G-Drama JEJU: January 2015

A quick review of the first half of our China trip (in Beijing) with new pics, courtesy of Beth and Victor!

We did this:

Ran up the Great Wall Rocky-style.

Took coupley- photos.

Posed cutely and pranced like a monster from Where the Wild Things Are.

Found hilarious Engrish in the foreign district of Beijing on New Year's Eve (especially if you pronounce the plastic surgery clinic's name "eulogy"...)

Enjoyed beautiful weather at the Summer Palace.

Got some duck and assorted, mustache-like vegetables at a restaurant famous for Peking Duck.

...and wandered around some night markets.

All in all, a good time, although Beijing left Ben with a case of what he affectionately called "the China lung." It's a testament to him that he looks as cheerful and alert as he did in the following pictures!

We left Beijing for our next destination, Harbin, via our first overnight train. It was definitely a glimpse into how large China is that our train from DC to Boston usually takes about 8 hours, and yet this ten hour trip looks like nothing on a map of China!

Once on the train, we settled in to our 4-person cabin (convenient), complete with table and 4 bunks, chowed down on our vegan dinners (delicious), and then settled in for a somewhat fitful night's sleep. All in all, not a bad way to travel.

We arrived to Harbin in the early morning to realize two things: a) yes, Harbin was a good bit colder than Beijing, and b) though our guidebooks made it sound like Harbin was relatively small town, small town in China is very relative, considering it's a city of 10 million people! After taking a bus in the wrong direction and then being denied by a cab, we finally found a more helpful cabbie who helped us to find our hotel. We dropped off our stuff and then walked down to the harbor, where the river had literally iced over to the extent that walking across the whole river was possible. And we're not talking a small stream, either, as you can see from the bridge in the background:

Fun 'n' games on the frozen river! Multiple chair chair-skating means three times the stabby action. There were also ice slides, animals (like an arctic fox!), ice skating, paint ball games, and all other manner of icy fun, but we decided to skip the harbor's activities and head across the river for our first glimpse at the ice and snow parks Harbin is famous for.

There were various ways to get across the river to where our first stop - the snow park - was, but they included: dog sleds, sleighs pulled by reindeer, horse and carriage, sky tram, and walking. Guess what we chose?

Yup. Here we are standing on the center of the frozen river, with a horse and carriage and a few gondolas in the background. It may have been a bit chilly outside.

We made it to the other side of the river and looked around a bit, realizing that we'd made it to the Snow Park. It was definitely lunchtime, yet we were told that inside the Snow Park, there would only be snacks. Not being sure of where any restaurants were and yet not wanting to walk all the way back across the river, we decided to take a gamble on an institutional-looking building close to the entrance of the Snow Park that looked like it had some food. We walked in to find a snack shop-like set up, with a cafeteria in the background. Perfect! The staff looked at us a bit strangely, and the cafeteria line didn't seem quite like a cafeteria, but we were able to point to the things we wanted and the staff served us kindly enough. We sat down for a pretty decent meal of various veggie dishes, steamed buns, and even some Harbin beer.

It was only after leaving the cafeteria to look for a bathroom among the maze of buildings that the cafeteria seemed to be a part of that we realized: we'd just eaten lunch at a hospital.

Classy move.

Our confidence in our China-navigating abilities fully restored by this tour-de-force, we sauntered into the Snow Park. It didn't seem so impressive at first. So what, you have some snow walls lining the path? Victor can break out of these, easy.

Then we came across Mr. Einstein,

the Mario Bros (complete with the most menacing goomba I've ever seen!),

and this breath-taking sculpture, still in the works, as you can see from the man on the left. These wolves in motion seemed a perfect welcome for members of the Wolfe family. ^_~ We began to think that this whole snow sculpture thing might be more impressive than we anticipated. All in all, we saw probably a hundred different sculptures, many made by college students.

And on the 8th day... ROBOTS. ROBOTS everywhere.

By the power of Snow Skull!

Amazing texture on the scales.

Whee!

A different take on all things Apple.

Newton, I didn't know you had a girl with you under that apple tree...

This looked like it could have walked right off to go cause some mayhem.

These were all of the competition sculptures, so we didn't realize that the giant purple spikes we saw off in the distance were a sign that the best was yet to come until...

A-MA-ZINGNESS happened. The phrase "Winter Wonderland" absolutely applies.

Click on the image for a bigger view of the panorama. It's worth it.

Since we were there on the opening day of the ice festival, quite a bit of work was still being done on this, but that made it all the more cool to be able to see how it was taking shape.

This might seem a bit out of place, but since Harbin was once a part of Russia, you can still see a lot of signs of Russian influence.

You didn't think you were getting out of this without couples' photos, did you?

Next, it was over to the snow building you can see behind the huge sculpture, which had these gorgeous snow reliefs on the walls.

Snow paintings and the coldest canvas.

(I'm trying to be crab since I already match the color scheme so surprisingly well.)

We were also treated to a random dance by about 20 people in animal costumes, including Teletubbies. Awesome.

After a brief warming up in a hot chocolate tent, we ventured back into the cold. We were really lucky for our trip to Harbin: temperatures were between -5 and 15 the whole time we were there. The morning we left, the temperatures dipped back into the -10s and -20s!

Hannah was having a whale of a good time. Something something Jonah.

A few last fun sculptures on the way out. As it was getting dark (at 4!), we were lucky enough to start seeing some of the sculptures get lit up.

Pretty intense with the harpoon through the head! And now for a few of my (Hannah's) favorites...

The farewell sculpture: happy Year of the Sheep! (Funnily enough, Lunar New Year is just a few days away now, so this is appropriate timing.)

After all of the awesome ice sculptures, we walked back across the river to downtown Harbin, only to be greeted by the beautiful scene of the harbor area all lit up.

Next stop: Zhaolin Park, just a few blocks away from our hotel, for the ice sculpture park!

Those ice lanterns sure did look refreshing...

Cool high five.

Grind those gears. Seems like fitting work for the head of IT?

Singing in the ...Sleet?

It was all very glowy.

...and maybe even a little romantic, for those not infected with China lung.

This bridge seemed very menorah-esque.

Interestingly, in the 1920s, Harbin had a population of 20,000 Jews, as many Russian Jews moved there to escape pogroms and persecution in Russia. The community started dwindling in the 30s and eventually died out, but some of the synagogues and buildings are still standing, with plaques to recognize some of the contributions.

In the midst of the ice sculptures, a playground! Time for a slide for Beth and Hannah.

I was very impressed this ended outside of a hospital room.

To be fair, I'm not sure anti-lock brakes could have helped.

Fitting into the snow sculpture holes wasn't easy, but it was worth it.

One of the coolest things in the ice park: an ice piano that actually played notes!

Hello, goat!

Poor Victor!

Horseman-ing.

Victor-ius.

Hello, goat. (Okay, sheep.)

Now, to go out on the town for some dinner! Having lived in Russia before, Victor was a helpful guide to find us a legit Russian place with borscht and all.

The interior seemed so nice that we were sure that we were in for an expensive meal, but we got some delicious soups, meats, and non-meats for a good price despite our waitresses' velour dresses...

Since we were all about falling asleep in our food, it was to an early bed so we could wake up the next day and check out...

St. Sophia Cathedral, the largest Eastern Orthodox Church in the Far East! Apparently it stopped being used as a church some years ago, so now it's the Harbin Art Center.

It was also tempting to stop at Mean Dessert, but alas, they didn't begin their heckling until later in the day.

We walked along some of the streets in Harbin noted for their architecture. So interesting to see the mix of cultures!

Hawthorne berries, you're here! And gigantic!

Entrance to the pedestrian portion of Central Street. Walk here without fear of being run over by taxis.

This is a cake. WHAT!?!?!?! Once we saw this, we couldn't help stopping in, so we had a great pastry and milk tea breakfast, complete with Totoro cake sighting!

Mmm, pastries, including durian pastry! Ah, durian, the fruit that smells like mango and gasoline...

No jumping cars with your bikes. Harbin must be super extreme.

I felt super Coca-Cola-y in my get up, so I figured I might as well say hi to the polar bears.

This restaurant's stairs were too awesome not to take a picture of...

but alas, it's dining room was too empty to stay. We ended up doing a brunch of dumplings instead, and then it was off to find a taxi across the river again to the biggest of the parks,

the Ice AND Snow Park. Again, mind totally blown by the sheer scale of this place.

Sooooo big.

Naturally, our first stop was the story-tall ice slide!

Ben stunned all the onlookers by taking a running start to his slide, then rocketing over the mound of snow at the end of the slide meant to stop you by doing a forward handspring so he flipped over the other side. I think everyone was too shocked to clap. ^_~ (Of course I was way too slow with the camera to catch it. ;_;''')

View from the top of the ice slide building! Cannot believe that huge bridge that spans the whole length of the horizon.

From there, it was off to play with other fun things, like ice bikes!

Beth managed to find the only bike with tiny wheel.

Ben, of course, managed to dump his bike on the first turn.

A little more leather and we could have formed a biker gang.

Then we played whip the dreidel.

Whip it! Whip it good!

Ice and Snow Park's sculptures say: Zhaolin Park, you have nothing on us. These were too good to let the rabble walk amongst (for good reason), so we had to snap pics from outside the ice wall.