We stepped off the train in the fabulous neo modern inspired station, and took a deep breath of the cool night air. In the pickup area was a group of Harbin’s most beautiful women, bikini clad and ready to lead us into the Rolls-Royce Phantom that the seven star hotel had sent for us. And then I woke up and was faced with reality. We jumped off the train and dove into the human blob that was the taxi line up, trying not to breathe in the minus 34 degree air that caused the boogers in our noses to crystalize. We tried to maintain a central position within the blob, to minimize heat loss. Slowly we were excreted into the warm and smoky confines of a taxi that I could have sworn was a Lada, and at the very least; drove exactly like one. Then off we went to the budget hotel.

For meteorological reasons beyond my comprehension, Harbin gives Amundsen-Scott a run for its money. Its latitude puts it further south than the vast majority of Canada, yet it has temperatures that are similar to Tuktoyaktuk. Maybe this was god’s way of saying; “don’t live here”. Well those godless Russians didn’t listen, and neither did their Chinese comrades. As of the most recent census, there’s about 5 million people freezing their balls off in Harbin.

Once we got ourselves checked in at the hotel, we took a stroll down Central Street to see if we could find some salvation through fine dining. We got lucky and found a Russian restaurant about five minutes into the walk, which was great because we had already lost a few members of our group to a pack of wolves. After we had been satiated by caviar and borsch, we all jumped in taxis for the quarter mile journey back to the hotel.

The first tourist trap of the day was the Harbin Tiger Reserve. The gist is, you pay the entry fee, and wait for them to call your bus number. When called you board your bus and it takes you on a tour through the metal fence-enclosed park. Oh and when you buy your entry ticket, they have a “menu” that lists everything from steak to free range chickens to live goats. If you decide to pony up the extra cash, you will be treated to treating the tigers to some lunch. I sprung for a chicken, while my friends who were on a different bus, got a goat.

As we made our way into the first area, everyone on the bus scrambled up against the caged windows and began oouing and ahhing at the first sight of tigers. The tigers were apathetic. That was until a white SUV appeared, and then suddenly it was like that dude who’s scoring the booze for the party in high school shows up, and they all gave chase. I knew what was coming. Out of one of the windows popped my chicken, and within about 3 milliseconds it was being torn to shreds by a happy tiger.

Later on we would meet up with the other group, and I was shown a video they took of their goat. It was not for the feint of heart, and if PETA saw it, they’d go apeshit. In it, a truck with a cage on the back of it showed up instead of the white SUV. The doors were unlocked, but obviously the goat who was scared shitless wasn’t about to leave. Outside there were about 8 tigers ready in waiting. Poor goat, that truck had a dumptruck like mechanism that tilted the cage up on an angle, so that the goat was doomed to be dumped right into the fray. Within a matter of moments the shrieking goat was torn to shreds by the pack. Blood and goat guts squirting everywhere. The moral of the story is, don’t be a goat.

Next up on our agenda was the Snow Sculpture Fair. This was basically a regular city park that had decided to charge outrageous fees so that one could enter and be amazed by sculptures of snow. It was a tourist orgy and within 40 minutes we had seen all there was to see. We spent the next couple of hours huddled in one of the coffee shacks making homemade milk chocolate out of the hot soymilk that was being sold and cheap Russian chocolate we’d bought earlier.

After the Snow Fair, the group wanted to move on to the main event, Ice World. As darkness had now fallen, so had the temperatures and we had left the relatively balmy minus 20-degree weather for the mid thirties. Yes in Harbin, it is so perpetually cold that when they say the temperature, they don’t bother saying “minus” because it’s already assumed it’s below zero. After the general disappointment with the Snow Fair, the weather closing in on absolute zero, my Chinese compadre and I made some alternate plans. We decided to head over to the Ice World, but when we arrived we told the cabbie to wait for us. We dashed out to the main gates of the Festival and took the requisite photos to show we’d been there, and then made a break back for the cab and by extension, vodka.

After the group had reconvened, we went on a hopeless quest to find a Russian restaurant that had lots of good reviews, but we were unable to get there before it closed at … 9PM?!!? Not that we were likely to fit all 11 of us in there anyway. We settled for a rather crappy dongbeified version of Bifengtang (a Cantonese food chain). It didn’t satisfy, and I found myself munching down a Big Mac shortly afterwards.

The rest of the night involved multiple bottles of bourbon, Russian girls, French guys poledancing and some bears riding around on bikes with midgets on their backs. Or maybe it was all a dream. I read Word Up magazine.

We capped off our time in Harbin, the same way we started it, with a feast at another Russian joint called Café Russia. This one with an ornately carved wood interior, subpar service, but food that got the job done. We finished just in time to catch our train while we watched Harbin disintegrate into the arctic sunset. All in all a decent trip, but it’s definitely one of those things you do once and never again.

Filed under: tourist shit