Harbin Trip

I realize that I haven’t talked about my trip to Harbin yet. I suppose I will now. It was a great weekend. One of our colleages, English name Ella and Chinese name Xiu (chew), grew up in Harbin and acted as our tour guide while there. I mention both names because we discovered that she took an English name upon getting hired at DAIS, and we decided to use her Chinese name instead because it was more familiar to her. But the name Ella has already stuck and now there is some debate and confusion about what name to use. My students and I call her Ella, Sid and her students call her Xiu. I have been trying to change over, but keep forgetting. The rest of the staff is split on this as well.

Anyway, we took the night train to Harbin, which was a lot like a cattle car of extremely cramped sleeping bunks. But, I have to admit that it was comfortable and I slept well, the train lulling me as I took the nine hour trip north to the land of the cold. Ella met us at the train station at six in the morning, having arrived a day earlier to visit her grandmother and mother. She had arranged a hotel for us already and we went to drop off our luggage to discover that the owner, the friend of a friends mother, or something like that, was giving the five of us free lodging! We protested in vain. That Ella must have some powerful guanxi!!! J

We spent the day out in maybe 10 degree Fahrenheit temperatures (unusually warm season this year…) at the snow park, full of the neatest snow sculptures. No words could do it justice, it was truly artwork. Sculptors compete for prizes for their work. It was really neat. We also shopped in the many Russian stores and bought lots of tea and hot chocolate and Russian chocolate bars…..yummm! In the evening we went to the Ice Park. It is the largest ice park in the world. They had tall towers of ice with lights inside each block of ice. Some of the tallest buildings had these break-your-neck ice slides that spiraled down from the top. One that was slid on was so dangerous. You can’t put your hands out of the sled, and once one elbow poked out and got a serious bruising bump on it from high speed abrasion on the ice. The sleds were cracked and shredded and broken. I was sitting in only a half of a sled, and about halfway down, I leaned back, and the front of the sled came up and I was on the two inch ridge that was the back of the sled. I couldn’t see and couldn’t right myself. I slammed into a pile of snow at the bottom, my hat over my eyes, my world upside down, laughing so hard from the exhiliration that I couldn’t find the direction of up. Then a Chinese man was frantically yelling, “Move!!! Move!!!” and yanking me off the course as the next sledder came hurtling down the slope. Incredible. I was laughing so hard and slipping and sliding all over the place, I almost peed my pants! Good thing I didn’t end up with spinal injuries! I only did that slide once! But I did try a bunch of smaller ones. Funny things is that Chinese people are so afraid to slide that they put their feet down and inch down these wonderful slides one foot at a time. They won’t even slide! Then all the slides get backed up and the only way you can go is to do it the same as everyone else. I tried to wait at the top until everyone was off the slide at the bottom, but people behind me were getting mad. So I got a little naughty and a few times just ran and threw myself down the slide, hurtling down the chute and smashing into a slow sledder at the bottom. I really shouldn’t have, I know, but boy, don’t these people know how to have fun on a slide?? Then the man watching the slide yelled at me and I felt guilty and skulked away. I later found an ice labrynth about five and a half feet tall and pretty big. Xiu and I entered the labrynth and turned our first corner to reach a dead end. There were many Chinese people filtering through the maze one by one, and I quickly realized that this was going to be an elaborate game of waiting in line. Loosing interest, Xiu and I climbed up the wall of the maze and sat on top of the ice wall. From this vantage point (and we were the only ones up there) we could see the entire thing, and like the helpful Cheshire cat, we both began our own game of giving directions to people. So I would yell “Bu Duai! Bu Duai! Zuo Zhuan! Zuo Zhuan!(Wrong way! Wrong Way! Go Left! Go Left!”, and Xiu sitting beside me would yell the opposite. From our particular location, both directions led to a dead end. It was riotous. Chinese people scratching their heads at us and at my blonde hair and Chinese shouting. Some people trusted me, some didn’t , all ended up at dead ends, and then would laugh and shout up at us, “Liars! Liars!” to which we responded, “Oh! Sorry! We forgot the way! We are not sure? Our mistake!” So much fun. I laughed until my ribs ached. It was the hardest laughing I have done since arriving here. Everyone was enjoying the game.

We checked out all the ice buildings and sculptures. There was a circle of small stages around the center building with beat music and Chinese women wearing white fur lined jackets dancing on pedestals. It was a crazy Asian Ice rave! Bizarre. We watched for a while, then saw arctic foxes, and a bear being mistreated in a circus show-made me mad. We finally hunted down Leslie and Sidney, who had also been engaged in some heavy sledding, and Sidney took a fall, ripped the handle off BOTH sides of her new handbag that she purchased that day and bruised her tailbone. She actually hasn’t been too happy sitting for these last two weeks.

On Sunday morning, we shopped, bought nice gifts for the hotel staff and the owner, and caught a plane home just after lunchtime. Great trip!