Back to Harbin after 12 years

Flying to Harbin

Today, we take a short flight to Harbin instead of taking a long ride on the slow train.  Bullet trains haven’t made it to the Heihe – Harbin route yet.

We got a car at 0730 for the ride to the airport.  Like many people in north-eastern China, they’re friendly and chatty.  We learnt that most people here are migrants, often from Shandong.

That agrees with what I had read about the area being sparsely populated with nomadic people before the arrival of Chinese settlers.

We arrived at the airport at 0800 and waited briefly for check-in to open before going airside.  I had forgotten to bring along my water bottles and would have to do without a drink until arrival in Harbin.

The ARJ21 or COMAC C909 aircraft was shorter than I had expected.  I knew that it was like a B717, DC9 or MD80 but I didn’t realise it was a short version.

There was no service on the 1h10 flight which got us to Harbin at 1055, parking at a remote gate.

We took a car to the Mundong Youth Hostel on Harbin’s pedestrian street. It was a highly-rated place except that the escalators and lifts are out of action on a long-term basis.  It is located up Level 4 and these old buildings have very high ceiling on each floor!  D’s luggage had become increasingly heavy through the trip.

We took lunch at a nearby mall in a fancy restaurant.  There are lots of food delivery workers and I feel for them having to walk such long distances inside a mall to do a pickup and perhaps similar distances inside other buildings to do a delivery!  All for very little money.

We managed to kill an hour and returned to the hostel at 1400 to find our room ready.  Despite that, there was good company in the lobby for nice chats and we didn’t actually spend any time in our room till about 1530.

Amongst the people we met were:

• a Spanish man who speaks Chinese, having studied at university level in China,
• a young Chinese lady attending an archery competition, and
• a couple of young hostel volunteers who were escaping the furnace-like heat in their hometowns in other parts of China.

City centre & Sun Island

After a very brief rest, we took a walk to St Sophia, the synagogue area and the pedestrian street.  While Harbin was never part of Russia, it has many Russian buildings built by the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because the city served as the headquarters for the Chinese Eastern Railway (operated by Russia for the Chinese empire).

Russian engineers, architects, and traders flooded the area, designing the new metropolis with European boulevards, mansions, and onion-domed Orthodox churches like the famous Saint Sophia Cathedral.

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We were running out of time to get to Sun Island for sunset, so we took a taxi to the cable car station.  Fortunately, there wasn’t a queue at all and we got across the Songhua River quickly for a walk.  We weren’t so lucky on the return ride and had to wait briefly.

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Back on the city side, the crowds were absolutely shocking in the pedestrian mall area.  Oh, the humanity!

However, one street back, while looking for our dinner venue, it was deserted.  We had a delicious BBQ dinner, similar to a Korean BBQ but with different condiments.

We jostled with the crowds walking back to the hostel, getting there after 2200.

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It was late but I had run out of clothing and had to do my washing in the hostel’s generous bank of washing machines and tumble-dryers.  I sat up till nearly 0100 waiting for the dryer to dry my clothes.