From Beijing we swiftly moved north to a city famous for it's frozen transformation in the winter - the former Russian town of Haerbin. 'Former town?' you may ask. Haerbin is rather close to Russia, so much so that it wasn't that long ago that the Russian border encompassed Haerbin.

The Russian influences are still clear to be seen, with statues of Lenin and Stalin, and Russian architecture along the main street of the city. Everyone also assumed, us being western and all, that we could speak fluent Russian, leading to a few confusing moments during our short stay there. Signs in haerbin are even often written in cyrillic script although this isn't that strange for us Xinjiang guys - you occasionally see Cyrillic in the North-west too.

So far I haven't mentioned exactly what this 'frozen transformation' I mentioned at the start was. Basically, Haerbin builds a small city out of ice every year. The ice freezes so thickly in the nearby river that it's possible to build a ice and snow metropolis they name, fittingly, 'Snow and Ice World'. Every year has slightly different buildings, and this year's centrepiece was reykjavik cathedral in ice form. From a distance, it even looked pretty convincing, but obviously detailing is tricky in ice.

That said, fine ice sculpting was as much part of the festival as the icy architecture. Dramatic scenes of crystaline bears fighting and strange goblin like things running around transparent trees could be found in the sculpture area, but despite the amazing skill, they were dwarfed by the buildings. There is something beautiful however in the fact that all the work put into making those sculptures is for a very temporary piece of art. Eventually (probably about now at the end February actually) they will melt and disappear forever.

One strange sight at the ice world, which I firmly believe none of us who saw it understood, was a very dramatic, very communist, very Chinese performance on a part stage/part ice rink. Imagine a scene of pounding communist music, with men speeding about on Ice skates with Chinese flags attatched to the backs. In the middle there are more men waving giant Chinese flags. Above is a man flying (??) about on aerial wires. Off some fake mountains behind the stage there are yet more men zooming down a slope, waving giant flags. The only thing telling us that there was indeed an intended story line was the acting list at the end.

I personally was left rather confused by the whole thing. It was impressive, don't get me wrong, but confusion was the more overruling feeling.

A message to any PT vols who will be coming to China. You will be confused in China very often. And I mean A LOT. The first time you see a husky riding a moped, you will be left in awe. Well, at least the first time you see something on the lines of that.

Now, one thing worth keeping in mind about the ice festival is that it's quite cold there. We're used to -30 degrees back home in Xinjiang, but it's dry there. Haerbin is close to the see, so there is both humidity and wind there - two of the rarest things nearby the Gobi. -30 in Haerbin feels how you would expect it to feel, whereas it simply doesn't over in the north-west. The cold certainly did add to the experience though!

Ice world was of course our main reason for visiting this very northern city, but there is more to talk about Harbin outside of it. I should have a story about seeing the famously rare siberian tiger but....I may have chosen not to go and instead go for a cup of coffee with Jacob. Admittedly my reasoning wasn't entirely down to finding a simply fabulous coffee shop near the high street (although it was a deciding factor), but more due to the slightly horrific feeding time 'entertainment'. When you visit the tiger sanctuary it is possibly to purchase animals to feed to the tigers.

Live animals.

The Tiger's menu varies from chickens up to whole cows. To highlight how evil we've all become in China, there was some (not so serious) discussion of everyone buying a chicken and seeing who's would live the longest. Luckily i discovered after we met up in the evening that the guys missed feeding time and did not contribute to the slaughter.

It would be naive to think it didn't happen nonetheless of course.

Moving swiftly onto less grim images, we also visited a part of the festival separate from Ice world, with the aim of visiting a so called 'Russian town'. There were other things to do in the complex, Such as husky sleigh rides, but we didn't want to spend too much money in Haerbin. Especially as it cost 400 kuai to get into Ice world!

We almost didn't even get to the Russian village, as entry into the complex alone was over 200. Luckily, with a bit of wondering about the entrance we found a little oversight from the organisers. The entrance was over a bridge. The bridge was over a river so frozen that the ice was over a metre thick at any point. In other words, we could just walk over the river and get free entry.

After arrival, we could tell the Russian town was going to be a bit of a farce. So much so that I didn't take a single photo of it. We paid for entrance anyway, got our fake Russian passports that came as a ticket (that was the coolest thing about the Russian town) and entered possibly the most lacklustre tourist attraction of all time. The few log-built buildings looked vaguely Russian in design and there were a number of strange cartoon-like statues dotted about with a vague Russian-ness about them. The only entertaining ones were the caricature statues of Putin, Gorbachev, Lenin and Stalin. Putin did not look happy to be in China, or to be a mildly overweight statue. inside the buildings wasn't much more exciting. One was a shop selling Russian chocolate and vodka. One sold Russian beer and the last had the walls covered with photos of the most stereotypical Russians one will ever lay their eyes on.

That's about it for Haerbin itself, but there is yet one more thing to mention. The journey to get there. From Beijing we took one of the long-haul trains that we have all become very accustomed to now. This time was slightly different however. There were no sleeping or sitting tickets, forcing us to buy standing tickets. This would have been fine, if the journey had not been 10 hours long! We managed to survive the journey however, despite it ending up being nearly 12 hours due to delays. There is a wonderful photo in the spring festival collection of the guys looking like zombies part way through the journey if you want a feel for what a 10 hour standing journey is like!

Next stop on my recounts of the past holiday is Shanghai and oh, do I have stories to tell you all. I hope you will all be waiting to read the next part in the spring festival journeys!

Until next time!