Harbin : Day 4

One of the greatest paradoxes in my life is my undying love for skiing and my reluctance to spend the great deal of money which it unfortunately entails. So yes, there was what was reported to be a fairly decent ski resort about 90 minutes outside of Harbin, but no we didn't decide to fork over the $80 US that it would've cost us to go skiing there for a day. What we did find however was a much smaller (much much much smaller) ski hill just on the outskirts of town that was so cheap it was almost free. Not only was it really cheap but the service was great too. They had people who would do your boots up for you! That's pretty awesome. Sadly the ski hill consisted of a single bunny run and a rope tow. On the other hand, it was Gatsby's first time ever skiing so the situation was pretty ideal for giving beginning ski lessons. It was pretty difficult trying to teach someone to ski in Chinese but eventually I figured out the right set of vocabulary and all in all it was a pretty enjoyable way to spend the morning.

After skiing we went and grabbed some noodles by the train station and then boarded our long and painful train ride home. This time we had two seats in the hard sleeper car and two seats in the regular car. The three guys took turns sleeping in the bed and sitting in the cheap seats. It is hard to imagine how painful it would be to have purchased a "standing only" ticket from Harbin to Nanjing.

Harbin : Day 3

If you go far enough north, and stay long enough, it stands to reason that eventually you will be eaten by a polar bear. This seems fairly certain. Thus, we put all the polar bears we can catch in cages and drive gas guzzling cars to fuel global warming so that we can destroy the habitats of the remaining few. Now, if this perfect plan fails to completely mitigate the issue at hand at least we can more easily control who gets eaten by the polar bears and when. And that brings me to day 3 in our adventures to the northern China frontier. We went to Polarland which was this great arctic themed zoo/aquarium thing the highlight of which was the two enormous polar bears that they had. In actuality we never got to see the polar bears eat anything they just swam back and forth, all that stuff about polar bears eating people was just to build suspense. But in some other universe perhaps they feed people to polar bears at the zoo. Maybe convicts or something, I don't know. Well, after the polar land we went to dinner at a Russian restaurant that Gatsby's friend recommended and which we all heartily approved of after we ate there.

walking to polarland

Harbin : Day 2 Part 2

In the afternoon on day two we went and saw the reason that Harbin is famous: the snow and ice festival! It was pretty impressive and lived up to the hype for the most part. It would have been much more enjoyable had I not contracted an incurable case of the hiccups (the kind that hurt) for the last 45 we were there. Because it hadn’t officially opened yet there were some parts that were closed off. I could try and describe all the different sculptures and buildings but that would just unnecessarily drain my literary powers which are not unlimited. So instead I’ll just share the magic of Harbin’s number one tourist attraction through some enlightening pictures.

Harbin : Day 2 Part 1

It was the day after Christmas (is that called boxing day? I can’t remember) and we had big big plans for how to spend our second day in China’s winter wonderland. We woke up early and followed the public transit directions we got from Google to find our way to the Siberian tiger park. 

This park was absolutely amazing. It was probably the highlight of the trip for me at least. When we got to the ticket window there was a sign listing entry prices of course, but this was accompanied by another sign that was a ‘menu’ of all the live animals you could buy to feed to the tigers. We bought a chicken for 60 RMB.  While we were waiting for the armored bus that would conduct us through tigerland my roommate Gatsby decided to buy me a Christmas present, and for some reason in his mind that meant furry animal hat. So that combined with the age old Roman tradition of wearing a finished piece of taxidermy on one's head (and all the pomp, majesty, and machismo that accompanies that) accounts for my wearing a tiger hat all day. Ok, now that I’ve rationalized myself, back to the story. We all hopped in an armored bus and then we were driven through the enormous park that was filled with tigers at every turn. They would come right up to and in front of the bus. Near the beginning a jeep drove in with our chicken sitting on the roof. One tiger leaped onto the roof of the car causing the chicken to fly down into the hungry waiting jaws of a second 600 pound striped killer.

After the bus tour there was a second section where you could stroll along an elevated covered walkway and look down at the tigers who, when we got there at least, were all napping in a big dog tiger pile. Here there was another opportunity to feed the tigers fresh meat, but this time you could throw it to them yourself. Since opportunities like this are non-existent in the civilized world I bought another live chicken and dangled it over the railing and over 40 hungry tiger mouths. If you’ve ever wondered where the phrase “Voracious as a Siberian tiger in Harbin who has just had the good fortune of expropriating a mouthwatering chicken and is engaged in tearing it to pieces” came from (and who hasn’t wondered that) it came from my head just now, and the spectacle it was coined to describe was pretty awe-inspiring to say the least.

I hand fed THAT meat to THAT tiger! Oh yeah.

One last thing that we saw at the tiger park was the only living white liger and one of only a few living ligers period. It was magical, but that should come as no surprise. After all, that’s what they’re bred for.

Doesn't it look majestic? Or is that smug?

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?)

Head... is... freezing.

So the weeks following the events described in my last post have been eventful. After my dad's surgery it was decided that he should do 6 rounds of chemotherapy. About two weeks after the first round his hair was starting to falling off whenever he touched it so he decided to just get it over with and shave it off. Mike, Spencer, and I also shaved our heads as a sign of solidarity. Then when the rest of his hair fell out a few days later I decided I might as well bic mine just this once since I'll never have as good an opportunity again (hopefully). So, now I've got no hair and that's why my head is cold. Picture follows. No laughing.

P.S. That is my genetic engineering final report in the background.

Ok... So, the thing I was referencing actually happened almost a month ago I've just been really bad about getting around to writing about it. I wanted to do something special for 11/11/11 something that I would probably never do again in my life. So the decision that was eventually come to was to put on a public performance of Romeo and Juliet. And because 11/11 is Single's Awareness Day in China we decided to limit the cast to single men, which also had the advantage of being very Shakespearean. Knowing that we would undoubtedly attract a lot of attention we decided to take advantage of the publicity and make the production a fundraiser. I went to a local service center and asked if there was anyone in the community who we could help out financially. They suggested a 50-year old woman who after being laid off two months ago was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had already been through surgery and they were able to completely resect the tumor, but she still had to go through 10 rounds of chemotherapy and on her husband's salary of 1000 RMB a month there was no way they were going to be able to afford it. So at 11:11 am we had 11 single guys from the Flagship Program perform Romeo and Juliet from start to finish. We even had a wig for our Juliet which was apparently pretty convincing (we had some Chinese guy come up to us afterwards and say "hey, what happened to the leading lady I was hoping to talk to her"). We probably had about 4000 people stop and watch us. But most importantly, we were able to raise over 5500 RMB to help out someone in need. Here is the link to the clip that was on the evening news: http://youtu.be/kA7xKIsMjZ8?t=1m49s