Harbin gets an exclamation mark because it was something else. I like to call it a once in a lifetime experience, because it’s well worth a visit but I most likely will not be going back. No one should be that cold out of choice…
Alex and I had acclimatised somewhat in Beijing but nothing could really prepare us for temperatures around -25°C on arrival. We were ridiculously excited though (and our toes hadn’t started to freeze yet).
Fortunately the hostel was warm (if somewhat unwashed), and inside an old synagogue, which was pretty interesting.
Harbin as a city didn’t seem so exciting, but there were ice and snow sculptures everywhere. Just everywhere.
On the first night we walked down the main pedestrian street, Zhongyang Dajie (lined with ice and snow sculptures) to Zhaolin park to look at all the pretty ice lanterns.
And of course some ice and snow sculptures.
Here we are at an ice table.
The next day we went to a Siberian tiger park. We were driven around in a van safari-style looking at many tigers, lions and even a couple of ligers. We were also treated to a bunch of tigers being fed a live goat.
We then walked around the enclosures observing the sweet tigers and feeding them strips of beef (didn’t have the money to splurge on a chicken).
There were even a couple of white tigers, which were beautiful but not terribly happy.
In the afternoon we went to the main ice and snow festival. There were a lot of ice and snow sculptures.
We went at the perfect time, about 3.30 pm, so we saw ice and snow sculptures in the light…
And we saw ice and snow sculptures lit up at night…
We also avoided the hoards of Chinese tourists who descended after nightfall.
And rode in a horse-drawn carriage, possibly the most exciting thing ever.
Apart from all the ice and snow sculptures.
To keep warm we went on ice slides…
Cuddled snow foxes…
And jumped around a lot.
Also, we looked at the ice and snow sculptures. All the looking at the ice and snow sculptures was exhausting. I think we went to bed around 8.
On our final day we went to the Harbin snow world. There were a lot of impressive snow sculptures.
No surprises there. Sadly no ice sculptures...but a pretty cool snowman army.
After lunch we visited St. Sofia’s church, a beautiful building in the city centre that is unfortunately a museum now.
And that was that. We were only in Harbin 2 days and 2 nights but it was enough. Undeniably beautiful and spectacularly unique. But absolutely freezing.
Did I mention we saw ice and snow sculptures?
We then flew back to Xiamen, a temperature difference of close to 40°C, and I remembered why I chose this magical winterless city. But my building was empty and the campus was full of tourists so after a day of drying laundry with a hairdryer I jumped on a plane to Kunming…
