Jilin, Harbin, Changchun, and back.

Kim and I decided to take a weekend excursion to visit Harbin for The Ninth Harhin Ice and Snow World. What we did not anticipate (though we should have) was the huge crowd of Chinese people also travelling to Harbin for the same reason. Train stations were littered with them like a colony of maggots festering on a dead animal's carcass, and as a result, we had to contend with queuing in long lines and hoping for the best where ever we went. To aggravate the matter, you can't purchase train tickets online, nor can you buy them all at once or check for seat availability for your return trip. You can count on the Chinese to find the most inefficient way to do anything.



By the time we got to the ticketing window, no direct trains to Harbin were available anymore, so instead, we bought a ticket to Jilin which is roughly the half way point from Beijing to Harbin. From Jilin, we queued in line again and found ourselves on a train bound for Harbin at last.

Fortunately. the Harbin Ice and Snow World made up for the trouble of getting to Harbin. I had never seen anything like it in my life! These sculptures were massive in scale, some towering at twenty-feet high! There were many recognisable structures replicated in the form of ice such as the Arc d'Triumphe, the Parthenon, and the Forbidden City.



At temperatures dipping below -20ºC, not only were our hands and faces freezing stiff, the camera and mobile phone battery kept dying as well. I had to take it out periodically, cup it with my hands, and breathe into it to warm it up to continue taking pictures. As for sending SMS messages on my mobile, it was as slow as watching molasses drip. The menus faded slowly in and out of each other like a trippy transition!

Midnight rolled around and any warmth from the sun that had blessed us during the day was now gone. We walked all over Harbin and found another attraction worth visiting: The church of St. Sofia. This Byzantine-styled church clearly has its Russian influence on Harbin.



Changchun had nothing much to offer except for Puppet Emperor's Palace, which was very impressive. Pu Yi, China's last emperor, lived an interesting life here during an uproarious period in China's history. This palace is now a museum to which I had thoroughly enjoyed my visit, but I would have had a greater appreciation and understanding if I had watched Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor beforehand.



Here's an excerpt from my DK Eyewitness Guide:


The Last Emperor

Aisin Gioro or Pu Yi ascended the Qing throne at the age of three in 1908 after the death of his uncle, the Guangxu emperor. His brief reign as the Xuantong emperor was brought to an end on February 12, 1912, when he abdicated the throne in the Forbidden City to make way for the new Republican government. The powerless Pu Yi continued to live in the palace until 1924, before furtively escaping to live in the Japanese concession in Tianjin. He was later installed as the Japanese puppet emperor of Manchukuo, residing in his palace in Changchun. At the end of World War II, he was arrested and handed over to the Chinese Communists, who imprisoned him in 1950. In 1959, Mao granted him amnesty. Pu Yi never returned to the Forbidden City, and he died of cancer, childless and anonymous, in 1967, after working for seven years as a gardener at the Beijing Botanical Gardens.