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.
