A warning. This post is slightly Not Safe For Work (NSFW) and contains a picture that may be inappropriate for small children. I figure I should warn people beforehand, since I can't figure out a way to mark the post as such.
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Okay, still with me?
This is my first post about Harbin, though there will be several more. Harbin was an incredible city, and this is really just a teaser post, because it's the middle of the week and I'm tired.
Quick, from the above two pictures, guess which country I was in! And no looking at the ethnicity of the crowd of people or using background information, because that's cheating.
But yeah, from the architecture, Harbin (which is still in China) looks very very different from Beijing. I'll have to post more pictures of the architecture in Beijing to make this clearer, but Beijing feels very Chinese. Low buildings, the sloping tiled roofs that I would expect to find in China, and everything packed close together. This is especially true of the area that I live in. There are giant skyscrapers as well, of course, but they're concentrated in a few areas. Harbin, on the other hand, feels much newer and European. There were tons of giant skyscrapers, placed with distance between them. And the older looking buildings were very European-looking, reminding me of Budapest and Eastern Europe more than anywhere else. This was a very neat contrast to come across.
The city is also along a river and, being so far north, this contributes to an incredibly comfortable climate in the summer time. There was a breeze blowing constantly, especially close to the river, and the temperature was a good several degrees cooler than Beijing. It was nice to have several days where I wasn't constantly drenched in sweat while walking around outside. It was perfect weather too, since we spent most of the two and a half days we were there outside.
Also, as you can see in several of those pictures above. The sky was clear and blue. There was no pollution to speak of, another welcome change from the norm here in Beijing. Well, I should clarify that there was no air pollution to speak of. Several Harbiners whom I talked to pointed out that they had pollution, in the river and the soil, but you weren't breathing it all the time, so that's a plus, right?
So anyways, I'm going to keep this post short and finish with a brief overview of my trip of Harbin before ending with a humorous, slight NSFW anecdote.
1. We took an eight-hour high speed train, leaving in the afternoon and arriving late at night, both ways. This was not terrible, but I would not recommend it. The overnight train is undoubtedly the way to go.
2. The staff at the hotel was wonderful. They were very friendly and helped us organize all of the excursions we took over the weekend (which was much more difficult than it should have been, for reasons I'll get into later). They were also fun to talk to and taught me some authentic 东北话, Northeastern Chinese dialect, though I've forgotten most of it by now.
3. Walking around Harbin was great. Still a ginormous city, but it was great to fun to walk along the waterfront and to see a bunch of different buildings.
4. We knew we were in for delicious sausage and Russian food, but didn't know we would find awesome seafood. Right next to our hotel too. That was a nice surprise.
5. Our second (and final) full day in Harbin, we took a long-distance bus to a dusty town outside of Harbin to do some outdoors excursions. Our plan was for rafting and hiking, which didn't quite work out. In the end, we got into splash flights with what seemed to be half of the residents of the province and emerged from the ordeal completely and utterly soaked and smelling of river water.
6. In the half day before we took the train back. We saw Siberian tigers at a tiger park. Still not quite sure on my feelings towards the tiger park, but it was definitely an interesting experience.
So, in the church featured in the picture above, St. Sofia Church, or 圣索菲亚教堂/Shèng Suǒfēiyà jiàotáng. It's a beautiful old Orthodox church that survived the Cultural Revolution only to be transformed into a museum about the history of Harbin in recent years.
The museum itself was very interesting, not necessarily because the history of Harbin is a particularly fascinating one, but because of the way it was presented in the museum. Harbin was a city founded by Russian Jews, but you wouldn't find that in this museum. As the story was told here, Harbin was founded by Chinese and was largely Chinese for the entirety of its history, despite an influx of Russians in the period before WWII. This is decidedly not the way things actually happened in Harbin, Other than that minor overlook, it was interesting to see the pictures in the museum, and how Harbin developed from a dusty little down to the metropolis of 12 million that it is today.
On the way out of the museum, we passed a small section with information about the name. Harbin, or 哈尔滨/Hā'ěrbīn in Chinese, is not a Mandarin name. It comes from the Manchu language, who were the original inhabitants of the region, though they are relatively sparse in the area nowadays.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Okay, still with me?
This is my first post about Harbin, though there will be several more. Harbin was an incredible city, and this is really just a teaser post, because it's the middle of the week and I'm tired.
But yeah, from the architecture, Harbin (which is still in China) looks very very different from Beijing. I'll have to post more pictures of the architecture in Beijing to make this clearer, but Beijing feels very Chinese. Low buildings, the sloping tiled roofs that I would expect to find in China, and everything packed close together. This is especially true of the area that I live in. There are giant skyscrapers as well, of course, but they're concentrated in a few areas. Harbin, on the other hand, feels much newer and European. There were tons of giant skyscrapers, placed with distance between them. And the older looking buildings were very European-looking, reminding me of Budapest and Eastern Europe more than anywhere else. This was a very neat contrast to come across.
Also, as you can see in several of those pictures above. The sky was clear and blue. There was no pollution to speak of, another welcome change from the norm here in Beijing. Well, I should clarify that there was no air pollution to speak of. Several Harbiners whom I talked to pointed out that they had pollution, in the river and the soil, but you weren't breathing it all the time, so that's a plus, right?
So anyways, I'm going to keep this post short and finish with a brief overview of my trip of Harbin before ending with a humorous, slight NSFW anecdote.
1. We took an eight-hour high speed train, leaving in the afternoon and arriving late at night, both ways. This was not terrible, but I would not recommend it. The overnight train is undoubtedly the way to go.
2. The staff at the hotel was wonderful. They were very friendly and helped us organize all of the excursions we took over the weekend (which was much more difficult than it should have been, for reasons I'll get into later). They were also fun to talk to and taught me some authentic 东北话, Northeastern Chinese dialect, though I've forgotten most of it by now.
3. Walking around Harbin was great. Still a ginormous city, but it was great to fun to walk along the waterfront and to see a bunch of different buildings.
4. We knew we were in for delicious sausage and Russian food, but didn't know we would find awesome seafood. Right next to our hotel too. That was a nice surprise.
5. Our second (and final) full day in Harbin, we took a long-distance bus to a dusty town outside of Harbin to do some outdoors excursions. Our plan was for rafting and hiking, which didn't quite work out. In the end, we got into splash flights with what seemed to be half of the residents of the province and emerged from the ordeal completely and utterly soaked and smelling of river water.
6. In the half day before we took the train back. We saw Siberian tigers at a tiger park. Still not quite sure on my feelings towards the tiger park, but it was definitely an interesting experience.
So, in the church featured in the picture above, St. Sofia Church, or 圣索菲亚教堂/Shèng Suǒfēiyà jiàotáng. It's a beautiful old Orthodox church that survived the Cultural Revolution only to be transformed into a museum about the history of Harbin in recent years.
On the way out of the museum, we passed a small section with information about the name. Harbin, or 哈尔滨/Hā'ěrbīn in Chinese, is not a Mandarin name. It comes from the Manchu language, who were the original inhabitants of the region, though they are relatively sparse in the area nowadays.
Right before we left the church-converted-into-a-museum, we passed the gift shop. And, lo and behold, saw the following interesting pieces of home decoration.
Those are two ashtrays, both in the form of naked women, one on her side and one with legs splayed open.
So, yes, that was quite unexpected. This is my opening salvo in the game of "Most Vulgar Things to be Found in a Church," and I'm curious if anyone else can find something to top this.
More details on Harbin, with fewer naked women, will be forthcoming.
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