YouTube Video Link

There has been some trouble viewing the videos - - we tried to compress the files, but they don't seem to be loading.  Here is a link to the YouTube channel with the videos.  Hope this is better!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8Lg4OefHsMc6k8INMOsPfXL4yt4QwKlc

YouTube Link to Videos

Harbin and the Ice and Snow Festival

Today was the big day - - the reason we came to Harbin:   the Ice and Snow Festival!

By Deacon...

We got up, had breakfast, put on all of our layers of clothes even our new ninja hats.  Dad even had one since he got up early and walked back to the store to get one. (Editor's Note:  at -20 degrees, vanity goes out the window.  Ninja hats for all!)

We took a taxi over the river to Sun Island where the festival was.  We got our tickets and went through the gates into a magical ice land.

Everywhere we looked, there were big buildings made of ice.  It was super cold, but we didn't care.  We started walking around and found that some of the buildings had ice slides.  It is a slide made of ice and you go down on your sled and sometimes they don't let sleds on the slide and we have to go on our bums.  The slides are fast.  And we went over and over again - there were only a couple people in line.

It was sunny and bright and the ice sparkled.  After walking around a little, we went to lunch.  There were only a few choices.  We went to Pizza Hut.

Baxter had a Hawaiian Pizza, but they don't have plain cheese pizza, so my dad took me to KFC.  I had chicken nuggets.  In KFC's nuggets it is actually 100% chicken.  I just know that.

After lunch we rang the Buddha's Bell.  We rang it with a big log that was wrapped in a red cloth.  It had a deep ring if you hit it hard.

By Baxter...

You are supposed to ring the bell three times in order for it to work.  You are supposed to make a wish or a prayer and then ring it.  The ringing sends up your wish or prayer to Buddha. 

I liked the ice sculpture buildings, and going down the slides.  After lunch we walked over to the big sledding hills and they told us we were too young.  They didn't really tell us because they didn't speak English and we didn't speak Chinese, but they pointed at a sign that said "16" and then pointed at Deacon and me and shook their head 'no'.  So we walked over to the smaller hills that were for our age.

We brought our own sleds and we had lots of fun sliding down the hill by ourselves.  There were a lot of kids at the festival now.  They hadn't been there before.  After a bit, we went inside to warm up.  When we came out, the sun had gone down and all the ice buildings were lit up with colorful lights.  It was kinda cool.  It kind of looked like a big deal.  There were lots of people here now.

We did a little more sledding and then went on a bigger hill with inner tubes.  That was super cold and fun.  We did that a few times and then walked through the Festival to see the lighted buildings and then it was time to go.

We were sad to go especially because we wanted to sled some more, but we had to meet our taxi. (Editor's Note:  We were at the festival for 6 hours. 5.25 hours outside.  Everyone said we were crazy to go for that long - but we had a blast.  A cold blast!)

We went to Portman's for dinner.  It is a cool Russian restaurant.  Harbin is right next to Russia. We got a table right next to the stage and there were people singing and playing instruments on stage.

They were playing Christmas songs and it was way past Christmas.  But we enjoyed it.

It really was worth going to Harbin for the Ice Festival.  Even if it were freezing cold.  I wasn't really cold because I was running up the stairs to go down the slides and up the hill to sled down.

Harbin

Harbin

We didn’t know what to expect.  Harbin is very far north and everyone we spoke to warned us that it was very cold there.  They were correct.  Luckily, we had brought our snow pants, long johns, and wool sweaters from home and our fancy new snow boots that we bought in Tianjin.  We also had our spiffy Star Wars hats and gloves that we had gotten for Christmas.

We took a bullet train from Beijing to Harbin.  

It took 8 hours.  It is about 1,200 kilometers from Beijing to Harbin, which is about 746 miles.  That is almost the same distance as from the top of California to the bottom of California.  It doesn't look that far on the map, does it?

Where is Harbin?

Harbin is located at:

45.7° NORTH - Latitude (side to side, or East to West, lines on the map or globe)

126.6° EAST – Longitude (top to bottom, or North to South, lines on the map or globe)

That is about as far North as St. Cloud, Minnesota, in our country.  St. Cloud is located at:

45.6° NORTH - Latitude

94.2° WEST – Longitude

  

We got to Harbin at 10pm at night.  We went directly to our hotel, checked in and went to bed.

Minion made of ice

The next morning, after breakfast, we put on our long johns, our pants, our ski pants.  Our long sleeve t-shirts, our wool sweaters, our fleeces and our winter coats.  We put on our hats, our gloves, our mufflers and our boots.  We were hot by the time we got outside.

That lasted a block.  Well, it lasted about 10 steps.  We went from hot to warm to comfortable to cold to freezing to worrying about frost bite in a block.  By the second block, we had to pop in to a store to warm up.  We looked around the store for about 10 minutes and then headed outside, warmed up.  We had made it to the Center Street that was a pedestrian street – no cars, only people.  We loved looking around at all the ice sculptures that had been carved on the street. 

Monkeys!

There were food vendors selling sausages and sugar dipped fruit on a stick.  Other vendors selling roasted nuts and other things that looked suspiciously like insects.

Eating strawberries - we had to bring them back to the hotel because they were too frozen to eat outside by the street vendor.  They had to thaw a bit before we could bite them!

The street was also lined with shops and restaurants - - a good thing, because we had to pop into them every block or two because we were freezing!  We would browse in the store for about 10 minutes and then glove and hat up again and go back outside.

How cold was it?  The 4 days that we were in Harbin were the coldest days that Harbin has had in 30 years.  They had posted frost bite warnings.  It was on average -48 degrees Celsius, - 15 Fahrenheit.

So when we reached the end of the pedestrian street and had arrived at the river, we were a bit nervous about going out on the ice.  But we did.  On the river, there were a bunch of vendors selling ice rides - - you could rent a bike that had a back wheel and instead of a front wheel, it had an ice skating blade.  You could rent a whip and play a ‘whip a can’ type of game.   

There were these huge bubbles that you could climb into and roll around the ice.  The boys chose that activity first!

They also had a tractor pulling a bunch of inner tubes around the river - - the boys had to do that activity, too!  But the ride threw so much snow on us and the wind made us so cold that we had to go find a place to warm up.

We found a little store that sold special hats that had a face guard sewn in.  We had to have them!  Much as we love our Star Wars gear, they just weren’t warm enough.  These new fleece hats kept the boys and me pretty warm, all things considered. 

Ninja hats with built-in scarf across our faces!

Steven chose not to get one.  That day.  He went back the next morning to get himself one!

Walking home with our new hats and water down the pedestrian street

That was the end of our first day in Harbin!

The Great Wall

The Great Wall

You think you know what the Great Wall looks like - - a long wall, built of stone, maybe some parts on a hill, yada, yada, yada.

Nothing can prepare you for the reality.  Those hills?  Mountains.  High mountains.  So high, we had to take a cable car to the top.  And the section of the Wall that we saw (in Mutianyu), the mountain was really steep.  It was hard to imagine the back breaking work it must have taken to get these rocks up the mountain to build the Wall.  

Up, up, up in the cable car!

Once up on the Wall, we hiked along it for a bit.  Every 100 yards or so (the length of a football field), there is a watch tower.  Some are large.  Some are small.  There are plaques on each entrance with the number of the watch tower and, in some cases, the town you were in.  The Wall ran across different areas, so the plaques would distinguish one region from the next.  Kind of like those signs on the highway.

One of the plaques found on the outside of the Watch Tower - tells the number of the Tower and sometimes the name of the region.  One watch tower might have one region on one doorway plaque and another on the other side.

When hiking from one watch tower to another, it isn’t just a pleasant little stroll.  We are in the mountains.  So some stretches were steep and had built in stairs.  Other stretches were flat and a welcomed relief.   

Our driver and translator had never been to the Great Wall - we had fun exploring together!

And when you looked out one of the ‘windows’, you could see the Wall stretch for mile after mile.  Up a mountain and then down to the next.  Then up again, then down.  Did we mention that these are full on mountains?  In a large mountain range?  This isn’t the Hollywood Hills.

The Wall goes on and on and on - - 13,170 miles of it!

And there isn’t just one long continuous Wall.  There are a few Walls, some not connecting at all.  Depending on the geography.  A few years ago, China used satellites to determine the total length of the Wall(s).  Ready for the total?  Around 13,000 miles.  If the Walls were put end to end in one long row, its length would be wider than the United States. MUCH wider.  The United States is about 3,200 miles wide.  The Great Wall is 13,170 miles wide.  It could go back and forth across the US – from California to New York and back to California- and then back and forth again.  Or from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and then back again - TWICE.  That is a long Wall!

Map of the Great Wall (s)

How the Great Wall was constructed - - by Baxter

First they built two big brick walls – they were about 19 feet tall, and about a foot thick.  They were a little less than 15 feet apart.  Then they put rocks and dirt between the two walls, filling up the space.  Then they put lots of stone and gravel in the walls, too.  And that constructed the walkway between the two walls.  And then they found a way to stick it all together and put a floor on top so they could walk and stand on it and shoot arrows at the other army. 

Baxter sitting in one of the 'windows' on the Wall and Steven holding tight so he doesn't fall!

 And then they built the watch towers and made little carvings on the top of the wall so they could shoot arrows and then dodge behind the wall.

Baxter & Deacon at a Watch Tower pointing at a plaque

 I thought it was actually going to be pretty hard to get those heavy stone bricks up the mountain, but they must have had people who were pretty strong.  I think they had animals that helped, like horses, because they didn’t have vehicles back then. 

The wall was built 600 years ago to make sure China wasn’t taken over by another country.  It was Mongolia that was trying to take over China, but now Mongolia is part of China and they get along and they don’t need the wall so people are allowed to go on the wall.  People will be safe now, they didn’t want people on the wall when there was fighting.

(This video is a large file - - we couldn't compress any further, so it may or may not play.)

Measuring the Great Wall - - by Deacon

We took a tape measure to measure the Great Wall.  This is what we found.

A large watch tower measures 34 feet long and 25 feet wide.

The Wall between the watch towers where you walk measures 14 feet across.  

 On the outside, from the ground to the top of the Great Wall, the height measures 19 feet. 

The canons on the Great Wall measure 3 feet long and less than a foot wide.

It was hard to measure because it was so big.  We measured a couple of times and then we added them up.  When we measured the height of the wall, we had to go outside and also inside and hang from the top.  That was fun.

I thought the Wall was bigger, so the measurements surprised me.  19 feet doesn’t feel so tall – I thought it would be like 100 feet tall.

Getting down the Great Wall - - by Baxter & Deacon

We got down the mountain next to the Wall on something like sleds.  There was a track made of metal that looked like a slide at a playground but super, super long.  We had to ride with an adult.  We rode a plastic and metal sled and it had a little stick that made you go forward when you pushed it forward and stop when you pulled it back.

The track from on top of the Wall.

You were not allowed to go really, really fast, even though we wanted to.  There were people ahead of us and we couldn’t get too close.  And there were signs all over saying “Slow Down” and “No Stopping”. It was a very cold day and the wind from the sled made us even colder.  Especially on our faces.  It was fun anyway.

We got up the mountain in a cable car which was like a little tiny room with seats.   

Going up!

It was much more fun coming down on the sleds because we went fast.