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Harbin
The first stop on our spring travels was Harbin to go and see the ice and snow festival. The first thing we noticed upon arriving in Harbin was just how cold it was, we had been warned on numerous occasions by our students and teachers at the school but we never really believed them when they told us how cold it was. As it turns out they were correct and the weather was indeed very, very cold, in fact it was so cold that as we pulled into the station at Harbin ice was forming on the inside of the windows and the doors had frozen shut, requiring a security guard to break the ice using his baton!
The first place we visited was an old 'Russian' town next to the ice and snow festival. This sounded like it would be a good activity for the day and everyone was excited for it but as we soon found out the 'Russian town' wasn't quite what we had pictured. Upon arriving at the park we saw that in order to get to where we wanted to go we had to pay 300 Yuan to get into the park just to get to through to the Russian, luckily due to the immense cold that is Harbin the all the rivers and lakes where frozen so we decided to follow the locals example and simply walk across the river to the side and enter the park that way. Having made the beautiful walk across the river and taken some beautiful pictures along the way we made it to the Russian town where we had to pay 20 Yuan to get in and were presented with our tickets which were fake Russian passports. Upon entering we quickly realised that this was not what we had expected and was more like a small park with the occasional hut with 'authentic' Russian goods. Despite this it made for a good memorable day out.
The next day we went to the ice and snow festival. This was the main attraction of Harbin as it happens once a year. The festival was full of massive ice sculptures and the occasional snow sculpture. The main sculptures included A copy of the Hallgrimskirkja in Iceland, The coliseum, and castles. The best way for you to see what I am talking about is to take a look at the pictures I have uploaded here: http://www.offexploring.com/alexinchina/albums/harbin .As well as sculptures there was also a ice skating show with a Chinese man on a wire flying above our heads and lots of Chinese flags being waved about, despite us not fully understanding what was happening it was actually good fun to watch.
On our last day in Harbin We went to a Siberian Tiger park where we got driven around in a mini bus and saw the tigers get up close to us, making for some good pictures. The tigers had a good habitat to roam around in, plenty of space which was good to see as we were expecting it to be very small. As well as tigers there were also leopards, lions and Panthers although we didn't get to see much of them as they were being taken away to their cages for the evening (I think). After this we went to the aquarium, where we saw polar bears, penguins a beluga whale show and got to feed some seals. Feeding the seals was fun as they had been taught to clap whenever they wanted a fish and patiently waited for you to throw them a fish. As for the Beluga whale show, this was a beautifully choreographed routine where the trainers swam and danced with the whales to Chinas favourite song "my heart will go on by Celine Dion".
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Susanne (mor) I'm giving you 5 stars for this blog as I'm just so grateful to hear a bit more about your Chinese adventures! :-). Please keep them coming!