Hā'ěrbīn

Hello all,

Greetings from Harbin! We’ve had a great time on our first leg of our multi-week backpacking trip, after the unbearable headache of the first day. Let’s get that story out of the way first.

After weeks of planning, we were set to leave the morning of Monday the 14^th. The first hiccup occurred when we got to the bus station around 6:30 a.m. to get tickets for a 7:20 a.m. train; just after sitting down with our tickets to wait, Liz realized that she forgot her purse at our apartment.

A quick taxi ride later, and she remembered that her keys and phone are in said purse. Luckily, after about 20 minutes of standing destitute by our school’s front gate, one of the Chinese English teachers pulled in and spotted Liz looking forlorn. She helped Liz get a key and even a ride back to the bus station. Liz came running into the station with barely 5 minutes to spare.

So far so good. Once on the bus, however, we ran into problem number two. The bus made it about 20 minutes out of town before pulling over and stopping, engine off, at a toll station. We sat on the bus watching other passengers get off and mill about for about 90 minutes before another passenger who spoke pretty good English overheard our dismay (and saw Elizabeth quietly crying) and informed us that the highways were closed due to fog. The bus then turned around and went back to the station, 2 hours after we first left.

Because we were riding the bus directly to the Pudong Airport in Shanghai, all of the travelers had planes to catch that day. We joined up with some businessmen on the bus who really needed to catch their planes that day and, together, made our way by taxi to a nearby city, where we hopped a train to Shanghai (after much ado and 2 train stations). A 90-minute subway ride later, we were at the airport.

Our original flight – cancelled at this point – was supposed to leave at 12:40. We were now at the airport at roughly 3:00. After running – in our arctic-ready clothing – to the terminal, we found and bought tickets at 3:30 for a 4:10 flight to Harbin. 1 train, 1 flight, 2 subway rides, 2 buses, 3 taxis, and probably 3 hours of speed walking later, we finally arrived at our hostel around 10:00 p.m. Quite a day. Oh, did we forget to mention that we were both carrying large, framed, camping backpacks all day during all of those modes of transportation? Needless to say, though we oohed and ahhed at the ice sculptures that dot the roadsides on the way to the hostel, we collapsed into bed that first night without venturing out.

So, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we can tell you that Harbin has been a fantastic first destination. The city is currently hosting the Ice and Snow Festival – a city-wide winter wonderland, with no less than three main areas to visit, each full of interesting and elaborate ice/snow sculptures and snow/ice-based entertainment. Though you can visit any of the areas all day long, at night, the sculptures are all lit from within with elaborate neon lights, and we were told that it’s the best time to go. That was our main reason for wanting to come, so we wanted to be sure to set aside a whole evening to visit one of the attractions.

(Click on the pictures to see a bigger version.)

There are ice sculptures all over town.

That's Celsius folks.

The first full day we were here, Tuesday 1/15, we spent the day exploring around town on foot. As you’ll see in the pictures, we were adequately prepared for temperatures in the -20s F – we each wore base layers, thermal underwear, pants, sweaters, fleece-lined ski pants with bibs, and fleece-lined ski jackets, along with fleece-lined ski masks (popular among the robber population), scarves, hats, ear warmers, and two pairs of gloves. (We brought oxygen-activated chemical heat packs for our shoes, but didn’t even need them until the Ice Festival on Wednesday night.)

During our first day of adventuring, we walked up and down the longest pedestrian street in China – Zhongyang Jie, a cobblestone-paved architectural “museum” of various European and Russian styles alongside modern Chinese structures. The street is full of ice sculptures, overpriced souvenir shops, coffee bars, and street food vendors. Chinese street food is one of our favorite parts of living here; for just a few dollars US, you can eat a whole meal of delicious and varied treats (usually on sticks) cooked right before you.

Some of the older Russian-made buildings.

The longest pedestrian street in China, so we've been told.

Street food market

Grilled spicy mutton. Delicious.

Bean-filled steamed buns.

The end of the pedestrian street is the riverfront

After the pedestrian street, we walked on (and across) the frozen-solid Songhua River. It was an amazing experience to be out on the ice, and something we won’t soon forget.

Liz's frozen eyelashes

The sun setting over the river

We crossed the river over to Sun Island, where there’s a large park and a Russian Village. During the 20^th century, there was a large influx of Russians and Jews escaping from persecution abroad, and Harbin has maintained a strong and proud Russian influence in its buildings and entertainment ever since. As each region has its own tourist souvenirs, there can be found Russian vodka and stacking dolls everywhere here. Harbin’s entertainment is very seasonally-specific; in the winter, there are huge parks of ice sculptures, skating, skiing, ice bicycles, tubing, sledding, etc., and in the summer, outdoor beer gardens and attractions like the Russian village are more predominant. We’ll just have to come back again in the summer to experience that side of Harbin!

Bronze piano on Sun Island

Dragon boats frozen into the river

Our breath caused our masks to freeze. Note Brett's frozen eyebrows.

We ended the day with some hotpot - it's a style of dining similar to fondue where you are given a pot full of broth to cook raw meats and veggies in. It's delicious and a great way to warm up after a day in sub-zero Harbin.

Because each of the main areas of the Snow and Ice Festival requires rather steep admission, we knew that we could only afford to visit one in order to budget for our whole backpacking adventure. We chose the Bing Xue Da Shi Jie (literally “Ice Snow Big World Festival”, or Snow and Ice World), which features ice sculptures on a massive scale – there are replicas of entire buildings, a huge Buddha, gigantic ice slides, and bars make entirely of ice, where you can sit on a fur-topped ice stool and enjoy a literally ice-cold Harbin beer. No words can accurately describe the amount of detail and truly incredible spectacle of being in a city made of ice and snow, so we hope our pictures and videos will suffice.

The main entrance to Ice and Snow World

We had a great time going down the many ice slides, and took some videos of the experience. In one, you’ll hear Liz shout “AI-YA!” as Brett performs his patented YMCA-waterpark-honed-rocket-down-the-slide move and pushes her forward into the person in front of her – who then shouts “XIE XIE!” (thank you) for giving him more of a boost.

As we write this, we’re sitting in an old synagogue-turned-hostel-and-coffee-shop, killing a little bit of time before we head to the train station to catch an all-night sleeper train to Beijing, for the next leg of our journey.

We’ll continue to try to write a post per city, so as to stay on top of it all and keep you guys updated in as real-time as possible.

We love you all and think of you constantly!

(Oh, and Grandma Sue and Grandpa Lu – our Christmas package came the day before we left, and we’ve been enjoying our chocolate on the journey and keeping time on the beautiful new watches – thank you!)

Our Chinese Holiday Season

Hey everyone,

It’s been quite a while since our last post. While we do apologize for letting work, travel, and our social lives interfere with our writing, much of the delay has been due to reasons out of our control.

The Internet in China simply has not been the same since the last CCP Congress and handover of power. Many American websites are blocked in China, such as the ones we use to write this blog and host the images we include on it. We have been unable to connect until this week when our VPN program updated to work around the changes. Keep your fingers crossed.

In other less depressing news, we have had an excellent holiday season here. Some of you follow us on Facebook and have seen and/or read about our holiday times, but for those that don’t, here’s a brief rundown. If you are Facebookers with us, prepare to hear in prose what you’ve seen in pictures.

For Thanksgiving, an American couple that we are friends with approached a local restaurant about hosting the foreigners and their Chinese friends/spouses for a traditional meal. They roasted a turkey for us, made mashed potatoes and attempted stuffing, and plenty of other dishes. While not exactly an American Thanksgiving meal, it was delicious and we had a blast celebrating with our foreign and Chinese friends alike.

Our Christmas season in Zhangjiagang was festive; quite a few Christmas parties were had. Our buddy Dennis hosted two: one at his house so that a Chinese friend could film a local TV news segment on foreigners during Christmas time; and a Secret Santa party at his bar. Both were a lot of fun; we’ve made some great friends in our short time here.

Our friend Joe, who filmed the party.

From L-R: the party's host Dennis, our colleague Bella, our flatmate Jesse, Brett

Liz and our good friend Bella. She's the Chinese 7th grade English teacher at our school.

Secret Santa party aftermath. We got sweet new mugs!

We were also given tickets to see a Chinese ballet as a Christmas present from our school. It was one of the more fascinating things we’ve seen yet – it’s called Yang Liping’s “Spirit of the Peacock” or sometimes just “The Peacock” if you’re interested.

Curtain call for "The Peacock" ballet. Photography was prohibited.

For Christmas Eve-Eve (the 23^rd), our British friend Nick (actually, he’s from Guernsey) cooked a traditional British meal. It was beyond delicious. He also made mulled wine, and we stayed up late singing Christmas songs and telling stories. It really helped with our holiday homesickness.

The cook, and our good mate, Nick.

Our Christmas meal. Exquisite. 

On Christmas Eve, our school cancelled classes for an all-day Christmas concert/pageant. Even while it was below freezing that day, it was a blast. The students sang and performed dance routines, some teachers sang in a medley of Chinese pop songs, and the foreign teachers all performed. It was an experience we’ll never forget – singing Christmas songs for a crowd of a few hundred Chinese elementary school students all wearing Santa hats.

The poor freezing students.

Our adorable hosts.

Here we're singing "Winter Wonderland."

For Christmas Day, Liz and I stayed in and opened presents and watched Christmas movies all day. We even made the Bridgewater/Penn family broccoli casserole to make us feel at home.

A small taste of home all the way in Jiangsu.

New Years’ Eve was more laid-back; the usual crowd of Zhangjiagang foreigners met at one of the foreigner-friendly pubs in town for a few drinks and a NYE countdown. It was much more subdued than an American New Year’s Eve, as the locals that were there do not celebrate their New Year for another two months.

So, that was a brief synopsis of the holiday season. In other news, we’ve really settled in to our roles here at our school and have made some great friendships with teachers and students alike here. At first, the language and culture barrier really made it hard to bond with the students. Now that we’ve adjusted more, we’ve begun to really care for our students and about their education.

It’s really important to us that our students walk away from our classes with a broader conception of Americans, the world, and what it means to interact with other cultures in an understanding way. We think we’re doing a good job – our school principals seem to really like us and tell us we’re popular with the students and teachers alike. It makes us feel really good about our decision to come here.

Speaking of which, our school approached us to give a lecture to the 10^th graders at our school. They said it would need to be an hour long and could be about anything related to American culture. We decided to give a mixed lecture on and performance of American folk music in many of its myriad forms. We played some clips of Native American music first, then began with Shaker songs and played our way through time all the way to 1960’s protest songs. The students seemed to enjoy it as much as 10^th graders can enjoy a mandatory extra-curricular lecture, but the school staff and music teachers were really impressed; they want us to give another lecture next semester.

We are both really excited about the next two months. We have one more week of work before get a full 6 weeks off for Chinese New Year. We’ve planned a backpacking tour of northeastern and eastern China for the first four weeks. We will begin in Harbin for the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival, followed by a whole week in Beijing staying with some friends. After that, we’ll visit a few ancient walled cities and small villages before ending in Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. Neither of us can sit still thinking about it. We’ll try to update you regularly while we’re travelling.

Tonight we’re headed to a concert in town to see the TwelveGirls Band – a band of yes, you guessed it, twelve women who play traditional Chinese music with modern touches. We’re quite excited.

So, with that, we need to get moving. We’ll be sure to try and update you all during our travels as much as we can, but there will be times when we don’t have Internet. Stay tuned.

Love you all!
Brett and Liz