Harbin

Harbin ligger jättelångt norrut och är känt för sina galet kalla vintrar. Ändå valde, liksom flockvis med andra turister, att åka dit just nu när det är som kallast. Hemligheten stavas Snö och isfestival.

Friday afternoon we packed four people into a taxi to the airport. Apart from Gustav and I, it was Paul and David; both working for EF, both British and both having lived in Shanghai for a good number of years. We landed in Harbin around 9pm and they announced before landing that the outside temperature was -21 degrees. Welcome to Harbin! 10 million people live in Harbin. It is known for being rough with loads of fights, drugs and very cheap vodka. During the wintermonths temperatures down to -30 are common. Harbin lies far up north, north of Korea and fairly close to the Russian border. 

The 45 minutes taxi ride in to Harbin was spent in a taxi without any heating and where the windows froze on the inside making it impossible to see anything at all. The driver had a 10x10cm lookout through the front window which he swiped with the back of his hand. All in all it felt like we had arrived to Harbin.

There are a few must dos and we realized that we could squeeze them all in to a day if we just had a driver. So after the “western breakfast” (including 20 different Chinese meals and white square toast – but no toaster) we jumped in to the taxi and went to see the snow sculptures. It was joint ventured with Finland so F1 cars, saunas and Mumintrollet were all depicted.

The next stop for the day was the Siberian tigers. As we already know, the Chinese aren’t the best when it comes to respect and/or care for animals. This could be proved by the tiny cages that some of the tigers sat in and the fact that they could be fed by live chickens if anyone wanted to pay for the chicken. After a bus tour through different cages where the animals ran “free”, Paul got the chance to get himself a chicken. The tigers went crazy and so did some of the young girls when he fed the tigers with the chicken who was literally scared to death…

After a busy morning, we went to a really nice Russian restaurant and had sausages, cabbage, mashed potatoes and Harbin beer. As the sun sets at 4 pm already, by the time we had eaten it was time to go to the ice sculpture city and see it as it got dark. The place was huge and the buildings were full size; castles, houses, churches. Everything in ice! I will let the pictures speak for themselves but as David so nicely put it, the place would break a tacky-ometer with all the brightly colored, blinking lights.

For dinner, our driver had recommended “The good harvest restaurant”. When we arrived there was a show on with songs, Mao costumes and the little red one. Despite the very kitsch setting, the food was excellent and the place was definitely charming. The bar hopping afterwards is a bit messy to describe here but to sum it up, the driver who ripped us off on the taxi bill, at least showed us to the place where foreigners drink for free. Yes, for free! The whole night, any night! China is probably the only country in the world where they use foreigners as a marketing tool, let them drink for free, attract more foreigners and hence attract more (classy/rich?) Chinese.

Sunday, we started off with another ice sculpture park. Their slide was huge and they even had a built in elevator in one of the ice castles! But the best thing was probably the “permobiler”. (How do you say that in English? Electric wheelchair?) The point was that the lazy Chinese and Russians wouldn’t have to walk around the park. But we decided to use them for racing in the snow instead. Hilarious with wheelchair racing in slow motion!

After lunch we decided to heat up ourselves in a spa/sauna/massage place. I went for oil massage, Paul got a Chinese massage and Gustav and David tried the Korean massage as neither of them had tried it before. We got small prison cell sized rooms next to each other. After a while I could hear a lot of chatting and laughing from the others. Apparently Korean massage includes a happy ending. David was the first to realize and as his masseuse actually couldn’t massage, he had to swop masseuses. Gustav had been talking with his masseuse and told her that his wife was in the room next door. She had been a bit surprised and made a sign that they would be silent. Not until David stormed in and explained what the Korean massage meant, he understood what she had meant…!

The more you see of China, the more you realize how civilized Shanghai actually is.