What an amazing weekend we have just had! After a busy first week back at school, dealing with jet lag and cats waking us up at 2am just to purr in our faces, we were not convinced we had the energy for our weekend away, planned months ago. We flew out of Shanghai on Friday night, landing in Harbin at 11.30pm, to a balmy minus 14 degrees. I say balmy, because usually it's around minus 30, but Harbin seemed to be in the middle of a 'heatwave'! Our driver and guide picked us up and took us straight to the Crowne Plaza, which was a very nice hotel.
On Saturday, we got dressed up in our thermals and ski wear, with so many layers on we could barely climb into the car! We headed straight for the Tiger Safari park, where more than 600 Siberian Tigers live in a free-range environment. They were very curious about the busses we drove around in, and were playing and mating - sure signs that they were happy enough. The park even had a couple of white tigers, and ligers (half tiger, half lion). They are such beautiful animals, and I loved seeing that a cat is a cat, no matter it's size or colour. The tigers were doing so many things that Sooty and Snowball love to do, like sleep on their backs with all their paws in the air, and roll around on the ground in a very playful way.
More photos to follow since they are on my DSLR camera and I haven't had time to put them on the computer yet.
We then went to Sun Island, which is an island in the middle of the completely frozen river. The snow sculptures were just incredible. There was so much detail in them, and some of them were absolutely enormous! I especially loved the replica of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, which seemed to be life-sized. Really amazing. We also got to see some of the sculptures being created, which even our guide said she had not seen before. I think the weather was warmer this year, so they are making the sculptures later than they usually would. It was so interesting seeing how they are made.
We then got to play on ice bikes on a frozen lake, which was so much fun! We were like children in the snow. There was even a slide, which was really quite high, and I was nervous about going on it! I'm glad I did, but it was really fast, shooting down a slide made entirely of ice from the river.
The one unfortunate thing about the whole trip was the pollution. You can see in our photos that we are wearing pollution masks. In Shanghai, anything over 100 means the students are kept inside for the day. The pollution in Harbin was over 400. The air was thick with it, and it has a really wood-fire type smell to it. Becky suffers quite badly from the pollution, so she struggled. My problem was more to do with claustrophobia of having the mask covering my face, coupled with all of my layers of clothing. Still, that's just part of the deal with Harbin, and the best hadn't even come yet.
After the snow island, we stopped for lunch at somewhere our guide, Yankee recommended. A traditional meal in Harbin is pancakes (savoury) with lots of different fillings. We went to a restaurant that you could choose dishes to fill your pancakes with. We had spicy pork, shredded spicy potato, spicy aubergine (are you sensing the spicy theme yet?) and a cold potato starch noodle that I really didn't like. The texture reminded me of jelly fish, possibly my least favourite food i've ever tried! The texture just wasn't right.
After the delicious lunch it was off to the Ice Festival, which I must say is one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen!
We had put even more layers on because the temperature drops during the night from minus 7 to minus 14, so we had our full ski gear on, plus hand warmers etc. My camera had given up in the minus 7, so I didn't bother with it in the evening - no point in actually breaking it (it just got too cold and is fully recovered now). That did mean that I had to have my hand out of my gloves to work my phone camera quite a lot. But my hand was the only thing that got cold - and we were at the park for a good few hours. It showed just how good my walking boots are, since my feet stayed toasty warm the whole trip.
The ice festival is wonderful. Seeing the ice lit up is what Matt calls 'magical cold' as opposed to 'awful cold' which is just cold with no snow or ice. One thing I hadn't realised is just how tactile ice is. I spent a huge amount of time touching the ice. It's so dry and smooth and really amazing to look at, especially when the blocks have bubbles in them. All of the ice for the entire festival comes from the river, so is all natural. The festival is in its 20th year, so there were ice columns with each year on them. Then of course, there were the buildings, all monuments from around the world including the Burj Khalifa, the Colosseum, the Macau church, Big Ben and the Forbidden City Palaces, as well as lots of towers, pagodas and churches that could be anywhere in the world. They were magnificent. There were tunnels and bridges and even a maze to explore, all made out of ice. The colours changed intermittently and so the display in front of you was forever changing. There was a huge ice drum, with a normal drum in front of it, and the colours on the big drum would pulse in time to whoever was playing the tiny drum below.
The queue for the slides were over an hour long and we didn't want to be standing still for that long, so we didn't go on them. We'd already been on the slide on the snow island earlier, so we weren't too bothered by that. It really was an incredible place. The photos and my words just don't do it justice.
On Saturday night, we ate dinner at the hotel because we were so tired! Being in the cold, and on your feet all day really takes it out of you! Dinner was a buffet and included some really odd Chinese food! Becky was fairly high on her medication to counteract the pollution, so was chatting some really funny stuff. After that was an early night.
Sunday morning, we woke up to such bad pollution that we literally couldn't see a foot out of our 15th floor hotel room window. I'm not exaggerating! Becky had been awake all night with nose bleeds because of it, so didn't come for breakfast. We decided to do less that day due to the air quality, so went for a 10am pick up instead of 8am. We had a different guide on Sunday, James, who was very nice, and was in training to be a full time guide. He took us to see St Sofia's church, which is a Russian Orthodox church. Harbin is the last major city on the way to Russia, so there is a huge Russian influence there. The church is fabulous on the outside. Unfortunately, the inside was being renovated, so we couldn't have a look at the ceiling, which I would like to have seen.
We spent an hour or so wandering down the main street, which was full of original 100 year old buildings and shops. We got a local traditional style ice cream, which wasn't even kept in a freezer! It was definitely colder on Sunday.
We went for lunch at a dumpling place, which was nice, and then headed to the airport. Our flight was delayed by 3 hours due to the pollution, so we ended up landing at 11.30pm! With work the next day! Needless to say, Monday was hard work! But at least the cats were pleased to see us when we got home.
It was a great weekend, with our wonderful friends. Harbin really is one of a kind, and i'm so glad we made the trip.
