of my life will likely be somewhere HOT, so I figured I should check Harbin off my list now.
It was a VERY quick turnaround but well worth it! Harbin is a city that is in the very, very far north of China and is close the border with Russia. It gets VERY cold. Every year, for the last 13 years, it has hosted a huge Ice Festival and is now world famous for it.
We took the train up Friday after school. Hard sleepers in China are very different from soft sleepers. In a soft sleeper there are 4 beds to a cabin (2 stacked on each side). The beds are softer and the cabin door locks. It’s actually very nice. In the hard sleeper class, there are no cabin doors, the beds are harder and they are stacked 3 high. People are everywhere!
We stayed at the JinJiang Hotel on Diduan
Dajie. The location was good and the rooms were warm. On the first day we walked to the Church of St. Sophia. The Church of St. Sophia is a huge Russian Orthodox Church that was built in 1907. It looks very out of place in China!
After that we made our way over to the pedestrian street, Zhongyang Dajie. I got very excited when I saw my first ice and snow sculptures! Harbin is a very neat city in China because it has a huge Russian influence. There are Russians everywhere! Because of this, there are also a lot of Russian restaurants, cafes and stores. It’s really neat! We also spent some time walking on the frozen Songhua River eating Chinese Cotton Candy (Cotton Candy: not recommended).
That night we went to the Ice Festival (330RMB for an adult, 180RMB for a student). FYI: Anything with your picture on it passes for a student card, including driver’s licences, library cards, and European metro passes!
The Ice Festival really does take your breath away – it is REALLY cold at night! Seriously though, the things that are made with ice are amazing.
And, it’s all done by hand! It was like an amusement park made out of ice. They freeze lights into the blocks of ice and it all lights up at night so it really is a sight to see. Furthermore, they make some great ice slides to go down!
On Sunday, January 8
th, we spent the day lazing around drinking delicious coffees and eating. My perfect Sunday!
On January 15
th I take off for my big holiday of the year – Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year. I will be travelling to Thailand and Burma for 5 weeks and I AM SO EXCITED!!
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