Harbin: Part III

Today I was told that yesterday we had a bit of a heat wave in Harbin (temperatures right around -20). This floored me. I think I barely survived yesterday. Heat wave, my foot. Frozen snot on the face is proof enough that we were not in a heat wave. Semantics aside, today was even colder than yesterday and almost painfully so with the wind. Normally I would hide inside on a day like today, but I'm only in Harbin for a couple of days so I boarded the bus and made my way down to my first stop of the day: the Siberian Tiger park. When I read about the tiger park in the Lonely Planet, I was a little worried that it would be a crappy zoo and a sad experience, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. Before we get to the tiger park itself, I should mention my journey out there. I took my first bus without a problem to speak of (except my feet basically froze to the floorboards, but thats par for the course with -30 temperatures). I had to switch buses to cross over to Sun Island where the park was and that took a little wandering and questioning street vendors about the location of different buses. Eventually I found the correct bus rolling down the road, so I sprinted out and hailed it. I hopped on and found 3 white people on the bus! The first thought that went through my head was "Sweet! These clowns must be heading to the same place that I'm going, now I can't get lost." Sure enough we all got off the bus at its final stop, which I can only describe as a winter wasteland. There were very few buildings in the area and only 2 people (one of whom fishtailed while riding his motorcycle, crashed, swore, and then went on his way). We were dumbfounded and lost. We ran down the other person, who pointed us in the right direction before going on her merry way too (she was off to make dumplings at a factory, no lie). Anyways, eventually we stumbled down this road, got picked up in a van, and finally ended up at the tiger park. The park was actually really cool! It was a HUGE area (imagine Jurassic Park) and we drove around in these buses and saw tons of tigers hanging out. Tigers are HUGE! End to end I think a full grown tiger might be 7 or 8 feet long (plus a tail). Their heads and paws are massive! I definitely would not want to be attacked by one of them... Oh, the other awesome thing about the tiger park is that you could buy livestock (chicken, duck, or a COW!) to feed to the tigers. A bunch of the Chinese tourists bought chickens for the tigers. The chickens were a sad bunch and barely lasted a second. The tigers would have made short work of just about anything alive though. Pretty intense.

After the checking out the tiger park, I returned to the main downtown area of Harbin and hung out for the rest of the afternoon and evening with my three new friends. It was really nice to chat it up with Jim, Amy, and Rob - all really cool people who had just finished up a Peace Corps tour in Southwestern China. We traded China stories and chatted over chuanr, beer, and hot pot. A very relaxing and pleasant afternoon :)

Time for a random note about Harbin. Everybody in China is supposed to learn (and speak) Mandarin in school, but each region still has its own dialect that can be almost impossible to understand if you are from a different region. Harbinren speak a variety of putonghua (Mandarin) that involves a lot of rrrrrrrrrs. This kind of makes them sound like Shrek with a fishhook in his mouth at all times and makes it very difficult for me to understand. For example, I was chatting with my cabbie yesterday and I asked him what his favorite food was. He said "huorrrrrrrrr guorrrrr" (instead of "huo guo"). Hmmm, hard to describe unless you speak some Mandarin, but the point is that people from Harbin sound funny.

Oh, I also want to make an addition to yesterday's post. After visiting the Jewish museum in Harbin, I should make note of the Chinese attitude toward Jews. Oddly enough, it is one of admiration and enthusiasm. Chinese people think very highly of Jewish people and insist that they are the best people on Earth. This has to be the only place in the world that Jewish stereotypes are viewed positively. Very unusual. My theory is that intelligence, fine arts prowess, and financial knowledge (three stereotypes associated with Jewish people) are all very highly regarded traits in Chinese society.

Pray for warmer temperatures tomorrow...

- Jon