Blogs from Heilongjiang, China, Asia - page 7

This is the second of two blogs featuring my visit to Haerbin/Harbin in Heilongjiang Province in the NE of China. As previously stated, the main attraction for me to venture into these frozen realms during the coldest Chinese winter in 50 years, was to experience the Haerbin/Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival, a series of gala events involving ice and snow carving art. The Ice and Snow Festival came into being in January of 1985. Initially the main events were the Ice Lantern Festival in Zhaolin Park and surrounding streets (particularly Zhongyang Dajie and the waterfront parks) and the Snow Sculpture Fair on Sun Island (a recreational area situated on the northern banks of the Songhua River). The festival lasted for about a month or so up until around Chinese New Year/Spring Festival Holidays. In 1999, ... read more

Have you ever been somewhere sooooo cold that your eyelashes temporarily froze together? This was one of the more unusual experiences I had on a visit to Haerbin/Harbin in the North East of China this past January! Part of the joy of travelling is in setting personal challenges in order to stretch your boundaries of comfort. This is how, I, as a woman from the sub-tropics of Queensland, Australia, found myself travelling north from my temporary home in Taizhou, Jiangsu to the frozen north-east of Heilongjiang Province in what was later referred to as “the coldest winter in over 50 years”! With daily temperatures ranging between -17 and -30 degrees C, it was definitely an experience that pushed me a number of times well outside my comfort zone! I have divided my week- long visit into ... read more

I'm going to preface this story with: So, my friends and I are sitting around on a Wednesday night discussing the following weekend (not the upcoming weekend, the one after that). We had planned on going to Harbin, in Northern China, to travel because we did not have anything to do and do not have tests approaching after it. However, a crutch was thrown into our plan because the Major League Baseball teams (Dodgers and Padres) are going to be playing 2 games in Beijing this weekend. It is the first time that the MLB will ever be in China. What do we do? Harbin or MLB history? We could not decide, so we decided to compromise: If we could find cheap tickets and work everything out for this weekend, we go to Harbin then and ... read more

Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province, near to Russia, there are a lot of Russian influence, there some Russian construction and so many Russian speaking the Mandarin. Harbin is also famous by Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, normally there have the Winter Olympics Games. Harbin's dialect is very close to Mandarin, so you don't need to worry about, and the people from north of China have a simple and straight behavior, it is easier to deal with, and women there are quite beautiful in my opinion. The main food there are pasta and dumpling, the temperature there in the winter can reach 30 degree under the zero, so outside of the house is better than any freezer in the world, and it is normal the people make the dumplings and put outside to freeze and then ... read more