Harbin

Last year, during the most un-summery summer of my life (in London of course), I vowed that I would go home to Australia, and that by December/January I would be sitting on the beach and moseying around in no more than thongs and a flimsy dress.

As you know, life unfolds in different ways than we planned, and I have found myself in Shanghai. Quite cold, almost colder than in London actually, as it has snowed a few times in the last week.

however, unsatisfied with temperatures of the low single digit variety, I thought I would try and go negative, negative double figures, down to minus 29 in the city of Harbin.

In January and February of each year, Harbin holds a snow and ice festival. During this festival huge, artistic, beautiful sculptures are made out of snow and ice. The pictures on the internet were awe inspiring, and I booked a trip for Aidan and I to go up there.

Since moving to China, I have been scammed in many different ways. The most frequent is to be charged a higher 'westerners' price for things. Another way is for people to pretend to be freindly with you, and then scam you in some uniquely horrible way. I thought I had become quite jaded by now, but you will be surprised then to find out how I booked my airfares to Harbin.

While looking on travel sites for advice on Harbin (using Tripadvisor, Virtualtourist, and Lonely Planet Thorn Tree), I came frequently across a poster called Ellyse. She is a young woman who makes multiple posts on all different destinations in China, with lots of useful advice. After private messaging her on VT, we then began emailing each other.

Ellyse is a Singaporean student studying in Shanghai and who spends a lot of her free time giving free advice to travellers. She also buys tickets for them, books hotels, and even acts as tour guide. At first I was very suspect but after a myriad of emails, she booked some airfares to Harbin for me, we met up for dinner and I handed over the cash to pay for them, with nothing to be given in return, except the hope that on the 18th of January, Spring Airlines would let me on their flight to Harbin.

You might wonder why I didn't use an online travel agent like I did for Huangshan. Well, these tickets through Ellyse were a lot cheaper, because they are on a cheapo carrier, Ryan Air equivalent, which you can't just book on the internet unless you read mandarin. It is called Spring Airlines - we obviously didn't crash and die. However, we did have to sit through hours of a flight attendant yabbering on in mandarin trying to sell all these bits of crap, e.g. plastic plane and god knows what else. Obviously they try to make up for their low ticket prices in this way.

The point is not that I had a great flight, or that Ellyse's service was overly useful. The point is, I handed cash over to a stranger I met on the internet, with nothing guaranteeing I would get anything in return for it. But it was true. This girl is helping people out of the kindness of her heart. And if there is a scam attached, I am as yet unaware of it. (prices on the internet were the same as the prices she was charging I later found out, so she isn't even skimming off the top). In the future I will use Ctrip or Elong (like expedia), however, this girl has pulled me back from my distrust of all helpful chinese people. (ok, she is not strictly chinese, but anyway).

So, after the 2.5 hour advertisement filled flight from Shanghai to Harbin, we arrive in Harbin airport, and walk into the freezer outside. Seriously, I coughed so much at first, as it was very hard to breathe.

I was wearing: two pairs of thermal pants, one pair of normal socks, one pair of wool socks that go right to the top of your leg, one pair of hiking socks, boots, singlet, two t-shirts, thermal shirt, two jumpers, coat, scarf, two beanies, and super crap ineffective gloves. Admittedly my body wasn't too cold, but my face, hands and feet were freezing. Even with all those socks and boots! My face got warmer when I wrapped my scarf around it, but the disgusting thing is that you breath hot air out your mouth, it hits the cold air, condenses, and the scarf around your mouth gets so wet and disgustingly gross. But if you don't have it there, your face hurts a lot.

Our first night, we walked up and down Zhong Yang Dajie, which is the main street. Since Harbin is so far north, it has a massive russian influence, and the main street is all cute and cobble stoned, and the architecture is all russian and dome-like (in the main street anyway). In the middle of the road are ice statues.

We were starving when we got there, so quickly had some KFC chips to tide us over while we walked arund and decided what we woudl really eat (and no, the KFC chips were not the good ones you get in Oz). After half an hour of walking in the freezing cold and being not able to find any restaurant menus, I am sad to say that our KFC entree was followed by a Mei Don Lou (McDonalds) main course....I know that is so terrible!!! but we were freeeeezing!!!

That night, against all childhood advice from my mother, I ripped off my million layers and put my freezing hands and feet directly onto the oil heater in my hotel room. Luckily I have no chill blains. (sp?).

The next morning we wanted to head off to the ice and snow festival. So, rather than risk being scammed by a taxi driver (as we already had been in Harbin, but I refuse to talk of this), I thought it looked easy enough on the map to walk to the place. It was on the other side of the river, but I could see there was a bridge over it according to the map.

so we left our hotel and went down to the riverside - Stalin Park - and walked up towards the bridge. However, this was a rail bridge, and we couldn't walk across it. But, we looked down, and there were many people crossing the river. It was frozen over. when I say many people, I mean like, a dozen, but they weren't drowning, so I thought that was ok. And obviously it was, by the fact that I am here to write about it. But there were some big cracks which scared me, and sheer bits where it wasn't white, but clear, and you could see down into the water. hmmmmm scary. But we walked across it, and then got lost in the slum like area on the other side for a little while (I cannot believe that people don't just die in this weather when they live in poor conditions like this), and finally made it to snow and Ice world.

However, by this time we were obviously frozen to the core (remember it was a maximum of minus15, and a minimum of minus 29). The statues were amazingly impressive. However, my hadns were too cold to take pictures, and the batteries died if you left the camera out of your pocket too long. So we didn't spend more than an hour there I think. we then got a ride back to our hotel for a couple of pounds, from a man with a van. A dodgy van, with tape holding the door on, but still. It was better than walking across that frozen river.

I feel like I should describe the statues more. So much work goes into them, and they are the most amazing things, but I cannot describe them well enough, as I am no poet, and you can tell even from this sentence that my English isn't up to much. One of them was this massive scaled sculpture of some kind of goddess lying down, and then mountains and buildigns and temples around her, and she was just the size of some huge Jumbo Jet!! (admittedly my judgement of size and distance is no good though. I often see photos of myself and others, and am shocked that I am so short). Anyway, this thing was huge. I can't post any more photos on this blog for some stupid reason, so if you want to see photo's, email me. and I will send them to you.

So anyway, those statues during the day were all white, and made out of snow. During the evening, there is another thing to look at, the ice lantern festival. these are statues made of clear ice and which are lit up with neon lights inside them (the chinese love that neon). This luckily was just across the road from our hotel in Zhaolin Park. It cost 60RMB each for us to enter, and then you get to walk around these cool temples made of ice, over bridges made of ice, there is a sculpture competition with competitors from all over the world (USA won first place), and even some ice slides (No thank you crack my head open).

For my trip in Harbin, I bought lots of thermal type clothes to keep me warm, which I worried was a waste of money, but I have found out it isn't, as it is snowing at least a bit every day in Shanghai now, and I am freezing! much colder than London, I think because of the humidity, which makes you damp and cold to your bones. Unfortunately this humidity is also what makes the heat crap in summer.

(on a side note, in Shanghai, people are constantly spitting on the ground, it makes me want to vomit. In Harbin, it is about a zillion times worse, it is constantly going on, and there are frozen little globules of spit all over the ground. Oh, I feel so ill even thinking about it).

Huangshan

On the weekend before Christmas, Aidan and I travelled to Huangshan for a holiday, only for three nights, and when I say before christmas, I mean RIGHT before christmas, we got back at 12:05 on christmas morning.

This is because I booked the whole thing only a week before and so got really stupid flight times. We flew out on the Friday at 10:pm, and our return flight was at 11:0pm on the Monday Christmas Eve. This could have all been a nightmare, if it was in say, Europe, using Easy Jet, or, worse, Ryan Air. However, Shanghai Air is now my favourite short haul carrier. not only were tickets super cheap to buy only a week before (on Ctrip, Chinas equivalent to Lastminute.com, and so much better), but the flights were awesome too. No delays at all. People get on, the plane goes. No waiting for idiots in duty free or baggage handlers on strike like London.

Now I will just harp on a bit more about them - you swipe your passport, you get a ticket. You get on the plane. the plane goes. no lines. No nothing. Despite the fact that China has a billion people and so this should be a bit more hectic. It was fantastic. but the best bit was, that on the way back, the plane left at 11:05, 35 minutes early!!! and we got into Shanghai 35 minutes early! This is something I have never experienced on any other airline in my life.

Alright, now onto the actual trip.

Huangshan is located in Anhui province, and is only 1 hour flight from Shanghai. According to the CSR woman I met through work, it is the poorest province in China. however, it also has Huangshan, which is better known in the west as Yellow Mountin. This area is a crowd of peaks, 72 of which are named. they have really good names like "Monkey looking out at the Sea", "Beginning to Believe Peak" and "Lotus Brightness Apex". I wanted to go there because they are those mountains that you always think of when you think of China scenery. Green pine trees, craggy rock faces, ravines, all covered in mist. They are one of the most popular tourist destinations for chinese people, and during summer it would be crazy busy, so we went in winter when we could better appreciate the quietness and also because I really did want to see them when they were all misty.

We flew into Huangshan city, which is about 70km from the Huangshan mountains. The city is also called Tunxi, and we stayed there on the Friday night, and were up early the next morning to get to the mountains. Now, seeing as this place is a major tourist destination, and we were staying at a Holiday Inn Express, I had thought that there would be some English spoken. There wasn't. In fact, the whole weekend we didn't come across english speakers, except two other tourists. Now, seeing as I can't speak anything other than English, i am not expecting people to be able to speak English just for me, but it did make it a bit harder. Especially after all these people on the Lonely planet thorn tree, trip advisor, virtual tourist, etc. said it was easy to get around. Maybe they speak chinese. Or maybe it is easier in peak season.

Due to the language barrier, we ended up getting on a mini bus (which was actually a Tarago owned by locals, to drive locals to work at Huangshan). And it was old and dirty, and they were all smoking in it, and it was so grotty we couldn't see out the window. Eventually, we got to Tankou, which is at the foot of the mountains, and the minibus just kept circling the town, and then stopped for 15 minutes while the driver had something to eat, and eventually it was too much for aidan and he went off his brain, and no one cared, but eventually,...much later...we were dropped off just down the street from there, and got a taxi up to the cable car. I don't know what that whole trip was about, but at 2 GBP each for 70km I suppose it was ok.

Then we went up the cable car to the top of the mountain. It was sooo misty, that we couldn't see anything. So we weren't scared at all. It was a bit like that Crash Bandicoot level where you can only see two feet in front of him or something. On our return journey the next day we woudl see how truly incredible the scenery is from that Cable car, and how bloody far high up we were!!! very.

Up the top of the mountains, there are extremely well maintained trails (and lots and lots of steps) connecting all the peaks, the look outs, and the couple of hotels. aidan and I only had day packs, so it was super easy for us to walk around for a while until we found our hotel. it was beautiful and eerie, because there was so much mist. But at the same time, we cuoldn't really see all that much because of the mist. That evening however, the mist cleared, and we got to see out in the moonlight, which was absolutely beautiful, but impossible to capture on camera.

The next morning we rose at crack o dawn to go and see the sunrise, as recommended by all travel books. However, despite our efforts, and getting at the front of the lookout, the mist was so thick we could't see anything. By now I had seen enough mist and was getting quite disgruntled, so we went back to the room and had a nap. Then the Gods smiled, and as we woke up, the mist was clearing, adn so our second day was spent taking a million photo's of the awe inspiring views. amazing. like something from national geographic.

It was a lot of walking. Lots of stairs. By the morning, my legs were so sore. But you can't look tired or exhausted on the mountain because there are cosntantly men walking up all the stairs (no chairlift for them), carrying so much crap! like all the building materials, and hotel supplies, water and food and beer, and everything! they carry it all hanging across their back, and so it would just be so horrible to walk past them whinging or puffing when all I am carryign is a muesli bar and my camera!

After the stupid mini bus on the way to Huangshan, we decided to get a cab on the way back. So after going down the awesome chairlift, we caught a cab back to Huangshan, which cost less than 10GBP anyway. Then that night we walked around Tunxi old street, which is over a km long, and would have been beautiful if it wasn't full of stupid tourist crap shops. I don't know who is buying all this crap, but there was over one km of shops selling tea and statues and chinese calligraphy pictures. talk about market saturation.

The next day (after a night of being kept awake by chinese party in our hotel corridor), we hired a car for the day to take us around theancient villages of the area. Two of these we visited are UNESCO world heritage listed, they are called Xidi (sheedee) and Hongcun(Hoongtswun). They are about 40km from Tunxi, and we hired a car for the whole day to take us around, which cost less than 20GBP. Both of the villages you have to pay a couple of pounds to get in.
Hongcun was the more amazing of the two. The main feature of this village is water. It is centred around two ponds, both of which have the most reflective water ever, which means that the buildings and landscape are all reflected perfectly in them. Which looks amazing. Also, this village has a water system whereby water runs past every single house in the village, for use of everyoen. while this is clever it also hgrossed meout because, it meant that while some people are cleaning a dead chicken in there, some are cleaning their clothes, or vegetables, or fish, and it all just flows on. The water was really fast flowing though, so maybe it was ok. I am not sure.

The stupid thing is, these two towns are UNESCO heritage listed, so I am not sure how, but someone must be paying to have these towns looked after and kept clean. So, especially in Hongcun, you can really see where the edge of the town is, because beyond this point, there is rubbish EVERYWHERE. It is quite disgusting. Although Shanghai is quite clean, it is only because there are people employed to pick up rubbish. In China it seems that people are quite happy to throw rubbish on the ground anywhere. right outside their shop, out car windows, wherever. even though there are bins everywhere!

At least this keeps people employed I suppose.

So in conclusion, I would say that it is definitely worth going to Huangshan area at this time of year, with the only caveat being the lack of language skills by the locals. Also, three days is a really good amount of time to see the area.