More Harbin

In the afternoon we were taken to the Russian Market. It wasn't what I expected. I was picturing a large, outdoor market. Instead it appeared that we were dropped at a random street corner and given an hour to roam. The market, in reality, was a Russian section of town with many small little shops. With the weather as cold as it was I think I would have been just as happy staying in my hotel room staying warm. I did enjoy going into a couple of the shops and found a Russian stacking doll for a good price.

We were then off to the Ice Festival (or whatever it is really called). I don't really know how to describe it except to say that it is a little city made out of ice. Ice castle, ice churches, ice bar, ice Cartier (but only holographic jewelry), and various other structures, sculptures, and attractions. Neon lighting is placed inside the ice so that the buildings can be seen at night. When it is first getting dark and the lights go on it has a tacky Vegas kind of feel. As it becomes darker, it becomes less tacky and more amazing.
Here are some more pictures.

The Ice Garden

After visiting the church, we went to (what I believe is called) the ice garden. It has sculptures and other things made out of ice and snow. Bet you never would have guessed that! The bundled up figure with the red scarf is me by one of the huge entrance gates. Throughout the garden there is a collection of various flowers frozen in the ice. They were pretty to look at. The fish who got frozen made me think of how my hands felt when I removed them from my gloves in order to take pictures. Towards the center of the park was a display of the ice sculptures different teams had created. Some were quite impressive, some not as much. All were better than I could do. It was a challenge to take decent pictures as the sculptures were clear. I just couldn't do them justice. I liked the ballet dancers that a Polish team made. I thought the man trying to pull the tree out of the ground was neat too. Very unique (as opposed to just a little bit unique).

There were also some slides in the ice park. You have to watch your step since the stairs are made of ice just as the slides are. I went on one of the shorter slides because (1) it was the first one we encountered (2) it was free and (3) it didn't have too many stairs. Later we came across some larger ones. They cost (though hardly anything) and had a lot of stairs. By the time we got to them my hands and feet were cold too and I just wanted to try to keep as warm as possible.
Russian Market, Ice Festival, and Snow Festival pictures and commentary coming soon.

Harbin Ice and Snow Festival, Winter 2005

Getting there and St Sophia Russian Orthodox Church

The trip began in the hotel lobby. We boarded a van and headed for the train station. It was a crowded, busy place and I was glad we already had tickets and a guide to follow. Toting luggage around and finding our compartment was a workout. It took awhile to settle in, with four of us to a compartment. I got an upper bunk. I was pleasantly surprised with my warm, thick comforter and fluffy pillow. The train left at 7:00 pm and by 8:30 we were going to sleep. I managed to sleep until 1:00 am. That gave me time to use the bathroom (a bit scary, but not the worst ever) and get organized before we arrived shortly before 2:00 am. Once again, a shuttle was waiting to take us to our hotel. It didn't take long to get into my comfy bed and drift off to sleep.

After a buffet breakfast we got ready to brave the cold. With all the layers I had on it was hard to move. They were necessary as it was COLD outside! As we walked towards the chuch, we passed an elderly man playing an instrument (I don't know what it is called) on the sidewalk. His gloves were so thin. I couldn't believe that he could keep them warm enough to play.

Outside the church there were rows of small ice sculptures. I also enjoyed the trees, complete with faux apples. Heaven only knows how cold it was outside and fresh fruit is growing on the tree? I don't think anyone bought it. Good try though.

The church looked out of place in China. It is no longer used for church services, but has been made into a museum. Still, it is an impressive sight. The inside is not in very good condition, but there are some nice pictures. The history of the church was all written in Chinese, so I can't really say much about it. It isn't hard to imagine that it was once very beautifully decorated.

After touring the church/ museum, we saw vendors selling bird feed so that people could feed the pigeons. The birds were landing right on people's hands, arms, shoulders... I thought that China had this whole bird flu thing going on. Can't pigeons carry that? Should one really pose kissing a pigeon? I decided to pass. I had to admit that the little kid in the picture is really cute. With all that padding you could fall down and not even notice. I wonder how to say you've fallen and can't get up in Chinese.

More Harbin pictures coming soon!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr









The river is a perfect place to skate, sled, walk, ride a bike, or fly a kite. I will be going to Harbin for the Snow and Ice Festival over the MLK holiday. If it is this cold here I don't know that I want to think about how cold it will be there. It is even further north than Shenyang and stays below freezing more than half the year. Hopefully I will get some great pictures and it will be worth it.

Carrying the camera has paid off.

I've started trying to remember to bring my camera with me more often. It seems every time I forget it I see something cool. Having it with me doesn't guarantee that I do see something cool, but hopefully it will pay off.
Walking home from buying groceries I saw a school group doing some drumming and dragon dancing in front of a newly opened store. There are two people under each dragon and they were pretty good at moving on all fours (as in above pictures) and also at having the front person jump up on the back person's shoulders to get the dragon standing up high.

Ho Ho Ho! Christmas in China

Pictures at last!
I had every intention of making a little video tour of our apartment right from the front door outside, up the elevator, and then around our home. I wanted to do this as soon as I had things put away perfectly. Well, that hasn't quite happened yet and I don't know that it will happen before we move out. Perhaps I will get around to making a tape for family or something. For now, here are some pictures of our home sweet home.


Above you can see the view you have as you walk down the entrance hallway. There is usually a small table where the Christmas tree is, but you get the general idea. If you turn to the right is our living room/dining room and also the kitchen.

The kitchen

Our TV/computer/guest room (if you come to visit we will clean it)

Bedroom, including my reading windowsill

One of our three bathrooms (we have two tubs and two showers)

He doesn't seem to do anything...

My nephews (turning three this week and just turned five last week) look at their new baby brother. The middle kid is excited to be a BIG brother now! Now someone has to break it to him that not only will he not be four on his birthday, but that his big brother is no longer four. How will he ever catch up? Oh well, he can do more than the baby can!

Is it really THAT bad?

Rob said that I look scary in this picture. Nice thing to say to your wife, isn't it? I don't think it is my best picture ever or anything, but I don't think that merely looking at it is going to cause small children to have nightmares. He says it looks like I didn't want my picture taken. Like he does?

This little girl had already had a million pictures taken and her mom made her go back for another. Doesn't she looked thrilled? She was happier once I took the picture and let her see it. Her mom wasn't showing her the pictures and I think that was part of what had her not so thrilled.

There were cool yo-yo koosh balls for the kids to play with. The balls lit up when you hit them against something. The kids loved them and adults could be seen playing with them too.

And of course, what is a work Christmas party without the appearance of Santa Claus? A lot of the Chinese kids weren't so sure about this guy, even though he spoke Chinese. He did come bearing gifts, but doesn't your mom always teach you not to talk to strangers or take candy or presents from them? I guess it is okay if they are wearing a funky red outfit and wearing a fake beard.

The adults also got presents of sort at the party. All of the official gift stuff that people get over the year is saved up for the Christmas party. Each is numbered and numbers are put into a container. People draw numbers and get to keep the corresponding present. Some are neat and some are not so neat. Luck of the draw. Well, Rob was sure excited to get his as I am sure that you can tell in this picture. Later he did model it a bit for us. We are wondering though exactly why that was given as an official gift and who initially received it. The gifts are usually more business or city related. This just doesn't seem to fit either of those categories. Oh well.

Death of a DVD Player

Don't you hate it when you decide to watch a movie and the DVD player doesn't work? I had one die on me in the States, but it went slowly. At first it wouldn't play all of my DVDs, then when it was loading the ones that would play I would have to tilt the DVD player back at an angle. It got to the point where I would put my ear up next to the DVD player and depending upon the sound it was making I would increase or decrease how much I was tilting it. When it finally died it wasn't much of a shocker. I had seen it coming. I admit that I didn't want to throw it out and we ended up keeping it until we moved. I finally was able to part with it then (I did check one more time to make sure that it hadn't recovered) because moving it with us to China just seemed a bit excessive. I guess part of it was that I felt so wasteful. It probably could have been repaired and had many years of use. Why would I pay more to fix one than to get a new one though?

Our lovely DVD player here had a sudden death. We went to watch something and it refused to read any DVD or CD. The previous night we had been watching something and hadn't had a problem. Our only difficulties with the DVD player had been (1) not being able to read the Chinese characters on the remote control and (2) whenever the power went out it went back to the default language setting of Chinese. Perhaps we will never know if ZNX is a bad brand or if it was just bad luck. We had gone really cheap, so perhaps we got what we paid for.

Our new DVD player is an AMOI, one of China's best brands as the saleslady pointed out. We got the second most expensive model in stock and shelled out $62 for it. Of course when we turn in our receipt for VAT refund we will get 17% of that back. We also got a special bonus gift of two karaoke microphones and four DVDs. Looks like three of the four are going to be in English, but the fourth might be only Chinese. After she had made the sale is when we learned about our exciting bonus gifts AND when she showed us how to use the remote. This remote is also in Chinese so she hooked up our DVD player to a TV and showed us what the different buttons did. One of our favorite features is that you can change the lighting color on the DVD player. That's right, a feature you always wanted and possibly needed, but hadn't thought about. You can now have the DVD player match your decor by pushing a button on the remote. How do people even come up with features like this? Does it make this particular model more appealing? Do people try to decide which DVD player they want and then realize that hands down this is the best one, I mean you can change the color! Too bad it is hard to capture that with the camera. I tried earlier in the day and too much sun was coming in the window and then later it was dark and if I used the flash it took out the light color. Here are two no flash pictures to show you blue and red. You probably can imagine green, white, yellow, purple, etc.

I hadn't realized before that many DVDs purchased in the US have many different language and subtitles available even though they are not listed. With our new DVD player we can get several of each (spoken and subtited). I suppose it is because our player works on regions 1-6. I was having fun listening to the movie in Chinese with Portugese subtitles or in French with Korean subtitles. Doesn't take much to amuse me. Plus, I got to change the color display as I watched. Wow!

On a loosely related note (it involves an incident on the way back from buying the DVD player)... We were waiting to cross the street at a busy intersection. There was a bus stopped there that is one of the buses that looks like it should be in a junkyard or taking the riders straight to Hell. The kind of bus with more rust than not, door that doesn't close all the way, and of course the old lady with the megaphone shouting out to those who will listen as to why they should choose to ride this bus. Well, the bus was not moving and the honks were getting louder and more numerous. A couple of people got off the bus and started to push it. They were having little success, so they got back on and recruited some of the bigger looking guys to help them push the bus and try to get it going again. Their timing was great. They want to cross an intersection while other cars are making left turns across it, blocking their way. So the bus driver is trying to steer around the cars (which are also swerving and breaking) as they make their way forward. Too bad the light changed and we got to cross. I would have liked to have seen how that ended. I was so mad at myself for not having my camera to take a picture of these people pushing the bus. It was an amusing sight. Oh well, Rob's work Christmas party was this weekend too. I have some pictures to put up of that. I suppose that will have to make do.