Harbin's Snow and Ice Festival
After completing our final set of exams the Spring Holiday began! Scholars flew out across the globe; some went home, some to other parts of China and some to explore the rest of Asia.
I began my travels with a four day long trip to Harbin（哈尔滨）where we explored the Ice and Snow World (冰雪大世界). This is a festival that comes round once a year in Harbin where you can visit giant ice sculptures, slide down ice slides and even hold an arctic fox!
Our journey to Harbin started out by almost missing the train with literally seconds to spare. Luckily we managed to catch it in time and made our way to our bunk for the night. The bunks weren’t the most spacious with those who slept on the top barely having room to move let alone sit up however the sleep we got was actually very peaceful. We didn’t get much chance to talk to the people on our bunk on the way there but on the way back we chatted to the woman sleeping below us who was also from Tianjin and sang her a song our Chinese friends taught us. Once we were settled at our hostel we found an all you can eat buffet for 69 yuan! This had pizza, BBQ, rice, dumplings, noodles and all sorts of desserts as well as a free steak!
Personally I thought the Ice Festival itself was one of the most exciting things we done on the travels. In the morning we wrapped up in several layers of clothing including army boots, fluffy socks, two tops, two jumpers, two jackets, tights, leggings and jeans as well as hats and scarfs, then set out to the festival in negative 17 degrees.
The Ice Festival was spectacular. The sculptures and buildings made of ice were insane to look at. When you look at pictures you’d think it’s not all ice but everything within Ice and Snow World minus the cafes was made entirely out of ice. We spent the day sliding down ice slides, playing on sledges and even cuddling a snow fox!
Once it got dark we were unable to stay outside for long so we had to keep going into cafes and restaurants to keep warm. We were even able to practise our Chinese and talked to one of the waiters who called the girls beautiful and gave us a discount on our coffee. We gave him an English name: Derek.
The next day we decided to go to the Siberian tiger park. Compared to Tianjin zoo (those animals aren’t the healthiest looking) the tiger park had much better standards. We paid to go on the safari and got to see many tigers and lions close up as well as seeing rare white lions and white tigers, panthers and even a leopard! At one point in the park there was an option to feed the tigers. 10 yuan to feed them a chunk of beef (which I did a few times) and there was also options to feed live animals.
Perhaps one of the strangest things I’ve done is when we all decided to put money together to feed the tigers a live chicken… It cost about 100yuan if I remember correctly so we all put together money so it worked out at ten yuan each. At the time we expected the woman to throw it in and we would just get to see the chase but instead she handed the chicken to Robin and instructed him to throw it in! We watched excitedly as the tigers ran for the chicken and fought with each other to capture the prey.
The day after we ventured to Sofia’s cathedral to view the Russian architecture. The whole of Harbin was beautiful and honestly if it wasn’t so cold I’d love to spend more time there. We headed home and I began to pack for the next two months of travelling.
Alex