Blogs from Heilongjiang, China, Asia - page 7

The crowded and long train left my home, cold Taizhou, Jiangsu, at 6:02pm and 24 hours later arrived in what is known as the "coldest" city of China, bone-chilling HARBIN, the capital of China's most northern province of Hailongjiang. The province of Hailongjiang has its borders with arctic Russian-Siberia, and HARBIN looks more like an Eastern-European or Russian city than a Chinese city. What drives people from around the world, including myself, a tropical Floridian, to visit this deep-freeze, provincial capital in the middle of the harsh winter, where temperatures can reach below -22 Degree Farenheit or -30 Degree Centigrate? The answer is simple: It is the world-famous, spectacular and annual "Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival"!! Each year, during every deep-freeze winter in Harbin, a winter that lasts for at least four months, the ... read more

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We took a fast train from Beijing to Harbin (about 7 hours). The fast trains travel at 214 Kph top speed (fyi). Harbin was our first stop outside Beijing and it was a little intimidating at first. The train station is across from the Long Distance Bus Station and a large square contains countless taxis, two city bus stops an underground mall and hawkers everywhere selling everything from nuts, to shoe-shines, or guiding you to seedy hotels. It is a lot more chaotic a little dirty and at least as noisy as Beijing. The air in Harbin is also pretty thick and unpleasant. Apparently the northeast of China is a heavy industrial area as we were about to find out. It's not all bad however, we eventually found our hotel after doing a full circle and ... read more

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

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