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Published: March 2nd 2010
Chapter one of our five weeks of travel started with the boarding of train number T159 in
Taizhou, a city 43 miles east of Yangzhou and then traveling almost due north, into the dark and cold hinterlands of China; a land only a stone’s throw from Siberia.
Traveling some 1,500 miles via train makes for more than one story and coupling long travel time with tight quarters guarantees extra cultural-exchanging fun. A few observations:
* Everyone, including the manliest of men, immediately changes into slippers and long underwear; save the street clothing for the streets - its train time now...
* Along the way, train employees push carts down the aisles selling all sorts of treats, drinks, and toys. We had the opportunity to nearly anything under the sun - ice cream, cucumbers, strawberries, beer, noodles, peanuts, soap,
baijou (China’s rice liquor, 104 proof (!)), collapsible chopsticks, reading glasses, and let us not forget, toilet paper.
Each train car offers boiled water, two sinks, and one squatting toilet. All along the ride, but especially as people began their evening nesting ritual, the two sinks became a hot commodity for neck washing and the best throat clearing under
Train ride to Harbin-wind turbines
The wind turbines in the distance are the first, and only, turbines we've seen in China. We saw these just days after reading a New York Times article discussing China's goal of being the world's largest producer of alternative energy products. the
red flag, perhaps even the best in the world...
* Few other conditions exhibit China’s impassioned amity for packaged meat better than that of train travel; you name the meat and it existed on the train, either in tube form or still on bone, in a plastic bag stuffed into a suitcase somewhere. The two most popular options consisted of duck necks (extra spicy is best) and chicken feet (don’t you just love to nibble between the toes!). While Americans prefer to nibble on more processed meats - like lunch meats, hamburgers, and chicken nuggets, it appears that the Chinese overwhelmingly prefer at least a little bit of bone from which to pull their meat. Perhaps this is could explain KFC’s relative dominance over McDonald’s here in the mother land...
On our train, and most trains in China for that matter, one can buy five different types of tickets ranging from completely deluxe James Bond-style travel to simply standing without seat or sleeper for the duration of the travel. We shot for the middle ground and after forking over the equivalent of $73 USD, reserved ourselves two hard sleepers - not all that hard, without-a-doubt
Train ride to Harbin
The fruit man takes a rest on his rounds of selling fruit and veggies. To our left are our rooms, with three bunks on each side. It felt a bit cramped, but the 24 hours on the train went faster than we thought and after a while we just accepted the constant hauking and clearing of throats produced by our fellow travelers. tightly packed, stacked three to a side, six beds inside one door-less cabin, bunks. One can also buy hard and soft chairs-hard chairs are pretty much benches, and soft chairs are, well, soft chairs. And if all else fails and cash-flow is limited, the train offers a lovely discounted ticket good for the initial boarding of the train but from there on might as well be labeled the “fend for yourself” ticket - offering little more than the option of simply standing between cars or in the aisles; no sitting allowed...
The first portion of our ride hurtled us northward through the night and stopping early morning in Beijing before continuing on northward into the following evening. As we left Beijing, the land quickly became desolate; full of dry, sparsely populated land with little more than the stubble remains of a past corn harvest and large stacks of cornstalks waiting to be burned. It took the better part of two hours traveling away from Beijing for the air quality to finally clear and as we briefly skirted south along the mountains famous for hosting the Great Wall of China. While sitting in the narrow aisles next to the windows
Train ride to Harbin
At one point on the ride, Kelly unexpectedly recognized the landscape as similar to that of eastern Montana after a snowfall. Travelling into the far north we finally found clean air -- our first clean air in six months. of our sleeper car, we passed multiple small farming communities that perhaps were the remains of the ill-fated cooperative food-production units from Mao’s “great leap forward”. Piled on top of many of the flat roofs sat mounds and mounds of dried corn ready for winter consumption - a choice snack eaten by the Chinese everywhere in the winter. One can easily spot folks chomping away at the dried-boiled-steamed corn-on-the-cob in bus stations, of course trains, on the beaches of the south, and on the streets in the far north; a sort of “refried bean of the East” enjoyed by all...
We also rolled past multiple new coal burning power plants and also we sailed by perhaps a few dozen wind turbines -- a glimmer of hope in a land operated, almost entirely, via diesel or coal generated power. A day later, while reading the New York Times online, we learned that China has quite suddenly emerged as the world's leading producer of wind turbines and thanks to the no-nonsense approach of China’s one-party system, huge amounts of money (on the scale of billions and billions of dollars) have been devoted to the lofty goal of China answering a projected
Russian Goods and Chopsticks Shop
Soon arriving to a neighborhood near you! 10%!o(MISSING)f its energy needs through renewable methods such as solar panels, solar hot water heaters, and wind turbines in the next dozen or so years.
After sleeping, sitting, smelling, and chatting with the same 66 people for 24 hours we gladly put on every article of layer we owned and, looking quite similar to Ralph's little brother in "A Christmas Story," braved the -15 degree (F!) night and headed out to find our hotel.
Because of its proximity to Russia, many buildings had a hybrid vernacular of Russian and Chinese architecture and often times billboards, advertisements, and building signs had text written in both Russian and Chinese. Everywhere we travel in China, we always manage to come across a few locals with an untamed impulse to yell, "Helloooo!" from a distance. Ha'erbin however remained excluded from this nation-wide trend -- most western visitors to Ha'erbin come directly from Russia and locals assume we hailed from the north as well. The Chinese call them 俄国人, pronounced
É guó ren meaning “very soon-country people,” a name quite fitting for their imposing and very close neighbors. In many shops we could buy nearly any Russian item our little hearts desired --
Harbin Central Square
this central square didn't look all that Chinese to us... anything shiny and silvery, nesting dolls, CCCP flasks, cameras, and of the inevitable bottle or twenty of vodka.
On the streets of Ha'erbin, one would think the extreme and long-lasting cold would dampen the spirits of China's capitalistic-minded street vendors, but that was not the case at all - the cold simply inspired a large chunk of them to move indoors or into small huts with respectively sized coal-burning stoves. While Yangzhou has endless outdoor street markets, Ha'erbin has indoor markets of equal scale and scope. In an effort to curb heat loss of buildings, many doors leading indoors made use of either layer upon layer of hanging woolen mats and/or double (sometimes triple) vestibules at entrances to nearly every edifice. We spent two mornings finding our breakfast in the mayhem of these indoor "street" markets. While exploring these markets we found the Russian influence to pervade a bit further into Ha’erbin’s culture than street signs and vodka -- and we found that influence in the bakeries. Down south we had yet to enjoy a proper cookie or piece of bread. Up north however, we could find just about every wheat-based treat imaginable -- freshly made graham crackers, loafs
Pedestrian walk-way
The Russian architecture and ice carvings felt completely foreign to us; an odd mix of China, Russia, and, er, Disney. of whole-wheat bread in the round, molasses breakfast bread and even pumpernickel.
On the banks of the frozen
SongHua River locals and tourists alike enjoy themselves in the icy culture and embraced outdoor activities enthusiastically -- for two US dollars one could do just about every fun winter activity imaginable -- rent ice skates, go inner tubing, scoot around on chairs decked out with ice blades and small poles, and of course, enjoy the timeless activity of sledding. The sleds possessed all the perfect qualities of a low-tech Chinese solution to a low-tech problem - cheap, low-tech, and cheap - and for the better part of a half-hour we slid down the icy slopes in one-man toboggans fashioned from a square-shaped scrap of sheet metal snap-riveted to the bottom of a large bamboo basket.
Aside from the traditional ice activities, we also watched children and adults playing with humming ice tops. Armed with little more than a short stick, a piece of string, and a small metal top about the size of a soup can, the locals devoted large amounts of time to maintaining a healthy spin on their revolving ice-toys. On one side of the toy a
vertical slit had been cut and as the tin top spun faster and faster, the opening produced a humming sound similar to that of an Australian didgeridoo. Who needs Game Boys or IPods when you can have an old soup can and a stick?
In the evening of our second ridiculously cold day in Ha’erbin we found ourselves visiting the
International Ice and Snow Festival, one of the main attractions pulling us up North into the cold outskirts of China. We did not know what to expect and as a general rule for traveling in China, sites and scenes tend to be either a huge hit or an even huger bust; the Ice Festival most definitely made the “huge hit” list. Built up on an island North-East of town, the Festival dominated a plot of land at least one square mile in size. Every year ice sculptors recreate, with ice from the nearby
Songhua River, dozens of beautiful architectural scenes; the Coliseum, Italian churches, Angkor Wat, Thai and Japanese temples, three-story Buddhas, the Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven. Within the endless stacks of carved ice, the crafters placed tubes of fluorescent lighting of every hue imaginable thus
magically illuminating the long winter nights. Started in 1963, taking only a short break for the Cultural Revolution, and resuming again in 1985, the people of Ha’erbin and hundreds of international artists annually create an other-worldly landscape on a scale only appropriate for China - huge.
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Donna White
non-member comment
Spectacular!
This is a delightful read! Thank you for sharing your adventures with us. The pictures of the Ice Festival are absolutely spectacular!