Recently returned from Harbin where Adam and I took a five day holiday.
1. The Ice Festival(s)
Both the festival outside of the city and the festival within Zhaolin Park froze me with wonder — both because the sights are so glorious and the weather is so cold.
There’s the monumental…
The 40-foot-tall Buddha, the winding Great Wall, the life-sized Kremlin, the sumptuous replica of Saint Sofia.
There’s the historical…
Boats and figures from China’s Warring States period brace for action on the river of snow. Cao Cao flanked by the Wu Nation and the Yue Nation prepares for a monumental battle.
There’s the artistic…
Forget snowmen when you can have snow ballerinas. Snow dancers frozen in powerful movements capture Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.
There’s the detailed….
My favorite exhibitions lie within the walls of Zhaolin park, which displayed the most detailed of ice sculptures with the most variety. In addition to stunning Chinese entries, there are some beautiful sculptures from Russian teams. My favorite was one from Vladivostok entitled, The Wishing Tree. A small catlike girl poses dreamily in the strong branches of an abstract tree. Beautiful.
There’s the fun…
Snow slides, ice slides, ice skating, ice wall scaling — almost anything you can imagine to keep the blood flowing presents itself here at this festival. Personally, I preferred to do my best moonwalk on the icy walks.
2. Making friends on a tour package
Adam and I, in our three years of living here, have only taken one other package CITS tour trip, and it was a day trip. We usually don’t bother since we’re fluent in conversational Mandarin and can read proficiently. Essentially, we don’t need someone to hold our hand and map things out for us.
But this trip our time was limited, so we figured what the hell, our time is short, let’s join a tour group going to Yabuli for two days. Now, this was a mistake for many reasons, but thankfully we discovered where itineries are thin, friends to be made are many.
For the first half of the trip, we found ourselves serving as translators for a nice English pair — a mother and a daughter — who had just joined the trip for the bus ride. Later, after they left, we spent our time eating hot dumplings and ecstatically chatting with the Chinese members of our tour — in particular a family with a 17-year-old son. I didn’t get the real skiing in that I wanted to as they only brought us to the bunny slope, but sometimes trips aren’t as much what you do as they are who you meet.
3. Russian architecture
It was beautiful, as beautiful as they say. Go. See it. Get mistaken for a Russian while doing so, and try to puff up with your chest with a little pride as you saunter around Saint Sofia. You’ve got soul. You’ve got soul.
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