Second Tea House on the Left: The seventh degree below zero

Since I have been to several cities since I last wrote and taken way too many pictures to fit well in one post, I will write this post about Harbin and Beijing and then another about Guilin and Yangshuo.

When I bought my train ticket to Harbin, sleeper berths were already sold out, so I was stuck with a soft seat, which is usually just a slightly more comfortable version of a hard seat with fewer people per row (4 instead of 5). However, I ended up being one of six people sitting on the bottom bunks of a soft sleeper berth (there are usually four people - one for each bed). Two of us headed to the top bunks later in the night, only to be told by a conductor to come down. Apparently there was a government regulation that said we weren't allowed to use the upper bunks because we had only paid for a seat. We waited a few hours and then we, along with people in every other compartment in the car, went up to the bunks again to sleep. It was nice to be able to get some real sleep over the fourteen hour train ride. Sleep was made a bit more difficult by ridiculous, overwhelming heat, made worse by the closed-off compartments of soft-sleeper cars. I write ridiculous mainly because as we were removing layers to cool off, condensation was freezing thickly on the inside of the train windows from the rapidly lowering temperature outside.

I arrived in Harbin in the late morning and, after bundling up fully, headed straight for my hostel, which was located in an old renovated synagogue. The synagogue was one peeked roof on the skyline that distinguishes the city of Harbin. The city and surrounding area were strongly influenced by their proximity to Russia, visible in Russian language, stores, and even Russian nesting dolls throughout the city. One of the main riverside parks is named 斯大林公园, or Stalin Park. The buildings also show the influence, with a markedly different feel than other cities in China. The city also takes a page from Russia's book by being really, really cold.

At the hostel, I arranged to go to the Ice Festival that evening (I was told it was best viewed at night when the lights were on), put on my biking pants, long underwear, jeans, a pair of wool socks, a t-shirt, two sweaters, another pair of wool socks, a pair of boots, a coat, gloves, and a hat, and went out to see the city. It was achingly cold and Harbin embraced that fact. The river was frozen over and a carnival sort of atmosphere reigned over it, with ice skating, sledding, horse-drawn sleigh rides, ice bumper cars, and stands selling winter hats and (frozen) fruit covered in caramel (think candy apples, but lined up on a stick). Snow and ice sculptures lined the main avenue leading up to the river. A steeple made of ice rose out of the trees on the opposite side of the river. My snot disconcertingly froze in my nose, leading me to the warmth of a restaurant for lunch.

The ice festival in the evening was a testament to man's ability to make art even when it is very cold. There were dozens of huge structures made out of ice, each lit up with neon tubes threaded through the bricks of ice. After you carefully climbed up the steps to the top of the structures, you could then jump on your ass and slide down to the bottom. Many of the structures were sponsored, leading to such creations as a monumental snow sculpture of the characters from Ice Age, an ice bar for Harbin Beer, and a set up of the game Angry Birds. There was also a wildly incomprehensible show with ice skating and skiing and people dressed up as animals that seemed to be telling the story of how the Red Army heroically destroyed the forces of a sorcerer and his animal-killing henchmen. Beautiful and intricate ice sculptures were part of a contest that was part of the festival. Cafes with wonderful heat sold cold drinks for low prices while selling shitty tea and hot chocolate for exorbitant prices, which I caved in and partook in when I stopped feeling my toes.

Altogether, it was a lot of fun. However, both then and when I was walking around the riverbank I couldn't help but wish I were traveling with friends. Slides and ice skating and the other carnival-like activities that they had so much of were ideal for fun with friends, not so much individual traveling. I still managed to laugh happily as I slid through ice structures and to enjoy my time in general, but I think that it would have been even more fun with a small group of friends.

The next day I wandered until the afternoon, when I began my attempt to go to the Siberian Tiger Park just outside Harbin. I found the bus I thought was mentioned in the guidebook, but wasn't sure since I hadn't written it down. The bus driver didn't seem to know what I was talking about, so I got off a few stops down and went back to my hostel to check how to get there. As it turned out, I had been right about the bus number, but I had to switch buses to get there. Newly confident, I went back to the same bus stop and arrived successfully at the stop where I would have to switch buses. Unfortunately, the bus didn't seem to exist anymore, so I was stuck in the cold without a bus. I decided to stay on course and attempt to get to the park anyway, so I tried to get a taxi, but faced the problem that taxis in Harbin usually carry multiple people and throw in extras whenever they can if they are going in the same direction. I finally found an empty taxi that was willing to bring me to the park, and then negotiated a price for the taxi driver to bring me there, wait while I was in the park, and then bring me back.

The park was fun, with a minibus ride through a park filled with dozens of Siberian tigers. I was disappointed to find out that Siberian tigers are not, like I had thought they were from a third grade memory of the DC zoo, white. (As I learned from the park, White tigers result from a rare gene mutation.) They were still large and graceful and fierce. You could (I did not) pay some amount of money to feed beef, a live chicken, or even a love cow to the tigers. I figured I would enjoy the silent grace for that trip and save the fierce violence for another time.

I had a nice conversation with the taxi driver on the way back to my hostel. He told me how he hadn't studied well, and he had used to like to drive, so he had decided to become a taxi driver. He didn't mind it, but now he was tired of driving all the time (and he was only about 26 or so). He said his neck often got sore. He then proudly showed off neon lights that he had installed in his car to make it obvious in the street.

I got back to the hostel, packed, and went to my hard sleeper back to Beijing. I had one night in Beijing before a plane to Guilin in the morning. I had dinner with friends from Beida and then got back to my hostel for sleep and to prepare for Guilin. I woke up at nine in the morning with a silent alarm going off, ten minutes before my flight would be leaving for Guilin. I proceeded to say fuck in most every way imaginable, from loud and annoyed to slow and despairingly. After a refreshing shower and breakfast and with the help of the hostel staff, I was able to rebook my flight for the next morning for only a few hundred yuan more.

With the day newly opened up, I made plans with my Beida friends to go out to sing KTV in the evening, and spent the day relaxing, reading, and studying Chinese. We had a very fun night singing KTV, and the next day I successfully woke up in the morning for my flight to Guilin. Onward to my next destination!