Being a photographer, I don’t often step out in front of the camera. But now and then (like when you come across a giant bronze horse drawn carriage) even I can’t resist. And sometimes… you take it one step further.
Created with the help of my good friend and accomplice, Michela. Who is the most awesomest tripod and wireless trigger ever.
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.
It is utterly unbelievable how time flies. Two days ago I sat my last final for the semester, and it feels like it started only a few weeks ago.
In just about three hours, myself and nine other awesome friends are boarding a sleeper train and bound for Harbin, Heilongjiang. Otherwise known as China’s frozen tundra. The premise is to go check out the world famous ice festival, but also on the agenda is to feed a live chicken to Siberian tigers (not my idea…), go ice-sailing, and of course, snap some amazing night photography.
It’s been a rather busy semester for me and hence, I haven’t traveled anywhere in particular. This will be a much needed break, not to mention a reminder of what frostbite feels like.
Now that I’ve managed to get the internet working on my iPhone, I’ll be tweeting photos “live” from the trip (www.twitter.com/evaychan) and maybe even sneak in a blog entry or two.
See you all on the flip side!
When we last left off, our intrepid adventurers found themselves in Lijiang, Yunnan, where to their dismay, a 800 year old Unesco world heritage site was replaced by a monstrosity of modern-day tourism. Only in China would you have a squatty-potty equipped with LCD screens to entertain you as you go about your business.
Determined to boldly go where no KFC had gone before, our travelers headed for Tiger Leaping Gorge. A terrain so perilous said to be infested with (leaping) tigers. Twice as deep as the grand canyon, with icy waters originating from the Tibetan plateau, ranked the #4th on the world’s best white water rivers.
Booyah!
Our heroes arrive at a Tibetan guesthouse. The walls are lined with intricate carvings of ill-fated travelers:
LEAPING FOR THE BEST BED!!!! (and the mysterious Richard makes his appearance!)
It’s Yunnan (photoblog) redux time!!!!
Perhaps one of the nicest things about being a photographer is that once a trip is over, it’s really only just begun. Then comes the massive download (nearly 20GB worth in my case) of images, the processing and tweeking, and generally reliving the experience over and over again.
So part one of my trip. We begin with the train.
Now for a few hundred kuai more, I could have spared myself a 45 hour train ride from Beijing (in the north) aaaaaall the way to Kunming, Yunnan (in the south). But there’s really something rather magical about trains and watching the scenery go by your window. Concrete jungles soon melted into picturesque countryside from the comfort of my berth
I should probably not mention that our trip began with us actually MISSING our original train. By a measly 5 minutes. Seriously. We were schedules for the fast train which would have been around 36 hours, so we lost about an additional half a day in transit. But maybe that was a good thing. Because we wound up getting a soft sleeper… which was really, really cushy.
