Superman never visits Harbin

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.....ready to go to Harbin. My new backpack loaded. Great deal, very cheap. Too cheap. I pick it up & the stitching on the straps gives way. I have time to cycle to the tailor in Yangzhou & get it restitched with strong thread on the spot for ¥5.....

…..I arrive at Yangzhou station in plenty of time for the T7787. Damn, the readout changed - it's going to be 14 minutes late. Still time to make the connection at Taizhou, one hour away. What? Now it has changed again, to 37 minutes late.....

….as it is I arrive in Taizhou with half an hour to spare &, if I'd known, I could have walked to the neighbouring platform & saved myself the trouble of trying to walk against the flood of humanity released from the waiting room. Once on the train there is the usual crush of people carrying impossibly large suitcases into impossibly narrow corridors along the sides of the carriages then manoeuvering them into the shelf at the level of the top (third) bunks. I booked a top bunk - people often use the bottom bunk as a communal seat as there are only 2 flip down seats in the corridor for each group of six bunks. Just wide enough to lie in & not enough space to sit up straight. Still, it's only a twenty three hour trip. Tiny fold out steps on the bulkhead are the only alternative to levitation. I'm glad I retain a vestige of my former gymnastic abilities to climb, pull, lift, vault myself into the bunk.....

…..I introduce myself to my neighbour on the top bunk. His name is Wang. He traces the Chinese character helpfully on his hand as though I can read it. He places a pack of cigarettes on the bunk. Luckily there is no smoking allowed in the carriages. It does account for his discoloured teeth though. There is a couple on the bottom bunks & two students on the middle ones.....

…..I ask the two students when the food trolley will be back. The man on the bottom bunk immediately hands me a container of chicken noodles from his provisions on the small table between the bottom bunks. I have learned not to refuse. I thank him very much & head for the superheated water at the end of the carriage.....

…..I read more of Emile Zola's Germinal before lights out at 10pm. I avoid drinking anything to prevent a nocturnal impersonation of Tarzan to get to the little room at the end of the carriage.....

….going to sleep so early I wake early. I manage to order something in the dining car though the waitress doesn't understand me nor I her, save maybe “zaofan” (breakfast) & “xie xie” (thanks). Most of the other train staff there seem to smoke. They amused by my poor Chinese but are friendly enough & want to know where I come from.....

…..back to the carriage & another student wants to practise English. Fair exchange as I get to learn some Chinese. Li Wenyi, or Enya, as she has been named by a whimsical Aussie English teacher, is not fluent & I have to tell her several times not to apologise for any mistakes. With the aid of her electronic dictionary we end up having a great conversation about all sorts of subjects. Another (medical) student shyly joins in but is not confident, despite witnessing my failure to be struck dumb by lack of linguistic talent. Enya is from Qiqihar, north west of Harbin, but is getting off at Shenyang to visit friends. One more stop, at Changchung, then Harbin.....

…..thinking I can buy a milk tea (put the powder in the bottom of the polystyrene cup & add hot water) from the trolley or dining car I ask Wang where he got his. “At the supermarket”. It could have been a laconic joke had he not gone straight to his suitcase & pulled out his remaining milk tea & handed it to me. That's China.....

…..the first really obvious drunk I've seen in China, after being walked up & down the corridor by a friend, is finally deposited in the middle bunk vacated by the student who got off at Changchung. He is soon peacefully sleeping.....

…..off the train at Harbin at 5.30pm. Into the cold. I spend a little time looking at the quite impressive illuminated ice structures outside the station. The taxi to the hotel costs ¥40. I find later it's only a two kilometre walk. Less than ¥10 worth in Yangzhou. Ripped off! At the Shi Hua hotel it's great to hear the two budgies in the cage in the foyer. As usual in hotels here the corridors are dimly lit & the doors are unlocked & electricity in the room activated by a swipe card. When the card is removed from the holder as you leave the room the electricity goes off. Don't leave batteries on charge when you're not there.....

…..no one except possibly staff in the hotel restaurant at 7.30pm. Some good natured ribbing about my attempts to order without pictures or an English menu but I end up with a huge plate of chicken stir fry & a large bowl of fried rice, plus beer, for ¥27, while the woman in charge practises her half dozen words of English. They all give me advice on how to hold the chopsticks better & we end up with a toast to “Zhongguo he Aodaliya” (China & Orstraya!).....

…..a quick stroll around the streets to get my bearings (& discover the real distance to the station). The cold is fearsome. Temperatures vary during my stay between approximately -12°C & -18°C during the heat of the day. Reduce that by around 10°C at night. Batteries that would easily last for two days of holiday photography in Australia last two hours here. I need to carry a ziplock bag as the camera needs to acclimatise to room temperature before being exposed to warm air. This can take up to two hours after the same time outside. If you should go from cold to warm without this precaution not only does condensation freeze on, & probably inside, the camera but going into the cold again before it has cleared means it will just stay frozen on the lens & render it totally useless.....

…..an old woman draws a circle with a stick at a street intersection & lights a fire at the side of the road. Taking the lined motorcycle gauntlets off to take pictures with only fingerless mittens produces numbness within a couple of minutes. I start learning to operate the hair-trigger controls on the camera with the gauntlets on. Not easy but in this digital age you can delete the accidental pictures.....

…..Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang province, the farthest north & east of all. Heilongjiang borders Inner Mongolia & Russia. Harbin (or Haerbin) is north (& west) of the Russian naval port of Vladivostok. It's winters are colder than those of Moscow, St Petersburg & Montreal. With a total population of almost ten million it's a substantial city, even by Chinese standards. The Russian influence is obvious in the architecture & is even reflected in many of the modern apartment blocks & skyscrapers.....

…..breakfast at the hotel for ¥10, a selection of all sorts of things, eggs, baozi (plain or filled dumplings), various vegetable dishes, some quite spicy, doufu, various meats. As much as you can eat. Sorry, no cornflakes or bacon 'n' eggs.....

…..out the next day for a more comprehensive look around. It's a beautiful, blue-sky, sunny day, probably around -15°C, the clearest blue sky I have seen since arriving in China. Clouds of steam are vented from skyscrapers against the morning sun. Ads blare out from the huge screen on a building facing the railway station designed, I believe, by a Polish architect.....

…..obviously the street traders seen everywhere else in China won't be around in Harbin. Wrong! There are people out selling hot street food, other (frozen) foodstuff, frozen clothes, frozen toys, frozen newspapers, frozen jewellery etc. etc. Just standing there. All day. A table covered in newspapers & a sign announcing “Public Telephone” just above the blue phone. Superman never visits Harbin. A beggar is lying on the pavement. I put ¥5 in his tin, shiver in disbelief & walk on. I do the same for the busker sawing away at the erhu (two-stringed Chinese fiddle), ice crystallised on his moustache (see photos).....

…..anything spilled, splashed, spat, splattered, sprinkled or sprayed onto street or pavement after November stays there, solid, until at least March unless it is deliberately scraped or chipped off. The mainly clear areas of the pavement are punctuated by treacherous expanses of dirty, blackened ice, especially on less frequented routes.....

…..there are steel, fence-like barriers along the middle of most of the wider streets so the alternative is to go down the steps, cross the road & come out on the far side. Except that when you go down the first flight of steps, through a ragged tarpaulin screen, down another (& possibly third) set of steps & through a door you end up in a very long underground shopping street at the very least, & on one occasion a huge, two storey mall which took more than half an hour from which to find an escape route.....

…..the crowded 54 bus takes me from Daoli street, a few steps from the hotel, a good half hour trip across the huge, frozen Songha River to the Sun Island Park snow sculptures. The bus has that grubby, worn look common to cold climates where dirty snow gets trodden inside then ground into the floors & where exposed wiring & cracked plastic seats are the norm. There are 2 huge cracks, one on each side of the windscreen.....

…..after paying my ¥150 (Au$24) entrance fee I catch a photo of two men in a cart with a team of horses being driven along the frozen river in the late afternoon sun. There are hundreds of sculptures, some only two metres tall, some six, eight or ten metres. The level of detail is phenomenal. I'll let the pictures do the talking (see the Photobucket links).....

…..after being lured by the thought of a warm drink & room then being ripped off to the tune of ¥30 for a small cup of instant coffee in a rude hut of snow with vinyl topped tables. I wait for the number 54 bus & look at the now illuminated Ice City on the opposite side of the road to Sun Island. It looks quite spectacular. I find the hotel bus stop despite not being able to see out of the windows as they are totally frozen over.....

…..to Zhaolin Park, about a 2km walk from the hotel, to see the ice sculptures (again see the Photobucket links above). The Disney Ice Festival 2010 label isn't a great drawcard but the sculptures are by individual artists, are beautifully made & look like cut glass......

…..experimenting with combinations of bags, clothing, gloves to survive outside (down to -28°C at night) without dying of heatstroke when going into a warm shopping mall.....

…..talking of underground malls, I get my hiking shoes cleaned by an enthusiastic subterranean cleaner for, well, initially ¥5 but by the time I have been persuaded they could do with a waterproof spray coating it ends up at ¥20. Still, a very thorough job & good value compared to yesterday's coffee.....

…..onto another number 54 around 3pm to go to the Ice City. Standing room only but buses almost never pass a stop here on the pretext of being full. Always room for one (or three, or five...) more.....

…..impressive in the light of the setting sun, stupendous by night. An untold number of ice blocks crafted into buildings, including pagodas, a scale model of Rome's Colosseum close to 20m high, a Harbin brewery beer bottle, parts of the Forbidden City & an ice skyscraper probably 30m or 40m high lit from within & constantly changing colour. More beautiful ice sculptures for good measure. Worth the ¥200 entrance fee to see it & experience fingers, even with wool gloves & fur lined gauntlets combined, first feeling as though they've been hit with a hammer, then just tingling & finally losing contact with the nerve endings altogether, only to reverse the sequence when there's a chance to warm up. The coffee is cheaper, better & more plentiful than at Sun Island & the room has glass walls & is very warm. Sitting here with a hot drink & looking out I wonder how you'd even start to plan such an audacious display.....

…..I talk to a Chinese couple as we wait for the bus. We are tempted to take one of the many taxi offers in the half hour it takes. Waiting for a bus at night, in winter, in Harbin, is a character building experience.....

…..I realise my train ticket for Beijing is for Wednesday, not Thursday, which is what I actually need. At the station the ticket office has thirty tellers, each with a queue of twenty five or thirty people. Because I can't read the Chinese signs above the tellers I have to wait my turn in a queue before being told I have to go to teller three or four to CHANGE a ticket.....

…..I give up the search for the number 85 bus that supposedly goes to the Siberian Tiger Park & return to the hotel to be told it's further along my well worn number 54 route! It's another beautiful sunny day & -16°C. After paying my ¥60 (a bit less than Au$10) I take a brisk drive in a crowded minibus through spacious enclosures inhabited by scores of huge tigers. I manage to get a few photos through the grating over the windows. Even lying down they look incredibly powerful. In motion these animals are a justifiable excuse for the overworked word “awesome”. There are scores of them & I'm positive any one could have picked off those screens just as I'd remove a cobweb from a window.....

…..we are dropped off at a winding, covered pathway through more enclosures full of Siberian tigers &, sadly, a collection of African big cats lying miserably in the ineffective Harbin winter sun assuming they've been sent to hell & that it has indeed frozen over.....

…..I refuse the offer of a live chicken for ¥4 from a old woman with a basket full of them. I am at liberty to buy one & toss it over the fence for the tigers. As my fingers finally lose touch with my brain I wonder if it might be a more pleasant & quicker way to go than sitting in a basket in the frigid walkway. To ensure the tigers' are getting really fresh meat the sign at the entrance announces that a live cow can be purchased for ¥1000 & presented to be eaten while the spectators watch.....

…..I chat on the minibus to a Chinese man from Shanghai, there with his daughter, an English teacher, & son, a university student. They invite me to join them for a meal at the King of Dumplings for some baozi, the boiled dumplings, with various fillings. They don't allow me to pay my share of the minibus taxi to Harbin nor for the meal.....

…..for my final dinner at the hotel restaurant I am met by the sound of English being spoken. To my surprise I find an American teacher, travelling with an Icelandic girl named Anna & a Dutch-Australian English teacher with his New Zealand partner. I quickly remember how to speak the language again & we end up making enough noise for the Chinese staff to turn up the TV volume to compensate, several times as we do the same. In the end they give up, the TV is turned off & we all get along very well, take photos & make the best conversation we can manage. The little cook stands nervously near the two foreign girls but is over the moon to have his photo taken with the big American. I leave promising to send the pictures on when I get back to Yangzhou.....

…..I get out in the morning early enough to find my way through the cavernous & crowded railway station & cram myself into a seat with five students & luggage on seats of three facing another three across a narrow table, ready for the ten hour trip to Beijing.....

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