Late one damp December evening, a friend and I hatched up a plan for an adventure to Dongbei, China’s unforgiving north-eastern frontier where we could sample the scenic sights and…SNOWBOARD IN CHINA….oh hell yes!

I’d wanted to ride in China for a while, I mean, the shear geography of the place meant there had to be some decent slopes somewhere. The country is roughly the same size as the States area wise, and is home to the tallest mountain rage on earth (the Himalayas), surely there’d be a ski bums paradise hidden away here.

Our thorough research, which consisted of googling for ski resorts in China, somehow winding up looking at trail maps of places in Europe, followed by deciding what bars would have the most attractive members of the opposite sex that night, lead us to Yabuli Sun Mountain as our best chance for international quality runs.

My friend happened to have some contacts up in Shenyang, a city only a few hours away from Harbin, a former Tsarist Russian outpost that now plays home to China’s largest snow and ice festival. So what the hell, with all these places being roughly in the same geographical void of nothing, we figured after our snowboarding excursion, we catch a train over Harbin for the ice fest.

The ice festival has gone totally mainstream in China, and I suppose it’s on a billion plus bucket lists, because the prices attached to everything Harbin for that time of year are pumped up like Arnie circa 75’. For that reason, we decided to fly into Changchun, then take the overnight train into Yabuli saving the cost of a hotel and letting us start the morning fresh on the slopes.

Now it’s time for some helpful travel tips. If you decide to travel anywhere by train in China, especially closing in on Chinese New Years…buy your tickets in ADVANCE. Here’s what happens when you don’t. We flew into Changchun, and foolishly took a 45 minute taxi ride to the train station. There’s actually a brand new train station right outside the airport (Longjia Stn.) that takes you downtown in about 15 minutes for one tenth the price of a taxi. Our planned train from Changchun to Yabuli was to leave 1:50am, which was fine, because we also planned to sleep during the 6 hour ride. These plans were shattered into a million tiny ice fragments when we discovered that the only tickets available were standing room. Not only would we not have beds to lie down on, we wouldn’t even have fucking seats. That ladies and gentlemen, was not a comfortable train ride.

Apart from the small time crooks who made the bad choice of trying to steal from an army guy, the ride was uneventful. Four hours into the journey, the train lurched through Harbin, and enough people got off that I could finally get a seat. Sleep would have been nice, but by then, then sun was rising, and the snow covered wasteland was reflecting light into the carriage making any attempt impossible.

On arrival at Yabuli Station, we were greeted outside by touts trying to lure us to whatever resort they were on commission for. We told them to bugger off, and hopped into a minibus to take us to the mountain. For some reason I didn’t quite understand because I was physically and mentally exhausted from lack of sleep, the touts jumped into the mini bus with us and off we went.

Filed under: transport