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!