Catching Up - Harbin Day 1

So I'm going to take advantage of being in Guangzhou by catching up on a little blogging. That's right, now you can finally breathe a sigh of relief as your curiosity is satisfied. Oh so satisfied.

Harbin, as you may recall, is the capital of 黑龙江/Heilongjiang province in far northeast China, near the Russian border. Our first day was spent wandering around the city and seeing all we can see and so, to mirror that experience, I will present a series of photos from that day that summed up the important parts of it.

Behind Ben's incredibly cool pose lies the river of Harbin, the 松花江/Sōnghuā Jiāng, which is a tributary of the mighty 黑龙江/Hēilóng Jiāng itself, the river for which the province is named. The Heilong River, which I believe is more often called by its Russian name, the Amur, in English, is the river that divides Russia from China. The Songhua River winds its way through the city and is just generally pretty nice. We walked along the river all the way down to the city center, enjoying the cool weather and the nice breeze.

Along the way, we passed a rather rare sight in China:

A line! At a bus stop. Seriously, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen such an orderly line here. It was pretty amusing.

As we reached the main street of Harbin，we came across this patriotic decorated with a magnificent pillar celebrating the triumph of the people and this mural that says "Long Live Chairman Mao." Walking from here down the main street, however, the view turned changed to this:

Directly in front of this patriotic square we have a giant platform with, as far as I can tell, a televised talent competition of some sort. I don't believe they were singing. But there a bunch of women, who stepped forward, introduced themselves and where they were from and other such pleasantries. We walked away instead of looking at it for so long. But it's a good summary of modern China I feel. Communism! Right next to rampant America-like pop culture!

And here's the main street we were walking along. 中央街/Zhōngyāngjiē, or Central Street, runs down the center of the city and is flanked by these beautiful trees. It's also fairly European-style in my opinion.

You may notice those things along the sign of the street that look like pieces of paper strung between trees. Well, that's exactly what those are.

These are personal ads. Talking with some of the people along the street, these are mostly put up by people's parents to help them find a boyfriend or girlfriend. It lists all their vital stats: height, weight, name, education, age, current location, job, hometown, if they've been married before, what kind of house and/or car they have, etc. It also lists all their requirements for a significant other, so it's very convenient. Looking at the people examining these, it mainly appears to be parents examining them for their children. So that's another nice, really interesting phenomenon. Very modern China. This is actually considered a bit of an issue in China, where, because the country is industrializing and developing, people (in the cities) are getting married later and people in general are getting more educated. This especially the case for women, and you now have many unmarried women in their late 20s and early 30s, in a country were men greatly outnumber women. These women are known as 剩女/shèngnǚ，or leftover women. The recent they're unmarried, as I've been told, is a combination of your average man being intimidated, essentially, by a woman that is more educated, will make more money, and has a higher status than him, and these women being unwilling to date below their level. It's an interesting phenomenon and a fun one to talk about with people.

Also on this street we saw more evidences of the proximity to Russia:

Beer gardens! (Which unfortunately, because of time constraints, we didn't enter). Russian restaurant! With Russian food! It was tasty, quite heavy, but a little expensive, and I definitely still prefer Chinese.

This is how children are punished in Harbin. Put in giant plastic balls and released onto the river, where they're forced to fight to the death by attempting to roll into other children and force them into the eager jaws of child-eating tigers (not shown).

Pigeons, if this part of the square near St. Sofia church is any indication, are not viewed as nearly the irritation in China as they are in the US. I don't remember seeing significant pigeon populations in Beijing or elsewhere in China, so maybe that's the reason. Seriously though, there were a shit-ton of pigeons on that church and people were feeding them.

Construction. In the middle of the street. Hardhats? Ear plugs? Goggles? A cord to prevent people from walking right next to where you're working? That nonsense is all just unnecessary bureaucratic red tape. Real men use their jackhammers without protection. Pretty common scene in China, probably because there's always a surplus of willing workers and very little legal protection for them here...

Some random park while we're wandering around no idea where we were somewhere out in Harbin. Very pretty. And basically sums up one of my major feelings about Harbin: doesn't it look European?

Beautiful sunset over the Songhua river. We sat here for a good hour or so, watching the sun go down, talking with people, and people-watching. It was pretty awesome. And right next to where we were sitting:

People swimming and washing themselves in the river. You see that sign? The one right in front of all of them? The one that there's no way they couldn't have seen on their way to enjoy a dip in the river? That says "Danger. 'Wild bathing' is forbidden." Wild bathing, I assume, is washing yourself in the river, exactly what these people are all doing. This is another theme in China, people blatantly ignoring the signs literally right next to them. People smoking under no-smoking signs is the biggest offender I've come across so far, mainly because it bothers me so much, but this kind of thing is a very common scene to come across.

Unfortunately my camera died and I wasn't taking pictures with my phone for some reason, because the place we went for dinner was excellent. It was down a street that was surrounded by buildings that were literally falling apart, and then we came to this open street with a variety of different restaurants. A man on the street was doing artwork with sugar, making the most intricate-looking sweets I've ever seen, on demand and by request. Then we went into a halal restaurant that had been recommended to us and had a wonderful variety of food, almost none of which I can remember at this point. I feel like we ate cow stomach, and it was delicious, but I can't really remember what else. Though we did have a very special type of 白酒, one that had been transformed into a type of 中药/

Zhōngyào, or traditional Chinese medicine, by virtue of the items that were floating with it in the giant glass jar next to the cash register: ginseng and sea stars. In my opinion, it didn't change the flavor all that much, but Martin was quite a fan of it. Whatever greases your wagon wheels.

And that was our first day in Harbin. Hopefully more catching-up soon.