Yes, the puns are continuing. Embrace it! I'll pick up where I left off:

Day 3 (Wednesday 18th)
We stayed up until everyone else woke up, and then it was off to the station to catch a train to the nearby ski resort of Yabuli. This took about 3 hours. I slept most of the way, but it was still pretty bad - absolutely packed, and the heating swung between roasting hot and Arctic*. We arrived at a little station in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no idea what to do next. There were two private taxis by the station, and they offered us rides and basically organised our whole day for us: first they took us somewhere where we could hire ski-suits and ski-goggles, then to a proper resort where they organised our day-passes, ski-rental and a time at which to come back and collect us. We might have been ripped off a little (we paid 600Y each, plus taxi fares and extra for the suits and goggles. Helmets weren't an option) but I don't know how we'd have managed it by ourselves so I've no complaints. Now, apparently Yabuli is China's premier ski resort, but you wouldn't have thought it from what we saw: we had a choice of about six different runs, one blue and the others black, all of them more than a little icy.

Those of us who'd been skiing before had promised to spend the first hour teaching Beth, Dan and Naomi, our skiing newbies, the basics. We managed to stick together as a group for a grand total of three minutes, until Dan lost control and went flying down the blue run at a million miles an hour with Cat chasing after him. After this, we all ended up split into several different groups across the length of the blue run (there were chairlifts for you to join this run at the top or the mid-way point). Cat, Nold and I spent a difficult hour helping Beth down the top part of the blue, which was too icy and steep considering she'd only put skis on for the first time about forty minutes before. There was one very exposed part of this run where snow blew in gales across the ice, and it was just awful. The scarf I had wrapped about my mouth froze solid, we lost feeling in our hands and feet... horrible! We finally made it down, then headed back up to try out the black runs, leaving Beth to practice on the beginner slope. The rest of the afternoon was spent regrouping in various combinations to try out all of the different slopes, with several cafe-breaks to recover from the cold (this is where my current Snickers obsession began). I managed to collect a good few photos of us all fallen over in the snow, which have all proven very popular with my students. (Their favourite photo - greeted with pointing and shouts of laughter every time - is the one of Dan spread-eagled face-first in the snow.) Cat and I went for one last run before we had to leave for the station; not our best idea, as the slopes had got even icier and negotiating our way down took so long that we were nearly late for our taxis to the station.

Day 4 (Thursday 19th)

After a nutritious McDonalds breakfast/lunch, those of us who hadn't yet ticked it off our list of Things-to-See jumped into taxis to the Siberian tiger park. This being China, we couldn't simply explain where we wanted to go and go there, we had to bicker with our driver about the whole thing first. We're still not 100% about why, but he was insistent that we should let him buy our tickets for us before we arrived at the park - something we were a little suspicious of. He put us on the phone to an English-speaking relative and then just disappeared, leaving us to try and puzzle out what was going on. Something about him being able to get a free t-shirt if he bought our tickets for us? I don't know! Cat quickly lost patience with the whole discussion and there may have been a mildly violent chair-kicking incident, but we eventually agreed and it worked out okay. Our driver reappeared with a young tour guide who shared the taxi ride but didn't actually want to come into the park with us... again, no idea why.

I really enjoyed the tiger park. It was exactly what you would expect: a big park, divided into different sections, through which you drove about in a coach, watching the tigers. There were loooaaads of tigers, including several white tigers and, in separate areas, some lions (not sure how happy they were about the sub-zero temperatures, though). The last section of the 'tour' was walk-way past several smaller enclosures. It was here that you had the option to feed the tigers. Now, we'd heard that you could buy a chicken, a goat or a cow to sacrifice to the tigers, depending on your budget, but we only saw the chicken option. Nold talked us all into chipping in 10Y each for a scraggly hen: Pete waved it over the rails of the walkway until the tigers started to gather and then dropped it... you can imagine what came next. I was regretting my involvement in the whole thing, feeling like a terrible person and refusing to watch, but the boys thought it was hilarious. Nold even took a film of the event, which actually isn't too gruesome. I might upload it on here later if I can work out how (don't worry, viewing is optional). A little further on, we saw some more big cats in grim concrete enclosures. One of these was a liger - yes, they do exist!

That night was our last in Ha'erbin, and the last of our real travelling time. Everyone bar me was commemorating the occasion with homemade ham and cheese baguettes, courtesy of the specialist food supermarket by our hostel, with an elaborate production line of cheese slicing, bread buttering and assembly to match. As usual, the evening wound up with drinking games, and late enough to ensure that our early starts the next morning would be as punishing as possible.

The return journey

For me, Beth and Cat, getting home meant 26 hours sitting in hard seats from Ha'erbin to Wuhan, then another four hours from Wuhan to Jiujiang. Unsurprisingly, this wasn't much fun. The train was packed, with people standing in all of the aisles and sitting by the bins and even in the sinks; my ipod died about an hour into the journey, I managed maybe an hour's sleep the entire time and it was just generally hellish. Rough doesn't even begin to describe how we felt when the train finally spat us out in Wuhan. We set up camp in McDonalds, where we whiled away the hours until our next train brushing our teeth, washing our faces, applying deodorant, cutting and filing our nails, even changing tops. There were no toilets, only a washbasin, so all this was done in full view of every other customer in there, but by that point we just didn't care.

We made it back to Jiujang just in time to share a half-hour's gossip with Ellie and Lowri, who'd been staying the past few days with Nicole, and then began a beautiful day or so of doing nothing but sitting around eating peanut butter.