Traveling to Harbin and the Inner Mongolia

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October 11th 2015

Published: October 11th 2015

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linusinchina

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So Last week in China was the so-called Holiday “Golden Week”. During this National Holiday it’s common to Travel around in China, visiting relatives and friends or sightseeing spots.

I used this week with my family to fly to the City of Harbin, a 6 Million big City in the North of China, and from there on traveling by Car to the Inner Mongolia, through the Jilin province, driving a huge circle (about 2.500 Km), and back to Harbin.

Kicking it off with a delayed Plane (Yeah I’m super lucky with that), we arrived at Harbin late at Night. After having a small look on the City, we went straight to Bed. On the next day we had some more time to explore the City. During the Day time we took the Cable Car to a nearby island called Sun-Island.

There we rented 2 2-Person Bikes and drove around the Island, gazing at the beautiful scenario of small lakes and the forest. The Island did as the name suggest show its nice, sunny side.

But for us coming from Zhuhai with an average Temperate of around the 30.Degree mark, Harbin and

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the Sun-island with their 15 degrees were quit cold. Anyway, as y’all can see in the pictures it was really nice. Besides only driving around on the Island we also went into a Snow-Sculpture Museum and the Kids played with the Snow while I was almost freezing to death…

After taking the Cable-Car back to the Main-land of Harbin, We had a look on the Downtown of Harbin at Night. And the City quit surprised me. Just walking through the Main Shopping Street or alongside the river I encounter various small Highlights of my stay in Harbin. A crowd of old people singing traditional Songs together, various Groups of People , Old and young , dancing to a mixture of Chinese and Electro Music, Artist playing and singing in the Street and a Movie theater showing a Movie outside on a big screen. All in all Harbin surprised me with a living and exciting part of its downtown. A truly special City to visit.

On the next day the Big Journey finally began. We started of driving with a rented Car for about 600 Km on the first day. We reached a small city known for

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Russian Style Church in Harbin

its Japanese Building style and rented a room there. The city was occupied by Japanese soldiers during the 2^nd World war, thus having a couple of Japanese look-alike Buildings nowadays. Here we also met with friends of my host family. On the following day we were surprised with a little bit of snow. While it was truly beautiful seeing the flat land covered with snow, it made our journey a lot harder and we reached the next city late at night. We slowly made our way into the Inner Mongolia and the influence of Russian border became more and more present. Many Shops had Cyrillic (Russian Letters) Names and even some people started talking Russian to me on the Streets.

The Inner Mongolia also has a pretty big Minority population of (huge surprise) Mongolians. While most Shops and Street signs were in Chinese, almost everyone thing had a Mongolian subtitle. As you can see in one of the Pictures the Mongolian Characters look pretty crazy.

Over the next couple of Days we visited different Sight-Seeing spots and drove to one of the biggest forests in China. For breakfast we normally had Bao zi (Steamed Bum filled with Meat)

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A part of Harbin captured from the Sun-Island

and Rice soup. Probably my favorite type of breakfast next to Bacon and pancakes 😉. In the evening the two Chinese fathers introduced me to various types of Chinse beers and the all so well-known bai jiu (Rice Wine). With this we had all different types of dishes.

After traveling for 7 days we drove back to Harbin and for the first time so far my Plane was on time 😊

Back in Zhuhai I Can’t deny how much I missed the warm weather here, but its slowly gets colder here ( 20 Degree ). Btw a little Fun fact. All City’s/Buildings below Shanghai are not equipped with Heaters… So lets hope it doesn’t get to cold here .

Check out the pictures to get a first hand impression of the Trip !

再见 !

-林德什

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