The last place in China that I wanted to see is the Harbin Ice Festival. Soooo…I decided to spend the money and go for the weekend. The earliest and cheapest flight I could get out of China was on Jan. 1st at 9:30am with a return flight at 7am on Jan. 3rd back to the village.

I arrived at 1:30pm hoping to spend my first night going to the Ice and Snow World, but C-Trip bumbled my hotel reservation. C-Trip is a Chinese Expedia type website that offers inexpensive flights and hotel packages. I booked my trip through the site.

My flight was on time and I grabbed a cab to head to my hotel in the center of town. When I arrived at my hotel an hour later, they had no reservation for me. I called C-Trip but had to wait for someone who spoke English to call me back. It look 2 hours to settle the mess. They upgraded me to the Sofitel Hotel, which was nice, but it was far from the city center and hard to get to the festival.

By the time I took a cab to the new location it was 5:00pm and their bus that takes the guests to the festival had already gone. With little time to see everything, I booked a cab to take me and bring me back at 80 yuan an hour. The whole venture would cost me 320 for the cab and 350 to enter (about $100US). So off I went. When I got there there was a huge line to buy tickets. So I elbowed my way to the window shoving my money under the glass ahead of a woman who was trying to cut in front of me. Call me crazy, but I do enjoy a good shove fest. The exhibits were spectacular. The ice sculptures has glowing lights inside – really beautiful.

The next day, I took the same cab driver to Central Street, St. Sofia Church, Sun Island Park, Russian Old Town, the Harbin Aquarium, and the Siberian Tiger Park.

Harbin is a really terrific city with Russian style architecture and restaurants. The ice sculptures were amazing.

The strangest was the Siberian Tiger Park. You ride around in a bus looking at Tigers. It is a breeding place for tigers. The tigers are then killed and used for their skins, teeth, bones, wine. Basically to feed the Chinese need for tiger parts to keep themselves healthy and robust and sexually active. When you go there is a walking part that is like a concrete caged in bridge above the animals. A woman is there selling raw meat and live chickens that the tourists buy to throw to the tigers below. The chickens’ feet are bound and they are stocked sideways in a cage. The crowd delights in throwing a live chicken through a laundry shoot type door and watching a tiger pounce on it and eat it. Lots of fun…

China is a strange and wacky place. Better to visit than to live here though. Or perhaps I am just too Western to understand.