For a long time I’ve wanted to head to Harbin, especially in January for their annual winter festival. But, China is big. I live in pretty much the middle of China. Which, like when I lived in the middle of England is great – you’re equidistant from anywhere. Very convenient. But; I’ll say again; China is BIG. From Weinan to Harbin is 1190 miles as the crow (or Airbus) flies. In perspective, that’s from Stafford to Glasgow FIVE times. So, I had a few spare days and decided this year I’d go check it out. B was busy with work and couldn’t get out of it, so I asked Julian if he wanted to go. Plane tickets were a little pricey (around £220 return) but we thought “what the hell?” and went for it. Here are pics from the first few days…


Myself and Julian took the shuttle bus to Xian airport then hopped on a flight to Harbin. When we left Xi’an it was around 4-5’c, we stepped off the plane 2 and a half hours later into temperatures of minus 20’c, and the sun was going down at 3:30pm. Harbin is very north, and very east. China, despite it’s hugeness, has only one time zone. This was a new kind of mini-jet lag.

We grabbed a taxi from Harbin airport to our hotel. The system for getting a taxi at the airport was quite good. There’s an orderly line of taxis and a policeman at the front of the line. You tell the taxi driver where you want to go, the taxi driver gives you a price and the policeman decides if it’s a good price or not. Our policeman got us 20RMB off the price that the taxi driver said (after lots of shouting.) There’s lots of horror stories all around China (and the rest of the world) about airport Taxis, and this is quite a good system. For the 90min taxi journey (rush hour) I got to talk to the taxi driver and practice my Chinese. The whole holiday was a great opportunity to practice my Chinese, as of me and Julian, I’m the more proficient. Anyway, after arriving at our hotel (which was cheap and cheerful) we suited up in our survival gear (lots and lots of layers) and stepped out into what was now around -24’c. These were the first ice sculptures we saw in a small park, so I snapped some shots. It was good practice of trying to operate my camera while wearing my double-layered gloves.

Walking around was tiring. Walking through snow was tough, and when there wasn’t snow there was black ice. Walking on the black ice was fun. There were several times me and Julian lost our footing, but we never actually fell over. We saw lots of locals loosing their footing too, so we didn’t feel so bad.

  
It didn’t actually snow while we were there. I think it was just too cold to snow. Either way, there was plenty of the white stuff lying around.

Here’s a river-boat that (due to the frozen river) is now…well..I guess it’s still a riverboat. But it looked odd seeing a boat just surrounded in snow-covered ice.

The architecture is European/Russian influenced due to the fact Harbin was apparently once a part of Siberia.

The next morning we woke up, suited up for the cold and headed outside. That’s where I spotted this. One of my favourite things about Harbin. People selling ice cream. Outside. No freezer required. It was great. You could eat the ice cream as slowly as you like; zero melting! Just look at the selection too!

It doesn’t look that cold in pictures. But, you can see the black ice covering the path and parts of the road. Also, you can see just how many clothes everybody is wearing.

Always time for car-spotting; it’s another MG6! (I’d spotted one the month before in Dalian.)

Everyone loves Tigger. So; ICE TIGGER! Hell yeah!

This is central street. It’s cobbled and old and stuff. But when I look at this picture; all I see is a guy without a hat. That guy is crazy.

  
It’s a pretty place! Julian wouldn’t let me eat McDonald’s. 🙁

  
Went inside this EURO plaza food market and found lots of JAPANESE and KOREAN goods. Don’t know how that works; but – they were tasty!

Restourants!

Pocari Sweat. A Korean energy / ION drink that I only know of from Cyberathletes being sponsored by. Meh; it’s was alright.

People, drains, cars. At -20’c, EVERYTHING gives off steam / smoke.

My cheapo thermometer was lying! It was much colder than this!

  
This thermometer was more believable.

My new, especially-for-the-trip purchased snow boots were rubbing my little toe into a blister, so we returned to the hotel room. I ended up changing to my DC Skate Shoes (which are now 18months old, and have a few holes in) and wore them for the rest of the trip. Not a drop of water or snow inside, and my feet didn’t ever feel *too* cold. Seriously good shoes. Anyway, upon returning to the hotel I tried to take a photo of my purchases. Mr condensation attacked. So; taking photos in freezing weather is a pain in the arse. Usually I put my camera under my jacket or coat when I’m walking around. But, doing that in Harbin means the constant hot/cold/hot/cold and condense the camera, then the condensation freezes, then melts, runs into an important part of your camera, freezes, melts, etc, etc. While my camera and lens are weather sealed and I’ve used them in rain before; there’s no stopping Mr Condensation. So; for all the time I was outside, the camera would be on the outside of my coat, braving the cold. This makes the battery run down pretty quick, but not as much as people say. One thing I did notice though, was the LCD screen starts to freeze. It updates really slowly, and blurrily-fades from one picture to the next. I felt sorry for my camera. Upon going indoors, the usual procedure is to put the camera back in my camera bag (which is always left open when outdoors to allow cold air inside) then close the camera into the bag (with cold air in there too) and sit the bag in the coldest corner of the room for a few hours to slowly come up to room temperature. However, I broke the rule to take the above photo, and you can see from the picture just how steamy it started to get. Lesson learned.

Half car-spotting, half weather-spotting. This is a Roewe 750. Built by the SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation) it’s what the Chinese built after they acquired the rights and tooling to make Rovers. It’s a modified Rover 75, and while it looks similar; it’s actually quite different. For example; the wheelbase is 10cm+ longer, and SAIC claims they’ve improved 85% of the car. Not hard to improve though I guess!

Check out the ice. All the roads were like this. They seemingly don’t bother gritting. They all just have ice rally skills. Kept seeing taxis locking up the front wheels though.

  
High-rise, low-rise, I-dont-know-what-rise.

Then we headed to the North-east China Siberian Tiger Reserve. At first you get taken around in a mini-bus, and I thought this was gonna be as close as it got to the tigers. Most the tourists in Harbin with Russian, thus it was very hard to see out of a minibus full or Russians. I thought shots like this were gonna be as good as it got.

Also, with an outside temperature in the minus 20’c range, and a minibus full of hot sweaty Russians, condensation was rife. Condensation which instantly froze into ice. I was constantly rubbing the windows. The built-in ice-scraper of my knock-off North Face gloves worked a treat though.

The tigers certainly weren’t shy. Also saw a land rover drive out to feed them. They threw a chicken out of the land rover which half-jump half-flew onto the roof of the landrover; not a problem. 3 tigers jumped up onto the roof of the Land Rover like it was nothing. Very agile creatures!

  
These were all shots from within the minibus.

  
Then, outside the minibus! Turns out there’s a cool catwalk around the whole place which you can shoot down at the tigers from. When I say shoot, I mean with the camera, of course.

Beautiful creatures.

A strange environment to see tigers in.

Cats will be cats.

  
And boys will be boys.

It’s me!

And Julian!

I think my colour co-ordination was great. Yes, the sprite in my backpack is frozen. 😉

This was just a fraction of the reserve. Sunset and snow make for great photos.

Make no mistake; it was COLD! The tigers were huddling together to share heat.

  
It’s interesting to see this tiger *outside* the cage.

I liked this tiger’s shadow.

  
The white tiger was pretty pimpin. I also like this tiger looking out to the city, maybe longing for freedom. Or food.

  
Stunning creatures. As usual, you can click these pics to see larger versions. Print ’em out or whatever.

Really, the eye of the tiger.

I love the detail in the tiger’s breath.

Again, epic eyes.

Forgot what kind of big cat this was…

  
More varieties of big cat.

One final image. This sign is a price list for live animals that you can buy to feed to the tigers. That’s right, for 2000RMB, (£200) you can buy a cow to feed to the tigers. Make your own decisions about this. I was personally all right with it. No different to us eating cows. However, since this photo was taken, Chinese zoos have now outlawed this practice. I tried to pull up the article (I remember reading it in February, I couldn’t find it, but I did find this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8563673.stm An article about some tigers dying at a similar zoo. Not this zoo though. Although, this zoo is mentioned later: “The BBC recently found that the Siberia Tiger Park, based in Heilongjiang Province in the northeast of China, is selling a “tiger bone wine” that contains three small tiger bones.” Meh, I guess in some ways China isn’t perfect, but nobody is.

As always, more photos on Flickr.

Part One.

Part Two.

Part Three. Coming soon!

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