The Blithe Traveler

Disney on Ice!

Who knew? Disney in Harbin?? Could it be? In the middle of the frozen North of China? Read on!

When we arrived in Harbin, we knew we only had one night. There are two  "Lantern Ice Festivals" in the city, and we decided that we'd head to the one we could walk to from our hotel (rather than take a taxi). Although, "decided" might be too strong a word. There had been a plan to walk from the river back to the hotel to add layers of clothing, but we were out, it got dark, we hit the Hot Pot for dinner, and then, since the Ice Festival was on the way back to the hotel, we headed over. Yes, "plan" is too strong a word.

I don't know exactly why this happened, but I have become a huge fan of Hot Pot. As of last September when we were in Beijing, I was still all like, meh. But our last escapade at the Mongolian Ethnic restaurant converted me. There is something about the steaming copper pot, filled with ma la (hot, hot, hot!) oil just waiting to braise some tender bit of something I can probably identify that makes me all gooey.

Here's what Wiki has to say about Hot pot: "Hot Pot, or less commonly Chinese fondue, refers to several Chinese varieties of steamboat stew. It consists of a simmering metal pot of stock at the center of the dining table. While the hot pot is kept simmering, ingredients are placed into the pot and are cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, and seafood. The cooked food is usually eaten with a dipping sauce." The dipping sauces are the bomb; I am seriously going to miss this kind of eating whenever we leave China.

But, onward from the Hot Pot! We headed over to the local Ice Festival, and lo and behold, it seemed, somehow, Disney-fied! I have alluded to the feel that many foreigners have that parts of China are like "Disney." There is a "fakey" kind of kitsch that seems to go with tourist locales in this part of the world that include, but are not limited to, odd lighting displays, fake waterfalls, large, uber-cute carved (or fiberglass) animals and characters in strange locatations. Not to mention the huge assortment of pirated Disney goods one can purchase at the local markets.
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But when we arrived at the Ice Lantern Festival, we were stunned by the blatant Disney rip-off. There's no mistaking that Mickey logo. These ice blocks are the fence around the park, if you were wondering.
 
And there were characters all over the place!  I mean, you get used to piracy in China, but this was pretty serious! So serious, that it finally occured to me that maybe Disney really was sponsoring the thing.
 
I mean, you look at something like this guy; his jacket sure seems to think he works for Disney. 
And then there was a sign for Disney commodities. Surely Disney must be actively involved??
Then you come upon something like this, and think, "Ok, Harbin is just so far north it is totally under Disney's radar."
 
A desultory search of the internet reveals the Harbin Ice Festival probably was sponsored by Disney. I would gently suggest to the good Mouse People that they might want to send a proof reader next year. Anyway, whoever was sponsoring the place, we pretty much had a grand time. It was cold, and keeping Hope cheerful was an on and off kind of thing. This cheered her up:
This is an ice castle slide. You go up the escalator (see below) and slide back down. HUGE fun. While it was Spring Festival and Harbin was "crowded," we didn't have a problem at all with lines. Let's face it, it's cold, the lines move quickly or people abandon the place for the warmth of their hotels.
 
It is hard to describe exactly how awesome all of this was to see. The lights are generated by florescent bulbs embedded in the ice. There are electric cords running *all over* the place, all heading up into the ice. It's weird, wild and a little disconcerting all at the same time. The ice sculptures themselves are quite beautiful, and the lit up ice buildings amazing. How on earth you get an escalator (and an elevator!) into an ice building, I do not know. Let alone embedding the lighting into the ice. But it is magical and beautiful and really worth the trip. Hope only lasted about an hour, and I took her back to the hotel to warm up and sleep. I'll let the photos to the rest of the talking:
Random Ice Sculpture:
 
We were still mulling over the "Disney, not Disney? Disney, not Disney?" when we came upon our friends, the Cars from the movie Cars. I was astonished when I first saw them and couldn't imagine how they colored the ice this way. They didn't. They're fiberglass. No idea why they are part of the Ice Festival, much beyond their value as photo ops.
Random additional cool photos.
 
Random additional cool photos
Random additional cool photos

Next Up: Snow Sculpture!

Songhua River

We stayed in a hotel right in Harbin's old quarter which covers a wide area of the city near the Songhua River. Wiki reports that this area is still today mostly made up of buildings that were constructed by the Russians at the turn of the 19th century. Most of them are built in baroque or byzantine style with spires and cupolas and interesting shades of yellow, white, green, or red. Interestingly enough, Harbin's old quarter is made up of buildings that have been left untouched since the Russians left.

And I love this bit: "While most of these streets are fairly decrepit and in need of repair, at least the area has been free from the wrecking ball like many other historical districts in China." The area was "run down," in a live-in-for-a-while, comfortable old shoe kind of way. But it was nice to not feel like we were in Disneyland.

This night photo of the pedestrian way, Zhongyang Dajie (literally, Central Avenue) gives you a flavor of the area.

It is a walking road lined with "Authentic" American Coffee houses,
Russian pectopahs and commodity selling houses, KFC and McDonald's, not to mention what Wiki refers to as a "virtual museum of European architectural styles." And Ice Sculptures everywhere. 

Ice Pianos
 
Ice Mazes
 
All the streetlamps are ice. You get the picture.

The Zhongyang Dajie ends at the Songhua River:
The atmosphere is most certainly festive, with people having all kinds of fun on the ice (except maybe Hope - she's was cold at this point, so I didn't stay out here with her too long. We sauntered off to a Russian Commodity Shop for a chocolate break while Jeff and Tom took a ride down the slide).
The Ice Slide
 
Dog Sledding Across the Ice
Horses are an option, both the riding and driving kind
Or people power, if you are so inclined.
All fueled with some spun sugar!

"Tomorrow," or whenever I next get to it, Disney on Ice!

Do Not Try This At Home

I have been flipping through my Harbin photos taking advantage of a late night internet sweet spot and came upon this pair. Warning, the following is not for the squeamish. Nor am I going to discuss the cultural implications of what you are about to see. I'm just posting some photos that I found fascinating.

This is a chicken on the top of your truck.

This is a tiger eating the chicken. Any questions?

Further details on the Siberian Tiger Park will follow, promise.

Snapshot From Harbin

We are moving this weekend, and between Spring Festival and Harbin, there is a lot going on around here. Not to mention that moving thing. So, I'll try to sneak in a post or two during those moments when I can get the internet to co-operate.

Harbin is North, near the Russian border. Harbin is cold. Harbin is Russian influenced, in terms of architecture, recent history, food, tchotchkes; you know, all the things that really count. Jeff and I visited St. Petersburg a few years back. That city, if you know the history, is a heavily European influenced Russian city. And Harbin reminded us quite a bit of that. Cold, on a river, with oddly European architecture, occasionally off-set by a large, onion domed building. Most people spoke Chinese, of course, although there was a smattering of Russian around. I was quite delighted to recognize the Russian word for "restaurant," posted on, of all things, a restaurant. We saw some really fabulous ice sculpture, snow sculpture, enjoyed a bit of the Snow Fayre on the Frozen River Songhua, and, met Siberian Tigers Right. Up. Close. 

Here's todays quick snapshot, though, just to remind us we're in China. We popped into a Russian Commodity Shop (of which there were about a thousand within walking distance of our hotel) and snapped this shot of the children warming their small hands, to the background of some cozily familiar adult type beverages. Check out the bottle of Jack Daniels up over the words "look up here" in the photo below.

You are totally clear that I typed the words "Look Up Here" onto the photo in Photoshop, right?

But, wait! Here's the close up:
 
165 RMB for a bottle of Old Time, Old No.1 Brand (Quality!) Tenderness Sour Mash Whiskey!!?? For those of you not keeping up with the exchange rate, that is 24 US dollars for a bottle of fake JD. Er, or real Joens Danhse, if that's the way you prefer to look at it.

Perhaps more tomorrow! Perhaps not. But, we'll plug away at Harbin and Spring Festival for a while!

There and Back Again

Just a quick note to let you know we survived. No barfing (yeah!), and while it was cold and there were a few miserable moments, all in all, we had a pretty grand time. We were quite lucky in that our last adventure in Harbin was the Siberian Tiger Park, which both children loved. We're hoping that colors their memories the appropriate shade of Happy.

Here's what Tom looked like on his last day of school before the Spring Festival break:

Hope, alas, was out for the count that day. But I will post photos in her equally adorable New Year outfit later.

Home from Huangshan

It's funny looking at these photos from so many months ago. One of the reasons I keep this blog is to create a reminder of our time in China for myself and, one hopes, for the children. I had quite forgotten about this leg of our journey, but as we were recounting our Huangshan tales to some friends over New Year's dinner (Welcome to the Year of the Ox!), I was reminded of what an interesting trip it really was.

We took the train back to Our Fair City from Huangshan on Monday morning. It's a busy train route, so we were only able to get Hard Sleeper seats. As I have mentioned in posts past, you can travel by train in China on several levels. Soft Seat is the "nicest." You get a cushy seat, two by two. The hard seat seats aren't really any "harder," just smaller. I forget exactly how many more are in a car, but you are a bit more squished in. Soft sleeper is how we got to Huangshan: four bunk beds with a little door that closes. Hard sleeper is a little less private. By a factor of about a thousand. The bunks are three over three, with six bunks in an "area." And there are no doors. Lack of privacy is not a big deal for the typical Chinese traveler, and since we were traveling during the day, we weren't really concerned about it, either. We weren't going to be over nighting in our hard sleepers; just traveling for about 5 hours.

That's about all there is to say about it. Here are the photos:

You can see the six bunks to an area configuration. There are also two fold up seats near each area - those are the folks you see sitting by the window. They are required to have a bunk to be here, but it is kind of cramped to sit up in them, so taking a break by the window is a good idea. First come, first serve on the seats, I do believe.
Hope made a few friends while she was hanging out. She was all about the food, and there was a lot of sharing back and forth of different treats.
And games. And songs. The children know quite a few Chinese songs, which they were happy to sing with their new friends.
Snagged! If only for a few minutes. The bunks were actually the idea height for small children to it in, so they had a huge comfort advantage over us adults.

NEXT: Hurling Toward Harbin. We are planning to leave tomorrow morning for the Cold North. Tom threw up last week, and I was all kinds of relieved, thinking that it would be great to get all of the vomiting over with before we had to get on a plane. Two days passed, though, with no further eruptions, and I revised my forecast: food poisoning. Then, Hope threw up. Ulp. Four days passed. Today, Jeff is throwing up. We leave tomorrow.

Wish us luck.

PS. I am not bringing my computer with me, so updates will be a few days in coming. The fact that there will be no blog tomorrow does not mean that I am hurling my way through Harbin. You won't know until the hurlin's done.

World Heritage Site Overload!

The title is misleading, of course, because you can  never see too many World Heritage Sites. Although, it seems we have seen a fair number here in China. There are 37 sites in China, of which, we have visited 8. Not a bad percentage. Particularly when you consider out of the 19 World Heritage Sites in the US, I've been to exactly 2, one of which is Volcano State Park in Hawaii (the other is the Statue of Liberty, if you're interested).

Although, technically Hongcun and Xidi are a combined World Heritage site. And, I have to say honestly, that visiting one might have been sufficient.

This is Hongcun. It is gorgeous. In a seriously 800 year old gorgeous kind of way. And, hold the phone, this site is one of the locations for the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. If I could find that movie around here, I'd snatch it up in a heartbeat, just to see it again. Much the same way I was compelled to watch The Last Emperor after seeing the Forbidden City (World Heritage Site!). There is something quite compelling about seeing photos that are "representative" of China and recognizing them, because I have been there. I feel that way about the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Tiannamen Square, and now Huangshan and Hongcun of course. But there are so many iconic Chinese places that I have been, I do feel oddly connected to this country. 

The weather continued to be kind of gray and gloomy, which is reflected in our photos. Photos of this particularly site on a clear day are really astonishing.

The ancient towns are like mini-artists colonies these days. The children were particularly fascinated as they watched people sketch, ink and paint different areas of the beautiful old towns.

And now, because I am such a philistine, I am just going to say, "And Xidi looked pretty similar," and not bore you to tears with additional washed out, grayed photos. Although, we did use this one of the children as our main Christmas photo.

I will, however, include the following photo montage that was quite interesting to moi. This guy was bringing his buffalo in for the evening as we walked by.

Followed by this guy taking his motherboard out for a stroll:

Interesting juxtaposition, in my opinion. 

Back Down Huangshan

Despite our conscious decision to not set an alarm clock, we were roused early the next morning by a Tour Group Operator guiding his tour group to the Optimal Sunrise Viewing Location, complete with Serious Voice Amplifying Equipment.
Representative Tour Group; you get the picture

This Early Bird group took the route right under our window. It was pouring, so we went back to sleep until the children woke us up. Such is life at the top of a beautiful mountain. But onward to more educational topics!

"So," you are wondering to yourself, "How on earth do they get all that stuff UP the mountain to service a hotel, even a hotel that bills itself as 5-star hotel, but has a serious lack of the sort of thing one generally associates with a 5-star hotel, like high quality sheets, towels and hair/body cleaning supplies?"

One very large load at a time. These men made me quite ashamed of myself for kvetching (however quietly and mostly to myself) about having to carry my small backpack up the mountain. Talk about serious physical labor. ALL of the supplies for the hotel, including clean sheets, towels, food, the water we drank, everything except the very air that we breathed is brought up the mountain by men carrying it.
 
Jeff had noted on the way up that some of the steps we were walking had large holes going through them. Putting on his rather larger-than-the-average-bears-thinking cap, he deduced that the (enormous, heavy, concrete) steps had probably been stung up on poles and carried up the mountain, much like our laundry. Think about that the next time you are grumbling to yourself at your desk about how much you dislike your job. The thing that really struck me about these guys is how thin they were; wiry and muscular, of course, but also, very, very thin. Each and every one of them. I can't even imagine how many calories they consume and burn every day working these loads up and down the mountain.

We did not consider the sedan an option. Wait, maybe HOPE would have liked to be carted up and down, but we didn't buy her that cute walking stick for nothing.
We shuffled our way down to the cable car, grabbed a taxi down the mountain, and headed off to Hongcun and Xidi. More tomorrow!

A Night At the Bei Hai

So, we got to the top and checked in. And hung Barry and Lambie (the lamb formerly known as "Larry,") up to dry.
Then what? Well, we went out for a walk. Honest, there's not a whole heck of a lot else to do at the top of Huangshan.
This view was particularly awe inspiring, although, frankly, these photos fail to reflect that in just about every way I can imagine.
This might look familiar for those who received our Christmas card this year (no it wasn't the main photo, for those who didn't).
I suppose I can distill all the hyperbole into the single sentence: "We are going to do everything in our power to try to get back to Huangshan again before we leave China." That is about as high praise as I can give. It's amazing, go if you can.
That all said, it was chilly, and at some point, the wee children (and I) were cold, damp and just done. So we went back to our hotel. And here's where it gets, um, interesting? Or, then again,  maybe not at all. What exactly do you do in a 2-star hotel room (masquerading as a 5-star hotel room) at the top of the world on a cold rainy day when there isn't really much of anything to do? One option:
 
Many thanks to Jeff's mom, by the way, who supplied us with these wee bottles of warmth. And kudos to Jeff for being smart enough to pack 'em. Not the most flattering photo, I know, but given the context, I think it's appropriate.

Option B, also quite a departure for this crew:
We watched children's television. For those of you who know us in Real Life, this is almost like saying, "Yes, and we cut off Hope's foot and ate it for dinner!" That kind of a Life Transgression. We don't watch television. Ever. For any reason. However. This particular evening, we were, frankly, looking for something to do. And since it was all in Chinese, we figured it would be educational. And, boy, oh, boy, was it. We ended up watching a childrens game show that involved families pitted against each other in a series of challenges. First, the wee children were required to answer questions in a format that reminded me of the old Family Feud. These wee things were no more than six years old, but they were little pros at hitting the buzzer and being first to answer the question! The second challenge was a physical game that involved mom and dad. Suffice to say that the kid with the fittest, smartest parents actually won that one. The third challenge, though, that was the real learning experience for us.

No word of a lie here. The tiny children were given a pair of safety googles, a small peice of balsa wood with some stencils drawn on it and a jig saw. Let me repeat that for those of you who have dozed off. A JIG SAW. They gave the children a JIG SAW. I have never, ever been so flabbergasted in my life as when those tiny children fitted on those stupid saftey goggles and fired up their JIG SAWS and cut out bits of furniture which they had to put together. No parental involvement. And, of course, this was a TIMED EVENT. As in, the kid who didn't cut off their finger the fastest and managed to put together the wee piece of furniture they were meant to be building first, won. Crazy, crazy stuff. Certainly, entertaining.

With which, we ended our evening at Huangshan. One of the big deals at Yellow Mountain is to see the sunrise. Although generally, a "sunrise" invovles access to the "sun." We did check the weather forcast before heading to bed, and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. We didn't set the alarm.

Huangshan

We're taking a trip back in time, as it were. We visited Huangshan as well as the nearby historic villages of Hongcun and Xidi at the beginning of November. But since it is one of THE tourist sites in all of China, it's well worth a look back. Particularly since I hit an internet sweet spot late last night and was able to *quickly* download about a million Huangshan photos.

Here's what Wiki has to say about the locale: Huangshan (literally, Yellow Mountain), is a mountain in southern Anhui province in eastern China. The area is well known for its scenery, sunsets, peculiarly-shaped granite peaks, Huangshan Pine trees, and views of the clouds from above. Huangshan is a frequent subject of traditional Chinese paintings and literature, as well as modern photography.  In 1982, Huangshan was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990 for its scenery and for and its role as a habitat for rare and threatened species. Additionally, the nearby villages of Hongcun and Xidi were also named part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. End Wiki theft bit.

Photo stolen from the internet - the place is astonishing, really (Huangshan, I mean, not the internet).

Some people say Huangshan is the most beautiful spot in all of China, and I am willing to believe that. We were only able to see it under a serious cloud cover, but even that was incredible. And it is interesting to see Chinese artwork now and be able to recognize it as Huangshan. There are photos, ancient drawings, copied over and over and all sorts of emblems of these mountains all over China. They are seriously gorgeous and worth a view, should you ever manage to get over for a visit.

We left on a Friday afternoon and took a soft sleeper car from Nanjing to Huangshan. The trip was about five hours, of which I remember exactly 14 seconds. I am a serious sleeper (always have been) and when one has a "sleeper car," I ask you, don't you think one should sleep?? The soft sleeper consists of a four bunk room that has a door. Very cozy and sweet. The loo is down the hall, and as we have had experience on using the loo on overnight trains in China, I made sure that everyone was all peed out prior to getting on the train. Look, if one of them had to go, I am sure Jeff would have taken them, but I do try to avoid un-necessary bathroom trips in places where the bathroom is sure to be below sanitary expecations of the vast majority of people on the planet. I'm just saying. 

We arrived in the town of Huangshan and were picked up by our driver for the weekend and arrived at our hotel after a rather short drive. The hotel is billed as "5-star," which meant that not only did we get hot water, but the room was a "suite," which essentially means all four of us can fit in it. I am sure I have mentioned this in the past, but given that China has a strictly enforced policy regarding the number of children a family can have, it is actually fairly difficult and sometimes expensive to find a hotel where all four of us can bunk down in the same room. In this case, there were two double beds, and it is possible that this was the only room in the entire (largish and rather nice) hotel that had two double beds.

Our driver was picking us up rather early the next morning for the hour or so drive to the bottom of the mountain where we would be set free to find our way to the top. We had hotel reservations at the "5-star" hotel at the top of the mountain for Saturday evening, so it was in our best interests to figure out how to get to the top. The map and our prior reading indicated several cable cars, and we were under the impression that it was a relatively easy hike from the highest-up cable car to the Bei Hai, our hotel du jour. Although, I will say that friends of ours, who are quite intrepid and travel all over the blooming world with their three children under the age of 6 (they are traveling across New Zealand in a motor home for three weeks right now, and I'll let you in on a little secret, they are expecting Baby # 4 this summer - that kind of intrepid), called just as we were leaving, suggesting that maybe we were being a bit too blithe about the whole trip. Melissa (yes! sweater lady!) said that she had heard the 'shortest' hike to the top was about 2 hours. The idea of a Bataan Death March re-enactment as Hope caterwalled her way up the mountain did not exactly appeal to me, but, frankly, it was too late. We were going.

It was raining as our driver took us over hill and dale to the bottom of the mountain. Which, as it turns out, is a huge bus station. Crammed full of taxi drivers. The area is highly regulated, so our hotel driver wasn't able to take us any farther. With a little negotiation, we found a taxi driver in possession of the proper permits who would take us up to where the cable cars are. The ride up was fairly hairy as the road up the mountain is, not surprisingly, rather narrow with one switchback after another. The buses coming down at a million miles an hour were enough to give me a heart attack, but when our taxi driver inisted on passing them going up, well, it just about did me in. But, such is driving life in China. You close your eyes, offer up a prayer and hang on.

We arrived at Tourist Central where we promptly parted with a few quai to provide Hope with incentive to get her buns up the mountain. And we purchased those ubiquitous yellow raincoats, er, plastic sheets, you will notice in every single following photograph. Hey, rain happens on Huangshan.

Hope and her Huangshan Walking Stick, cut to size for her little self

Please note that of course, since we were planning to spend the night at the top of the mountain, we were packing our entire weekends worth of clothing in with us. That's the bad news. The good news is that while I remembered to pack underwear for both children (a small detail I am prone to forget) I had, in fact, forgotten to pack anything for myself except a toothbrush. I know you are like, "What?? Nothing?" Yep. No. Thing.

I have mentioned in the past that I am "not good at packing." I don't enjoy it and I tend to leave it until the very last second. In this case, I had gone to school with the children for their Halloween party in the morning, scurried home for an hour to pack and then hurried back to school to pick them up and whisk them off to the train station. In my haste, I had packed clothes for them (thinking, cool and rainy, so several pairs of things that weren't so pretty to look at but might keep them relatively warm and a bit dry). Alas, in my haste I had neglected to pack so much as a pair of clean shorts for myself. But, as I said, at least I had packed light for the hike up the mountain. There is good in everything, ne c'est pas?

The even better news is that the cable cars were everything promised. The lines weren't too long, the ride was gorgeous and the cars were enclosed, so we stayed relatively dry, albeit wrapped in plastic.

And now we'll head back to Wiki for a minute to give you a flavor of what met us when we disembarked from our cable car: "Mount Huang is known for its stone steps,carved into the side of the mountain, of which there may be more than 60,000 throughout the area. The date at which work on the steps began is unknown, but they have been said to be over 1,500 years old."

That's a lot of steps.

And here's a few of them. Note Barry has a free ride for the day. Nice to be a bear, doncha think?

But, and I'll cut to the chase here, while we may have climbed something like 50,000 steps up and down to do it, it didn't take us more than 20 minutes to hike to our hotel. It was great! The scenery, even under the cloud cover was fantastic, the steps really made the "hiking" bit kind of easy and even the children enjoyed themselves as we hiked up and down peering out over amazing view after amazing view.

My photos are their usual style (crappy!), but can you just imagine what this place must look like in nice weather?? 

Amazing
 
The following is a view of our hotel from above. It's really quite astonishing that a hotel can exist all the way up here, although more detail on how they manage that bit tomorrow.