Harbin : Day 1

Owing to the fact that Nanjing was altogether not Christmasy enough, but also because the window of opportunity just happened to fall over Christmas, I decided to take my "reading days" and go see China's northeasternmost province and only extant winter wonderland. For those uninitiated into the world of Chinese geography that would be Heilongjiang province (literally "black dragon river") and the city is called Harbin. It is nestled in between North Korea and Eastern Siberia. Our merry company consisted of myself, Ian, Maryia, and my roommate, who was recently re-christened Gatsby (would-be detractors of my choice of names take note, his old English name was 'Govad' so even if you don't like Gatsby you have to admit it's a big improvement). We originally planned on purchasing the cheapest train tickets available, partly to save money and partly because I felt that, unpleasant as it may be, it is a quintessential part of the China experience. However, due to Maryia being accustomed to a certain level of Luxury* we instead bought four tickets in the sleeper car so we could keep her company during the 30 hour train ride.

We arrived bright and early at the Harbin railway station on Christmas Day. My first sensation stepping off the train was not the most pleasant, that of having all my snot freeze in my nose. It was after all between -20°C and -30°C practically the whole time we were there. Our first object when we arrived was to find a church service to attend. Sadly, Harbin does not have an LDS branch, but nevertheless due to the Russian influence it is a city replete with churches, possibly more than any other city in China. I've never been to Mass before so I thought it would be good to find a Catholic church to go to. Unfortunately searching the Chinese interweb is like going on a scavenger hunt in a million-acre field of stinging nettle, oh and the field is also full of landmines, and Nazis, and a plethora of other kinds of unpleasantness. So we never did find a Catholic church, but we did eventually find a Christian church that was putting on a large Christmas program. We stopped in for the last hour. It was pretty good though. There were a lot of people there. When we got there there were actually no seats left in the auditorium but this Chinese lady made sure that we got some anyway because we were foreigners and she didn't want us to "go back home with a bad impression of Chinese Christians" as she put it.

After Church and lunch we went ice skating at a college which had converted their outdoor track into a skating rink. There were these guys there doing this really cool thing I had never seen before. They had these large metal tops that they got spinning on the ice and then they would keep them going by whipping them. It was pretty spiffy. At some point someone had remarked that ice cream in Harbin ought to be really cheap because they wouldn't have to pay for refrigeration, well after ice skating we confirmed that indeed this was the case, at the bus stop we found that they had cases of ice cream laying out on the street. And it was really cheap. And it was also delicious!

We finished off Christmas Day by visiting Harbin's most famous cathedral, St. Sofia's. The church was badly damaged but not quite destroyed during the Cultural Revolution but has since been restored. Or at least, the exterior has been restored, the interior has been reformed and is now a museum/gift shop. Well, I've written enough for one day, I'll write the rest later.

* Apparently she only flies Emerates and Lufthswasa (spelling on both of those?)