Harbin, brrr...

I got back from Harbin about 3 days ago. The trip, though short, was a fantastic experience and unlike anywhere I had ever been before. Olivia, Nick and I left Qufu on Friday afternoon (Jan 2) and headed to Tai'an where we would catch our train to Harbin. We had some time to kill at the station, about 2 hours, but the anticipation of our trip kept us entertained and in good spirits. We talked about what we wanted to do, what we expected it to be like, and if we could handle the extreme cold. In winter, Harbin is cold, very cold, reaching average high temperatures of about 12 degrees fahrenheit and lows of about -15 each night. At about 4:15 we boarded our hard sleeper car on the train and prepared ourselves for a 22 hour journey north. The train itself was comfortable, especially for the price (about $30). "Hard Sleep" is a bit like sleep away camp. In one car you have about a dozen compartments consisting of 2 bunk-beds with 3 beds each, so 6 beds per compartment. There are no doors so it's a very communal traveling experience. There are a few small tables around which every eats their meals, usually ramen noodle bowls because the train provides boiled water. At about 10:30 the over head lights go off and everyone goes to sleep. I had ear plugs and an eye mask to help me sleep, which I was incredibly grateful for because of the man next to me. Through out the entire 22 hour trip he dozed, waking himself up by making the loudest coughs/snores/congestion-type noises I have ever heard. Luckily, my earplugs blocked out all the noise and left me to sleep, rocked by the motion of the train. I woke the next morning, ate my breakfast, did some grading, and tried to convince myself that another 6 hours on the train was nothing. About 2pm we rolled into Harbin, quickly got off the train, and hopped into a taxi to our hostel.

The hostel, while not in the best location for a tourist and limited in the amount of english spoken by the staff was comfortable enough once you got used to the dingy, mildewed and musty smell of the room. We checked in, unpacked and then headed off to the main tourist street in Harbin, Zhongyang Dajie, for some sight seeing and the first of 3 snow & ice attractions. Harbin, having been founded as a Russian city, retains much of its European charm, and Zhongyang Dajie is a perfect example of it. A cobblestoned pedestrian street, it is lined with shops selling "Russian Goods" like air guns, binoculars, vodka and matryoshka nesting dolls, Chinese shoe and clothing stores, and a number of high end Western retailers like Emporio Armani. There were also a number of ice sculptures in front of which chinese tourists posed. After walking around for a bit we went to a Russian cafe that our Lonely Planet guide had recommended. Unfortunately it didn't leave up to our expectations as it lacked almost every item on the menu at the time we ordered. We ended up each have a small bowl of basic cabbage, tomato and beef soup, bread and some Harbin sausage, which is a bit like kielbasa.

After dinner we decided to head to Zaolin Park, home of the ice lantern festival. This attraction was the smallest of the 3, but we enjoyed it thoroughly. Disney themed this year, the festival included structures and sculptures of varying size all related to disney. There was Cinderella's castle, rocket ships form Toy Story, Aladdin's palace, and a pirate ship among other buildings. One even had a 4 story elevator! On all of these you could climb and interact-and hope you wouldn't fall. In addition to the ice buildings there were sculptures made of ice and snow. The atmosphere was amazing with both children and adults enjoying the space with the same enthusiasm. Having had a wonderful time, but slightly frozen we headed back to the hostel, tired from our long day of traveling and sight seeing.

The next morning we woke about 8:30, had a "western" breakfast at the hostel consisting of 5 slices of (untoasted) toast, a fried egg, tomato and cucumber, Harbin/russian sausage and nescafe. Not great, but satisfying, the meal filled us as we prepared our plan for the day. This day was our favorite of the trip, though each was spectacular in its own way. First we headed to the train station where we bought train return train tickets, though either through miscommunication or unavailability we could not get hard sleepers home and end up with hard seats. Glad to know we had a way home with at least seats, we jumped into a taxi, crossed the Songhua river and headed to Sun Island to see the Siberian Tiger Park. Siberian Tigers are an endangered species with only abotu 400 living in the wild in all of the world. The park looks to breed and then release into the wild enough tigers to sustain and rebuild the population, though I'm not quite sure how many they've actually released. At the park we boarded a bus that took us through the various areas of the park. We saw hundreds of tigers (and ligers) all very close to the bus. Being a Chinese tourist park, visitors have the ability to buy live chickens to feed to the tickers for about $6 or even a whole cow for about $200. We chose not to but still saw one chewing away on something. It was incredible to see these beautiful animals, and Olivia and I have decided that we want one as a pet. The tiger park was a lot of fun, though also a bit sad as we thought about what type of life these animals lived.



After the Siberian Tiger park we headed to the second of the 3 snow and ice attractions. This one was all snow sculptures and was absolutely incredible. Though the some of the largest sculptures weren't entirely completed, the afternoon was great. The sun was beginning to set and the light on the snow was beautiful. It was interesting too to see the sculptures being created and the simple tools that they used. The theme this year was Finland, which meant that half of the sculptures were Santa Clauses and Christmas themed, and the other half nordic myths. Unfortunately my camera battery died after the tigers and my extra was back at the hostel. Nick and Olivia got some great pictures which I'll steal from later and post here so check back in a bit. The sculptures, their individual scale and the scale of the park in general, were unlike anything I had seen before. Perhaps at a ski resort you might see one or two, but nothing that compared to the size and detail. On the largest of the sculptures that was still being completed, the workers looked like ants in comparison to the mound of snow they were sculpting.

After the park we headed back to Zhongyang Dajie and stopped into a western coffee shop/bar type place called USAcoffeebuck for something to warm us up and hold us over until dinner later. I had a delicous caramel latte and we split a plate of onion rings-delicious. We then walked around a bit, admiring the beautiful street and window shopping. We even happened upon a Sophora which Olivia and I forced Nick into. It smelled and looked exactly like ones in the US which was a strange, but welcome reminder of home. Finally, we headed to Pizza Hut, the activity that day that perhaps we had been anticipating the most. It had been 3 months since I had last had pizza and we were excited. We drank our fountain soda, ate garlic bread, pasta bolognese and a pizza and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as we splurged. It was a great day filled with things I had never seen before, comforts I missed from home, and very little difficulties in navigating our way around.

The next day some how became our "religion day." After our breakfast we went to see the Church of St. Sophia, supposedly the most photographed building in all of Harbin. It is a Russian church and very beautiful, set on its own plaza. In 2004 it was converted into a museum with pictures from its settlement and development in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I found it most interesting to see just how Western and Russian it was. So many pictures were entirely of Russians with not even one Chinese person clearly visible. Though there still is a small Russian population in Harbin and the Russian influence is undeniable, it has truly become a Chinese city with only memories of its past.


We then headed to the Temple of Heavenly Bliss, an active Buddhist community in Harbin. Surprisingly, it was the first Buddhist site that I have visited in China. It was quite and relaxing compound with a number of temples and shrines. People came and went, burning incense and leaving offerings. The incredible colors, beautiful colors, and amazing images really made me wish I new more about the religion. The area included a seven-tiered pagoda and a large buddha (with a ferris wheel in the background).



We then went back to Zhongyang Dajie, this time to the end of the street to see the Flood Control Monument and look at the frozen Songhua river. The monument was interesting, but nothing really remarkable. Behind it the was an incredible amount of activity on the river. Because of the long cold winters in Harbin, the river can freeze up to a few meters thick and becomes a center of amusement. Tubbing, skating, dog sledding, and horse drawn carriages are all available on the river. We chose simply to walk to the middle and marvel at the stability of the ice, the amount of activity, and just how cold the winters are in Harbin.




Finally, that night we headed to the largest of the all the snow and ice locations. The theme that year happened to be religious buildings and so fit nicely into our own, accidental theme for the day. Large ice structures colorfully lit from with in force you to marvel at their size and details. There really isn't much to say about the Snow and Ice world because being there really takes your breath away. The pictures don't quite capture the experience but here you go.





The next morning we lingered in the Hostel until check out. We had seen almost all of Harbin had to offer and simply had to kill time until our train that evening at 7. After checking out at noon we took a bus towards the train station where there also happened to be a Carrefour. The bus we took happened to be the worlds most crowded bus and we struggled to stay upright with our bags as people pushed to get on and off. From our hostel buses run to just about every tourist spot that you would want to see. However, unless you know the name of the stop you want to get off at and how far away it is, traveling by bus is rather difficult. Because of the extreme cold, all the windows of the bus-except the front-ice over making it impossible to see what you are approaching and then passing. If you are lucky enough to have a seat next to the window you might scratch yourself a little window which helps you to see a bit, but because we were standing in the middle of the bus we really had no idea when or where to get off. After about 30 minutes of being pushed about, we decided that overheating in our many layers and bodies hurting from holding our bags we better get off and hope for the best. We wandered a bit asking for directions and eventually found Carrefour. Exhausted and overheated we stuff our bags and jackets into some of the lockers and shuffled through Carrefour for 2 hours. We bough food for the train and then headed over to the train station. It was incredibly crowded but we found seats and attempted to kill time for another 4 hours. Finally our train arrived and we boarded. The hard seats weren't unbearable but I wouldn't say they were comfortable either. Imagine an airplane seat in coach with less cushion that doesn't recline and you have a "hard seat." Sleeping was nearly impossible though I dozed for about an hour and half at 4:30am. I figure if I can handle that, I can handle just about anything traveling here and the plane ride will be a breeze when I go home this summer. Despite the train home, Harbin was fantastic. I saw things I had never seen before, had a great time, and managed not to slip and fall once the whole time-unlike my travel companions.

New adventures

In a few hours I leave for Harbin, essentially marking the beginning of 2 plus months of continuous travel around China. I am incredibly excited, but anxious as well. The feelings I had as I packed for China 4 months ago seemed to have returned. In August I was eager to travel to China, yet I was nervous as well. It is far from my home, I don’t speech the language, it’s new and different. Now I have been her for 4 months, Qufu is not longer new and different, and I can easily navigate my way around the city-even around Shandong in general. As I prepare for 2 months of traveling, I feel like I am again leaving home-Qufu this time-to travel to new and different places where I don’t speech the language. Hopefully I will survive my two months as of now my route is roughly as follows:

Qufu – Harbin – Qufu – Changsha –Zhangjiajie/Wulinguan – Zhuhai – Macau – Guangzhou – Hainan/Sanya – Hong Kong -??? (one week of travel by myself but I don’t know where yet – Shanghai (matt meet's me) – Hangzhou – Suzhou – Yangtze river/Yichang/Chongqing – Chengdu – Leshan – Xian – Qufu – Beijing - Qufu

I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams

So it’s 7:30pm on Christmas Eve here in Qufu, and up until this moment, it really has not felt like Christmas here. Throughout the past 3 days or so, I kept expressing my disbelief that in 3 days, 2 days, tomorrow, it would be Christmas. I was also a bit upset by this. I wanted it to feel like Christmas—snowy, pine scented, and shimmering—and yet now, just hours before the actually day, now that I feel that it really is Christmas time, I wish it didn’t.

I have made it through 4 months, Thanksgiving, and my birthday without really wishing that I was home instead of here. I even made it to 4 and half hours before Christmas, and then I got a package for my parents. I new this package was on the way; I regularly check to see if it had come. When it finally came, tonight at 7pm, I was so happy for 5 minutes opening it. It was the perfect package filled with gifts no one but someone living in China would really want or appreciate—pancake mix, maple syrup, taco seasoning, a pinecone—but it was perfect. And then everything thing was opened, the excitement was gone but the gratitude remained, and I began to miss home, miss my family, miss Christmas time in my house. I think that not feeling like it was Thanksgiving, my birthday and then Christmas really protected me from feeling as if I was missing out. I know the feeling will subside; I’ll have a wonderful Christmas here in Qufu and many more wonderful Christmases back home in the future.

So Happy Holidays to all, have a wonderful New Year, hug your family extra tight for those who aren’t able to be home.

Teaching and Travel

Today is my last real “teaching” day of the semester, and it couldn’t have come fast enough. It seems that being a teacher in front of the classroom has not changed the attitude that regularly took hold of me as a student at this time of year. I need a break. In some ways I need the break simply in order to get out of Qufu. I love it here, I really do, but having not left Qufu for 3 months I am going a little stir crazy. I also need the break to get excited about teaching again. I need to relax, regroup and then instill my teaching with some energy once again.

As you may tell, I am eager to get out of Qufu, and I have already begun planning what I will do for my 2 months of vacation—it has not been an easy process. Travel in China, and the process of arranging travel in China, is like nothing I have ever experienced before. In America, even in Europe, it is easy to arrange round trip tickets and to buy tickets for multiple destinations on a trip. Not so in China. You purchase train and bus tickets usually just a day or two before you wish to travel, and you can only buy one way tickets. You can also only buy tickets in the city of your departure. So I will go to Shanghai, then Zhuhai, then Guangzhou, then Macau, then Guangzhou, and then Hainan. But at this point, if I hope to travel only by train and bus, I can only purchase my ticket from Qufu to Shanghai. You really have no choice but to “fly by the seat of your pants” and hope that tickets will match hotel reservations (if you have been bold enough to book them).

At this point it seem that I will be traveling for about 7 weeks straight, and I’m sure my vacation will not be that relaxing, but I am excited to see more of China. The first week of January I will take a 23 hour train north to Harbin. This Russian-influenced city is home to a spectacular snow and ice festival each winter. I will admit, however, that I am a little worried about the cold. My weather widget tells me that this Sunday’s low is -19F. Yes, you read correctly, I did not mistake an F for a C. -19 Fahrenheit. Wish me luck.

Another day, another competition

It has been quite some time since I last wrote about my experiences in china, and really not much has happened. As has been mentioned before, we have settled into our routines here. My days follow roughly the same pattern—wake up, put water on to boil while I wash up, drink coffee, eat breakfast, teach class, go online, pretend to grade, lunch, nap, Chinese lesson or free talk with students, pretend to grade, watch tv or a movie online, dinner, read, grade, go for a run, shower, watch tv or a movie, sleep. There is very little variation to these habits. I should also mention that frequently thrown into the pattern is “judge.” As a foreign teacher, I am asked to judge competitions on a near weekly basis. China is obsessed with competitions, an obsession that I am sure was not helped by this summers Olympic games. They use competitions to assess almost every single skill. Singing, acting, basketball playing, dancing, speaking, movie “voice-overing”.

Two weeks ago I began my morning sitting in the back of a police ca

r and ended it by getting 600 yuan. A day that should have been filled with new and exciting experiences, really felt not too different. Granted I was judging a police officers speaking competition but still. Very little about China shocks me anymore. That it should be different and “shocking” has become almost expected. Of course they wo

uld drive me to the competition in a police car. Of course the police car would be a Mercedes. Of course it would have black leather interior. Of course a plastic pink comb would be sitting on the black leather back seat of the Mercedes cop car. Of course – I would expect nothing else than to be “shocked” by the strangeness of the experience.

This particular speech contest was a bit more of a to-do. It was a contest for all of Shandong province and a contest of government employees so a bit more ceremony existed. It was also not in a classroom but a rather plush hotel in Jining. The hotel was perhaps the nicest one I had been in a few years. I even got my own hotel room, complete with cushy bed, down pillows and duvet, and HBO, for naptime after lunch. 

The competition itself was and English speech competition for the immigration bureau of Shandong. The participants' speech could be on any topic they wished for a length of up to 8 minutes. Most speeches had similar themes: duty, respect, responsibility, Olympics, service, etc. What I found most interesting was how many speeches gave examples of experiences in which the police officers had to put aside family for their job. Women in their mid 20s spoke about sobbing as they left their sick baby in the hospital to go to the office to expedite a visa for a foreign businessman. This was one of the few things about the day that actually did shock me. These women were not leaving to bust a drug lord or rescue a child from a kidnapper; they were leaving to issue a form. Further, this act was one that they deemed honorable and noteworthy enough to include in a speech, but then this type of act speech to the society in which they live and the government under which they live. And so, upon thinking about the speeches some more, I am no longer shock. I am in China—of course this would be the subject of a speech.

The competition also included some skits. This one was about Swedish athletes who were in Qingdao for the sailing competitions for the Olymics. Their visas were expiring the next day but they wanted to visit Beijing. 

Bachelors' Day!

Today, November 11th, is Veterans Day back home. A day to honor those who fought to protect our country. Here in China, today is bachelors' day. I'm not exactly sure what that means other than the fact that it is a day to celebrate the single men and women of China. From a quick search of the internet I've found that it is an unofficially holiday that was started by single high school and college students a few years ago. The day, 11/11, has become quite the vogue around college campuses and though I'm not sure what exactly people do to celebrate--students are much more chaste here--I did discover that in some cities 30-something singles gather at "marriage fairs." I love that China has a day, official or not, celebrating almost everyone. Earlier I was honored on teacher's day, and now, today, I can celebrate my singledom. Take that Valentine's day. 

Their very first foreigner

On Sunday Lucy and I went to a town near by--about 30 minutes drive from Qufu--to teach children between the ages of 5 and 12. We really didn't know anything more than that when we were picked up at 7am. During the ride there I was tired and not really looking forward to spending my Sunday in a classroom teaching. We arrived in the center of town and split up; Lucy would go to 3 schools and I would go to another 4 all in surrounding villages. Once I walked into the school my feelings about the day radically changed. The children were all so incredibly energetic and enthusiastic. I think Lucy described it best when she said she felt like Santa. Because we were the first foreigners that they had even met they were shy and hesitant in deciding what to make of me at first. Was I real? And then, moments later, once they decided that I was not someone--or something--to be afraid of they swarmed. For 3 hours I moved from class to class, school to school. The children had been taking English for anywhere from 2 months to 4 years so their levels varied. After introducing myself to each class, I would answer their questions--all the basic phrases they had learned: what is your favorite color; what is your favorite food; do you like oranges; what is your favorite sport? Then they would sing me a song or chant a song or two. I would then teach them a song and play a game with them. For most classes I taught them "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes" and they all learned very quickly. After singing the song and doing the motions together a few times, I would point to a part on my body and they would have to say it correctly or I would say a part of my body and they would have to point to it. Though some were a moment or two behind the others, most learned quickly--we'll see if they retain any of it.


After 3 hours of teaching Lucy and I met up again and taught a large group of very young children ring around the rosie. Holding hands with one little girl in a pink puffy jacket, I really noticed just how curious, enthusiastic, yet shy many of them were. She wouldn't really look me in the eye when I asked her questions, yet she clung to my hand, not wanted to let me go. We signed dozens of "autographs" in their textbooks in a frenzy of pushing and shoving and then said good bye. Following teaching, we were treated to a feast for lunch. Six or so dishes of food came out and we ate quickly, hungry and worn out by the long day. Having stuffed ourselves we forced ourselves to make room as another 5 dishes appeared. We did our best not to appear rude in refusing to eat more. We arrived back at our apartments at about 1:30 in the afternoon, exhausted from the morning but grateful for the experience.

The conditions of each school varied dramatically. Some were a large complex with larger, clean classrooms while others really nothing more than a single room in a rapidly aging building. From what I could gather, the each school was part of the larger single organization that had brought us there. Most seemed to have to do with educating the children of coal miners as the town is supported largely by coal mining. The children were all adorable though--I have to say Chinese children really are the cutest. Some were dressed in school track suites while others, mostly the girls, wore tweed jackets and knee high boots, making them appear almost as miniature adults. In the spring, when my Juniors go to their hometowns to do student teaching for a 5 weeks, I hope to be able to go back to the schools more regularly and really interact with the children.