Harbin: The beginning of the craziest journey of my life

Temple of Confucios

I live and study in China, doing my master in a northern city of the once-called Celestial Empire. The city bears a nickname "Ice City", for its long and cold winter. It’s official name is Harbin, originated from Man minority’s language.
That finally was a time when all, excluding Chinese, new year holidays and parties went by, but vacation just began. Chinese winter holidays in universities usually last for quite a long time, mainly depend on when they begin - again that depends upon each university and its exams - so for me that was almost two months, January and February.
I've been studying here already for five months, but I made up my mind not to go home on this vacation. Instead of going home, my mum decided to come to visit me in China. I was positively glad to see her here.
Before she came here, I had planed a journey for her and us. She had about 16 days in China. And that was a rather difficult road for her to come from Saint-Petersburg (the city I approximately am from). She had a flight with three stops, and needed to change an airplane once. Saint-Petersburg -> Barnaul -> Irkutsk -> Blagoveshensk -> Harbin.

Astonishing it was, but when I met her at airport, she was not as tired as I supposed.
The first day was a day we saw a sculpture contest in front of the main building of my university:

Buddha, Harbin Engineering University snow sculpture contest 2010

The head. By Russkies

This sculpture really makes you scared.

Zhongguo: World of China

That's interesting, I met them many times on my way, until I saw a real one

The winner of contest. Made by people from Thailand. The Giant

By Chinese

By British

The second day we went to a temple of Confucius (文廟), situated nearby my university.

The main entrance

文廟

櫺星門

櫺星門 and snowman

櫺星門, snowman and Mama

孔子

Bell

Drum

大成殿: The Palace of Big Achievement

Then, the same day, we went to the main pedestrian street in Harbin.
中央大街: Zhong Yang Dajie

Zhong Yang Dajie

Harbin 2010

Ice minicastle

Ice tree looks nice

冰糖葫芦: Chinese lollipop

Bike with huge gloves included

Chinese vehicle

Harbin: Sofia

Harbin: nice illumination of the city

中央大街

The third day was a day I showed my mum a sauna. The good place in Harbin, head of which is friend of mine.

Name of sauna I will never remember

Korean sauna

Foot massage

Burnt

Pricelist

Sauna: relaxing after Chinese traditional massage

Then we ate huoguo (火锅 or Hot pot). We haven't even eaten a half of what we ordered, as we were really stuffed. The rest we didn't eat we daizoule (带走了).

Meal for Hot pot

Eating raw meet

Next morning. Just going to shop, buying simplest goods also might be interesting and very unusual thing, when you are new in China.
家乐福

Carrefour

Rotten eggs

Wines and baijiues　白酒

with fishes in Carrefour

Fish in Carrefour

Really friendly people they are, Chinese.

Baker's

The rest of the day we decided to spend on both good for health and interesting pastime. Ice-skating. Coz' Harbin's kind climate allows you to do it sometimes, really
Ghanaian friend Alex joined us. That was his first experience and also a big fun, indeed.

...

A lot of fun

Ice-skating

Skating!!!

On the way to skating-rink , we met Mao. Actually, that was not a skating-ring, but just a frozen canal behind the building of a dormitory I live in.

With 毛 Mao

That evening Alex invited us to his place, and we had opportunity to play 古筝(guzheng), a plucked half-tube zither with movable bridges and 21 strings.

Mom playing guzheng 1

Mom playing guzheng 2

Mom playing guzheng 3

Playing guzheng

古筝

我们会吉他

With new Ghanaian friends

Harbin is most famous for its beautiful display of ice sculptures in winter.

The annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival has been held since 1985. While there are ice sculptures throughout the city, there are two main exhibition areas: Enormous snow sculptures at Sun Island (a recreational area on the opposite side of the Songhua River from the city) and the separate "Ice and Snow World" that operates each night. Ice and Snow World features illuminated full size buildings made from blocks of ice. Snow carving and ice and snow recreations are world famous.

On February 19 we decided to go there and see this world's miracle. That was the second time for me going there, since our university brought us there for free half a month ago. That's flipping cold there, but, anyways, that's world must-see. Fortunately, on my second visit that was not as cold as first time - about -25, instead of -35. Yeah...

Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival

(:

Harbin Beer

Yak

Empire State Building made of Ice

View and me

I don't know what it is

Oh

Welcome to World Exposition, Shanghai Expo 2010

Ice Colosseum

Ice Colosseum entrance

Some Chinese beauty

Me playing chess

Mom in an ice tunnel

In the ice tunnel

In labyrinth 2

In labyrinth

What's that a vehicle?

Oscar Ice Statue

Light-flower

Mom

The bell and me

Chinese stupid pose

Serious pose

Tower

Snow vehicles

View on Ice village

Harbin famous (in Harbin) beer 哈尔滨啤酒

iBig buddha

Big buddhas

Some another Ice palace

On the last but one day in Harbin we met with my supervisor and his wife. She's chancellor of departure of Foreign Languages of my university, teaching Russian language. And that's why she speaks really good Russian. That was a fine day, nice meal and good conversation.

妈

张国印,妈妈, 陈岩

My supervisor, me, mom, 陈岩

Harbin Engineering University

Me and mummy

That was a really good time in Harbin, and time for us to leave this cold city. Time to continue our journey. To begin to feel new places. Yeah...