The last major city before you hit the sub-Siberian wilderness and its scattering of oil and mining towns, HARBIN is the capital of Heilongjiang Province and probably the northernmost location that's of interest to visitors. It's worth a visit for its winter ice festival alone, but it's also one of the few northern cities with a distinctive character, the result of colonialism and co-operation with nearby Russia. The city's past is celebrated with the restored shopping street, Zhongyang Dajie , at the heart of town, as well as in a Russian cathedral that now serves as the Harbin Art and Architecture Center , housing a photo history of the city. Harbin was a small fishing village on the Songhua River - the name means "where the fishing nets are dried" - until world history intervened. In 1896 the Russians obtained a contract to build a rail line from Vladivostok through Harbin to Dalian, and the town's population swelled. More Russians arrived in 1917, this time White Russian refugees fleeing the Bolsheviks, and many stayed on for the rest of their lives. In 1932, the city was briefly captured by the Japanese forces invading Manchuria, then in 1945 it fell again to the Russian army, who held it for a year before Stalin and Chiang Kaishek finally came to an agreement. The city reverted to the Chinese, though when the Russians withdrew, they took with them most of the city's industrial plant. Things haven't been totally peaceful since - Harbin was the scene of fierce factional fighting during the Cultural Revolution, and when relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated, the inhabitants looked anxiously north as fierce border skirmishes took place.
Not surprisingly, the city used to be nicknamed " Little Moscow ", and though much of the old architecture has been torn down and replaced with sterile blocks and skyscrapers, the place still looks a little like the last threadbare outpost of imperial Russia. Leafy boulevards are lined with European-style buildings painted pastel shades, and bulbous onion domes dot the skyline. It's possible to eat in Russian restaurants, and the locals have picked up on some of their neighbour's customs: as well as developing a taste for ice cream and pastries, Harbin's residents have a reputation as the hardest drinkers in China.
During the summer the climate is quite pleasant, but in winter the temperature can plummet to well below minus 30°C, and the sun sets at 3:45pm. Local people are accustomed to the cold, however, and it is during winter that the city is most alive, with skiing and ice festivals in December and January.
Attractions beyond here are limited, and journeys can be arduous, though new highways and trains have shortened travel times. Ornithologists will be interested in the Zhalong Nature Reserve , home of the rare red-crowned crane, and roughnecks will enjoy Daqing , "Big Celebration", home of China's largest petroleum field. Beyond that sits Qiqihar and the volcanic spa at Wudalianchi , the latter an unattractive place that draws mostly elderly Chinese to its supposedly medicinal hot springs. If you're planning on heading onwards to Russia , new overnight trains from Harbin serve the two largest border crossings, Heihe to the north and Suifenhe to the east. You can also join the weekly Trans-Siberian train in Harbin. Make sure to have your paperwork and visas sorted in Beijing beforehand, as Harbin's PSB is, in the words of a local businessman, "worthless". Foreigners don't get up here much, and in general, local people are friendly and helpful.
The City
Harbin is more a recreational centre than a cultural mecca, a good place to shop and explore the streets. The place to head for is Daoli District's downtown area , a triangle outlined by Diduan Jie and Jingwei Jie, where there are plenty of brand-name clothing boutiques, fur shops and department stores. The smaller streets and alleys around here are the best places to see the city's Russian architecture , with its decaying stucco facades and elegant balconies. There's an extensive market selling women's clothes off Xinyang Square, while the best large department stores are on Diduan Lu and Zhongyang Dajie . Shops along the latter road have all been restored, with plaques out front in English detailing their past lives as colonial homes and stores. Make sure you go in the department store at #107, if only to see its spectacular skylight and rendition of a section from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel mural, which hangs on the back wall. Across the street is another beautiful structure, the Jiaoyu Bookstore, well worth exploring. There are numerous good restaurants and bars along Zhongyang Dajie, which is paved with cobblestones, and closed to cars, the result of a city beautification project in 1998. In winter, it's lined with ice sculptures, while summer sees pavement cafés set up.
The riverbank area is another worthwhile district to explore, starting from the Flood Control Monument at the bottom of Zhongyang Dajie. Built in 1958, the monument commemorates the many thousands who have died in the Songhua floods, and includes an added-on "1998" to commemorate the horrible floods during the summer of that year. The square here is a popular hang-out for local people, as is Stalin Park , a strip of land stretching along the east bank of the river that's particularly lively on weekends. People come to what must be China's last public memorial to Stalin in order to wash their clothes, meet and chat, and even bathe in the river - this last not a good idea, as mercury levels in the water are so high fish can no longer survive in it. Others cluster around palm-readers and storytellers, who relate old Chinese folk legends. Just southeast of the monument, Zhaolin Park , unremarkable in summer, is host to the spectacular winter Ice Festival.
In winter, the Songhua River freezes solid and you can take a horse carriage, rent a go-kart or walk across - the ice is so thick it will support a fully loaded bus or lorry and it gets used as a road. In summer, ferries will take you across to the northern bank and the resort and sanatorium village of Sun Island (daily 8.20am-4.30pm; ¥5), an enormous park and leisure complex with lakes for boating, swimming pools, fairground rides and an arms museum. It's unpleasantly busy on summer weekends, and getting around takes a lot of walking - it's probably of more interest to residents and Chinese tourists, though winter's snow sculptures draw tourists from around the world. You can also access Sun Island by cable car during warm months (¥25 one way).
But the most beautiful, and interesting, sight in Harbin has to be the old Russian Orthodox cathedral on Zhaolin Jie. Turn east off Zhongyang Dajie on to Xi Shi Er Dao, and walk until you hit Government Square, which fronts a new department store; the church is right behind the store. Set in its own square and restored to all its onion-domed glory, the cathedral now houses the Harbin Architecture and Art Centre (daily 9am-5pm; ¥10), with a permanent photographic survey of Harbin's history as a Russian railway outpost. The photos are interesting and the surroundings superb. Additional photos are available via touch-screen computers inside, although the captions, like those throughout the hall, are in Chinese.
South of the cathedral and directly east of the train station along Hongjun Lu, Harbin's Provincial Museum (Tues-Sun 9.30am-5.30pm; ¥8), opposite the International Hotel, has a dull permanent collection of dusty relics, and is only open when a major exhibit is shown every other month. At the Zoo (daily 8am-5pm; ¥5) in the south of the city, on the route of bus #81 from Xidazhi Jie or #338 from the train station, you can see the rare Manchurian tiger - only about thirty are left in the wild. The tigers have bred successfully here, saving them from extinction, though being kept in a Chinese zoo is not much of a life. There are some nice old working churches in the Nangang District, at nos. 252 and 268 Dong Dazhi Jie and one at Shike (ask the cab driver to take you to nangang jiaotang). Harbin also holds two unremarkable temples , Jile and Wen, downtown. Due to frosty relations with the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s (subject of Ha Jin's excellent Ocean of Words, a book of short stories in English by a former PLA soldier who was based on the Siberian border), Harbin also boasts a network of underground bomb shelter-turned-marketplaces . You can enter from the train station and walk all the way up to the International Hotel and beyond. The markets sell a huge selection of goods, from pirated video compact discs to leather jackets.
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