Explore: Harbin in photos

best smell and most pungent lilacs I’ve ever experienced

St. Sophia’s – a classic Harbin landmark, Russian-built

the largest shopping street in Harbin – also Russian-influenced

the blue-eyed bearded monster, who attracted numerous stares and unsolicited photos in spite of Russians apparently being quite prominent around the city. It’s frustrating.

some northeastern Chinese foods

always gotta have the bugs, though…

stumbled into this park where there were bumper cars, caged birds, and pedal boats!

vast view just inside HIT campus, which the highway runs under

HIT landmark building, Soviet-built

CHILI KEEP RUNNING!!!!

another Russian building – this one turned KFC!

good street food can always be found just outside college campuses

my new favorite dish – the Chinese “hamburger” – diced pork, beef, or chicken with cumin and red pepper, green onions, and cilantro if you like it! 

Explore: Lost in Harbin

My hotel wasn’t far from Harbin Institute of Technology, where Luke and Alex have been studying abroad this term, so on my first morning in town I thought I could walk there easily enough. Another lesson in “China” – no. Nothing is simple. I got crazy lost and walked miles and miles, and finally by 1 pm decided to take a bus. But I did get to see places that I doubt many foreigners go, and it gave a good feel for the city, which has a lot of outside influence from Manchuria (historically and in place names, mostly), Russia (architecture), and Korea (didn’t really see it / didn’t know what to look for).

First impressions: this is the square outside the train station. it was deserted last Friday, but I’m glad not to have seen it during Chinese New Year, when everyone goes home to be with their families – I bet you couldn’t even move.

apartment complexes don’t look like this in Beijing. a chicken startled me just after taking this photo (it’s just outside the frame).

“Care for others, care for the society, care for nature.” (no comment)

was hoping for a river, but here are some nicely colored trains. Harbin, like Shenyang, is just “vast.”

but Harbin seems to be more crumbling…

I liked this wall. I was off on a street that is like a developing country’s variation on Home Depot, there were paint shops and screen shops, plywood, sawing, lots of home improvement stuff – but the condition of the street and shops could have used some home improvement, too.

last one. next will be pictures of places I visited intentionally. 😉

 

Explore: Dongbei from the train

Last weekend I had saved up enough for some much-needed adventure and a break from Beijing. Early Friday morning I boarded the bullet train for Harbin, further north than Shenyang (or I think anywhere I’ve ever been). It’s the largest city in Heilongjiang province, and it’s pretty darn close to Russia and Korea. The train took eight hours, stopping in several small cities along the way.

Waiting for the train. China doesn’t believe in lines, it’s everyone for themselves.

last breath of “fresh” air on the platform

unfinished apartments surely for the workers in the factory (below). this was prevalent during my Shaanxi/Shanxi research – a new factory was built and farmers-turned-factory-workers were relocated from traditional homes to apartments, all in the name of progress.

probably a coal or steel factory

development

farming community – see the city on the horizon though?

suburbs don’t exist here; this was on the outskirts of a small city

Much of the country’s cereals are grown in northeast China – a region called Dongbei, formerly Manchuria

agricultural fires – always adding to that infamous air pollution

Heilongjiang is a big hub for agricultural machinery. I read about it a lot, so this was kind of neat to see firsthand.

Explore: Beijing’s Central Business District

Though Beijing municipality extends across more than 6300 sq miles, most of this is rural. The urban portion of Beijing covers an area of 528 sq miles (according to Wikipedia), and much of it is quite low. On study abroad, there was a time that it freaked me out that Beijing didn’t have a “skyline” as we know it – it’s just a sprawling monster. Last weekend as Luke and I stood at the center of the city and looked to the east, there was one particular cluster of high rise buildings that seemed higher and more modern than the rest of the development on the horizon.  This part of town, between the Second and Fourth Ring Roads, in Chaoyang District, is the Central Business District, and I hadn’t been there much since study abroad, so I decided it was time to visit. Nearly every subway stop I exit at feels like a different city in itself, and the CBD proved itself to be a more comfortable, luxury environment than I’ve been accustomed to lately.

view of CBD from Jingshan (the “mountain” overlooking the center of Beijing)

 

SOHO buildings can be found all over the city outside the Second Ring (in the modern areas) – generally with crazy architecture. Some are cylinders, some look like beehives! Then there’s these crazy cube-like structures.

 

Tesla dealership in a massive mall … this is not my Beijing. (Yes, I know this photo would be more effective with the hood down, but I was afraid to touch anything in that dealership.)

I spy (coming out of the ceiling) …. a HAND. What?!

This is The Place (no joke). It’s got a 250 m screen that plays weird screensaver-y videos … and the news. It’s surrounded by luxury shopping and nightlife.

Classic, but we were in the CBD so I had to. This is the CCTV (China Central Television Tower), also known as the big underpants.

 

Beijing: A Taxi Angel?

Early this afternoon I was at one of the busiest interchanges in Beijing, and I couldn’t find my way to the proper bus station to take the bus to a different subway line (because nothing new is ever easy or convenient in China) to make my next meeting on time… not to mention that I forgot to put on deodorant this morning and it ended up being one of the hottest days thus far this year. I was worried that I would be late and miss out on a potential part-time interning opportunity and was hurrying along the sidewalk in what I thought was the right direction, when I made eye contact (through the fence that keeps pedestrians from crossing the street wherever they damn well please) with a female cab driver driving past. She pulled up to the nearest opening in the fence (still a few hundred feet ahead of me) and stopped the car. I expected that she was waiting for someone who had called her in advance or found her through a taxi-finding app – it is one of the busiest sections of Second Ring Road, after all, and I had already made eye contact with several cab drivers. I hate hailing taxis; it’s the small-town girl in me that I can’t suppress. Once I reached the opening in the fence, I rushed up to her window and she asked me if I needed a taxi. Now, I’ve been ridiculously frugal for the past few months so there have barely been any taxis in my recent history and it was barely within my budget until my next tutoring gig, but I knew it would be somewhere along the lines of minimum fare (it was an easy jaunt a few kilometers NE; I needed to get to the subway that runs along Third Ring Road, and I was at the Second Ring – basically concentric circles without another line to connect them at the NE corner) and I couldn’t believe my luck/her intuition… so I said yes, I need to get to Sanyuanqiao Subway (which I still needed to take another stop, but I couldn’t find any of the proper buses) and hopped in. She cruised through the four-lane roundabout and somehow hit every red light, but little traffic. Partway through the drive she turned around and asked if I just needed to get to the other subway line or if it was Sanyuanqiao specifically. I breathlessly answered that I just didn’t know how to take the proper bus, so she suggested dropping me off at the closest stop on Line 10. I paid 14 RMB (2.25 USD and only 1 RMB over minimum fare) and she smiled and wished me a good day as I left. Maybe this just sounds like the rant of a lost foreigner, but please consider that very few people in Beijing are intentionally helpful (unless they’re your friend or want something from you). As far as I’m concerned, this female cab driver was a ray of light in this smoggy, car-congested city, and I am going to think of her as my taxi angel.

Beijing: Everyday

Lately my Beijing has been a world of warming weather, greening trees, continued smog, and work. I’ve started working three days per week, physically visiting my internship once per week, and I’m still tutoring in the evenings. I now have six students – Alice, who celebrated her 11th birthday on Tuesday; Jason and Stone, the basically fluent 7 and 5-year-olds who like to throw tantrums; Michelle who is ten and told an elaborate story (with pictures) about how she used to have hamsters, but they died; and Ben and Jerry, 5-year-old neighbors who are learning letters, numbers, and other words. They’re all great, and I am coming to really love tutoring.

My job at the Chinese office is a light workload, which I’m afraid may be ruining me as far as other jobs in the future. Last week a group of nine of us went out to about a three hour lunch. We usually just eat at the cafeteria, which takes 20 minutes, but instead we left campus and went to a restaurant that is like a cross between chuanr (“chw-ahr” – food on skewers) and hot pot (a boiling pot of broth on the table that you dump meat, vegetables, noodles, anything edible, into). We went up to a big refrigerator and loaded up several trays with assorted pre-skewered foods and brought it back to the table where we boiled the heck out of it all, and then downed it with sesame sauce. At the end, the restaurant workers count the number of sticks left. Wasteful (or they probably reuse them), and that’s your bill – 1 RMB per stick. It was fun to go out with everyone; I’m generally quite quiet but warm up to them and speak more each time. At one point one professor asked if I wanted to try something, then added my name, “Sam? ….. Francisco!!” he threw in at the last moment, and everyone cracked up. Kind of embarrassing – but hey, they don’t use my Chinese name!! So I guess I get teased. All in good fun!

lunch at the microbrewery near my American office

Ben trying to remember numbers:

[Counting through ten, prompting 11] “Seven-eleven!” (His mom says he loves to go to 7-11 for treats.)

[We’ve clarified 11, prompting him to say 12] “Eleven-two!”

Gah, so many others I can’t remember!! Then there’s Jerry, whose class immediately follows Ben’s because they can’t concentrate when they’re together (tried that). Jerry is a real beginner and is always confused and seems terrified of me, but he’s super adorable. Jerry loves to draw, Ben not so much – he wastes time complaining about the markers. Very cute, although a bit frustrating.

Jerry following directions by drawing a crazy monster-man

The weather is warming up, making me homesick for summer in northern Michigan. This will be the first time I’ll have missed a whole summer at home. I’m not looking forward to it! It also becomes more annoying to wear a mask on high-pollution days when it’s 75-80 degrees out. Everyone still wears long pants, sweaters, and jackets… I just can’t, I’ve been getting a lot of stares, and every time I show up at Alice’s door they ask if I’m cold and insist that she put on a hoodie, I think just to make a point. I’ve now borrowed coats from two of the moms on separate occasions, and not because I asked for one. Apparently in spring you wear more, but in fall it’s okay to continue wearing summer clothes later… my logic is opposite. I can’t change it. I won’t.

We recently got our air conditioning installed. Things are just done differently here. Below is a picture from the installation – keep in mind we live on the fourth floor…

didn’t want to be conspicuous, but yes, those are ankles…

Today I was the center of attention when I bought the wrong mop for our recently-hired ayi (“ah-yee” – maid). She said the one I purchased wouldn’t work and when we tried to return it to the little shop (I should take a picture of one of these types of shops – you wouldn’t believe how much stuff can fit into a tiny room), the shopkeeper and my ayi started fighting because it was “open.” By this we mean that the dusty plastic bag – not even real packaging, just a cheap baggie – had been taken off so we could see how it worked. A crowd gathered. I tried to look as innocent as possible (although I couldn’t quite muster up tears) as they fought over the fact that she had overcharged me, I’m a young foreign girl and how would I know which mop to get, etc… So that was a stressful start to my May Day holiday, but the apartment is nearly clean now (although she chose to clean the floor instead with a cloth and bowl of water, rather than just accepting that mop this week; the woman took it back when I got the bag from home on my third trip back and forth at 8 am). I skyped my mom and showed her my place because we finally got internet installed, the sky is blue – factories are closed for the holiday – and I’m hoping to go out sightseeing shortly! Things are always getting brighter!

the stores outside the Buddhist temples nearby

I’ve been looking for a good duvet cover print recently… how about this one? (made of cotton cotton cotton)

 

“good luck” apples… kinda weird, gotta be honest…

free pizza at a grand opening event last weekend; my roommate Rob was disgusted by the fact that it was “aubergine pizza, it should be free!”

cold noodles for lunch yesterday – most street food is prepared on the back of a bike. this one looked particularly clean!