Blogs from My house, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China, Asia

A common denominator of Japan and China is leadership that denies shameful moments in history. Japanese leaders Ishihara and Nagoya remind me of two museums I visited on my trip to Harbin in 2009. The Germ Warfare Museum and the Harbin Jewish Museum offer two separate accounts of the Second World War within the same city. Harbin, China's Ice Festival town bordering Siberia once had a thriving Jewish Community. In 1937 the Japanese Army set up a prison camp for experimental torture similar to Joseph Mengele's work in Auschwitz. All the while it appears that Harbin's Jewish hybrid looked the other way. Was there any mutual support? What are the lessons learned? Last week Tokyo's Governor url=http:/... read more

It has been an animal-packed few days! As promised yesterday, we saw sea lions, beluga whales and much much more at Polarland! The fun bits came, however, in the Chinese-ness of the visitors. We went to watch the sea lion show but it was absolutely packed with Chinese school children! The show was clever, although a little noisy in true Chinese style. After the show, we had a look around the place and saw allsorts of other winter animals, including arctic foxes, polar bears and sharks! It was a little on the small side but lovely to see nonetheless. We had a quiet evening in the hotel with a big darts match between the boys in the family! This morning, we had hoped to wake up to a snowy world - the one thing that has ... read more

First impressions of Harbin: *busy *lots of people *a bit dusty *first world country, very clean *beautiful river and esplanade *good shops, including grocery stores *weird food *very fashion-conscious people *don't get stared at quite so often as in India *lots of tall buildings and constant construction *drive on right hand side of road - left hand drive cars - very confusing *language is difficult to understand - so far we have shi shi (thank you) and ni hao (hello); mandarin *lessons between Gordon and myself are held in room 1822 (our room) every night after dinner *Gordon is meeting McCain staff today, but factory looks good *Meeting today with someone who can help me with English-teaching jobs *taxi drivers drive fast and rather recklessly, weaving in and out of traffic *I don't know if I ... read more

Hello all, We are not living in Harbin but our city is not on the map so Harbin is the closest they had. Daqing is our hometown. We have been living in China for a year now as ESL teachers. Our stay will end on June 23rd. China has been great we have been to Beijing, Shanghai, Inner Mongolia, Harbin, back to my old town of Yan Cheng to see an old friends wedding and to a new friends home town. China has been so great, we have learnt so many things and have seen so many great things like the great wall. The biggest changeling for us over here would be the cultural barrier. I know they say that North China is the last great communist front but what I really did not know was ... read more