Let’s pretend that we’re back in time. Say, not almost Spring. Also known as not ludicrously over-due for a post on Harbin.

Still with me? Good.

In my last post, I was heading to Harbin in China’s Heilongjiang province. At the turn of the 20th century, Harbin was a bustling city, and Heilongjiang the home of the Manchus, China’s last dynasty. Today, it is the home of the world’s largest ice festival, a quarter of the world’s Siberian tigers and of course, brutally cold temperatures. There is not only strength in masses but also body heat. With this in mind, nine of my friends and myself hopped on an over night train to my most frigid adventure yet.

Trains have always seemed the most romantic form of travel to me. (Next to ships, but how romantic is sea sickness?) Knowing how insane train stations can get in China, we decided to meet nearly two hours early. Despite our good intentions, our departure still resembled a scene from Home Alone with us running like MAD through Beijing’s railway station and quite literally made it with seconds to spare. Scratch that. Second to spare. Just one. We jumped on the end of the train as it began to pull out of the station, and dragged our luggage and sorry butts to the front of the train where our berths were located. I wish I could say this was a first for me. But at least it was better than last time on a 36 hour train ride to Yunnan, where we flat out missed our train by five minutes and watched it pull out of the station. (Baby steps, right? Baby steps.)

Despite our somewhat rocky start, the rest of the trip went off pretty much without a hitch. 45 minutes of negotiating and bunk swapping, all nine of us were settled into our bunks, and rocked to sleep by the gentle lulling and swaying of a train bound for almost-Siberia.

(SERIOUSLY) bright and early the next day, we found ourselves in a twilight zone between Russia and China. Welcome to Heilongjiang. A magical wonderland where the streets are littered with slides and sculptures made of ice, the bing tang hu lu (skewers of fruit coated with hardened sugar syrup) are the food of the gods, and everyone is a child once more. Our first stop, the Siberian Tiger Reserve.

The Lonely Planet calls this a dismal place where tigers are locked up and tourists are encouraged to buy livestock to feed to them, but personally, I thought it was amazing. I’ve been to plenty of famous zoos, but this place puts an enormous tiger within inches of your face. There may or may not have been some tiger-feeding by the gentlemen in our group. For those PETA activists, I assure you, there was plenty of squealing and squirming from the ladies.

A female liger (cross between tiger and lion). Remember Napoleon Dynamite? Well it turns out, ligers are real!!

After a Russian dinner (borsch, anyone? mm…) we were off to Harbin’s biggest attraction. The Ice and Snow festival. I have never seen anything so incredible. Here I have a sort-of regret. My fingers were pretty frigid, and I didn’t shoot as much (with my SLR) as I would have liked. But that’s only part of the reason. The bulk of it is I felt like I was six years old again, and was WAY too busy having fun. For the first time since I was a kid, the ice-slides were proportional to my size! It was truly amazing to see full grown adults running around like giddy children. But then again, how could you help it???

bing tang hu lu!!!!!! (nomnomnomNOMnom)

Doin’ it penguin-style!!!

So much fun that I split into multiple personalities to cover more ground

After taking in Harbin’s amazing sights, we set off further north for Yabuli. Once the hunting grounds of the feudal elite, and now China’s largest ski resort.

Here I’m obliged to point out Simon’s ridiculous get up (which you may or may not have noticed already). It is a bonafide PLA jacket, which he wore over his usual jacket. The ski mask and badass spider-branded gloves made him *quite* the conversation starter indeed.

I have no idea why, but Pac Man was everywhere in Harbin. And I mean everywhere! They quite literally lined the streets.

Simon, overwhelmed by the fact that he’s on the frozen Songha river, which effectively becomes a new highway in the winter, alleviating traffic.

Beautiful Harbin, on a gorgeous sunny day. Completely surreal in its east-meets-west-meets-21st century architecture.

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Tags: China, friends, Harbin, ice festival, skiing, snow, Travel