Harbin Ice and Snow World

I'll have to come back to organize and make captions, but here are a bunch of pictures from the huge ice sculptures for the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival. The actual event doesn't start for a little while, but this sculpture park seems finished and there are hundreds of sculptures large and small, in all stages of development, across the city.

We were there wandering around for a good hour and a half. Pretty damn cold at about negative 3 or 4 F. Notice the one yellow building way up on top of a hill. I don't know if they built the hill for this purpose, but there was a big double toboggan run. We didn't go because it was too cold to wait in line, but it looked like a blast. At the end of it they had a big snow ramp to shoot you up in the air to lose speed, then you slide (or tumble in some cases) back down.

Tell me if you recognize some of the structures. I think I recognized Notre Dame for example, Cinderella's Castle, the Forbidden Palace, and the blue temples are supposed to be the temples that guard a very famous area outside of Beijing, called Honjo (sp?). Anyway, let me know if you recognize any and I'll mark in the captions.

I Learned to Ski in China

Wei's cousin, me, Wei, another cousing in-law, and her daughter.

Of all the places to learn to ski, I happened to learn to ski in China, thanks to Wei's very generous cousin, Weng Meng Sheng, who we refer to as 'jiefu,' basically, 'my older sister's husband.' Like a cousin in America. In this part of China, cousins are referred to as brothers and sisters, though in some other parts, Wei thinks maybe the South, cousins would use a different word. Regardless, it's all based on the fact that every relationship has a hierarchy in Chinese culture, so each different position in the family, everywhere for that matter, has a rank, roughly by age.

Anyway we had a blast! Of all the things we've done in China, this will be one of the most memorable. I think of it as a "New China" kind of thing. The experience, including the hour and a half through the countryside, ranks up there with meeting Wei's family members, and a tea tasting that I should be able to write about shortly.

We both learned to ski, but I fell less (ha!). Anyway, it's true we never went all the way to the top, but we weren't just on the bunny slopes either. I made it down a couple times without falling, with some good speed, and mostly going in the direction intended. I recommend that Wei find an instructor who only speaks Hindi. Not understanding your instructor, or possibly the other way around, seems to help. I could understand only a few words that my instructor was saying, but it was fine and he didn't stop trying to talk to me, so I caught something every now and then. For the most part, "No" and "That's right" (dui or "dway" with a slight 'u' after the 'd') came in handy and suited us just fine. The "no" when spoken by him usually came within a long string of them. Such as "Ohhh, noooo no no no no" when I started to do a split or some other action disastrous to my fertility, or possibly his.

At first I could only turn to the right for some strange reason. I tried and tried to get my weight over the left foot and pivot, but all I did was gain speed....toward the fence. It didn't take long to run out of room so I had to figure something out. Mostly by accident, I discovered that speed was the answer. With some speed, it became much easier to pivot the ski, and easier to change directions in general. And so the rest is history. Mammoth Mountain here we come!

Which way to go?

Ah, that makes much more sense...

Somehow we made it. Helps to have a good driver from the company jiefu works at.
Nice little place to learn to ski. It even has a snow boarding bowl in the middle there.

Wei prepares for battle with Old Man Winter.

One small step up from the bunny slope.

Lin Hai and I (If it doesn's ryme, you're saying his name wrong, sorry.)

Bringing in the Year of the Bull

We went here before the 31st, but I had to include this here since it's so amazing. A few days before the 31st, jiefu took us to the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival sculpture garden. It's really more of an urban jungle since everything in the background is, in fact, bigger than most buildings in Santa Barbara or State College, and made of nothing but ice and light bulbs. More on that in another post, hopefully.

For New Year's Eve we went to bofu's house again. He is the "grandfather figure" who gave me the eagle scroll shown in a previous post. (Wei would call him "yifu" which means "mom's older sister's husband" but though I could use the same term, I use bofu now, which means roughly "uncle," however I referred to Wei's dad's closest friends, or usually those older or senior to him, in the same way, literally it's "dad's older brother" . See next note about hierarchy...

Anyway it was bofu's 85th birthday so we made dumplings and had a birthday dinner. We get along great, probably since we were both born in the year of the Rat.

And they corrupted me by showing me how to play majiang (Americans spell it Mahjong). And since bofu is the *real* dumpling shifu, I received some more training in that department. Of course we cooked them up and ate most of them shortly after.

Afterward we were going to go see the snow sculptures that we missed the other night, but instead we went to a rather interesting "dinner and performance" on a Russian themed island in the Song Hua River running through Harbin. That particular experience will require it's own post, which I hope to get to later.


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Majiang ready to go.

Believe it or not, that's a winning hand above. Let's see if I get this right. Essentially: You start with 13 cards, unless you are the house, in which case you have 14 and you get paid double if you win. You choose a card from the deck or the discard of the person just before you (called "eating" their card). In the deck there are three types of cards: circular symbols, stick symbols, and the Chinese number characters, all from 1 to 9.

To win, you need three of a kind in any type, plus three more sets that are either a three-card straight or three of a kind, one from each of the three types, and finally a pair of any type. So that's 4 sets required to win. And there's a card that works as a wild card when it's paired, its the symbol for zhong, or "center." In addition, you need either a 1 or a 9 as part of your hand to win. And when you pick up the final card to win, you will have 14 cards in your winning hand.

The hand above wins because it has a straight in three types (One set for each type: sticks--tiao, round symbols--bing, and number characters--wan. Note that the bird--or phoenix, female symbol for a dragon--is the same as a "one tiao" card.), three of a kind in wan (which also satisfies the requirement to have a 1 or a 9), and a pair of fours in tiao. One thing that made the game difficult for me to pick up in the first few rounds is that while the player turn rotation goes counter clockwise the picking of cards from the deck goes clockwise. Plus it moves *very* fast. And stalling seems to be frowned upon, even among family. No slackers allowed, apparently. :-)

Can any of you card hacks out there tell me which American card game that this most closely resembles? I don't know cards well enough to say, but it seems to play the same role that pinochle did at my dad's mother's table. Anyway I recall "playing" mahjong on old Mac computers. Now I finally know that I had no idea what I was doing.

The real dumpling Shifu, teaching me to "boa jiao zi" or "wrap dumplings."

Jiao Zi Making or, Dumpling Making

My first experience with dumpling making. Let's recount the things I did wrong in this video and in other attempts. 1) supposed to do the first fold from inside to out, 2) always start pinching from the edges first (though I did it right in the video, not later), 3) too much filling, 4) not enough filling, 5) no squeezing the filling out as you are pinching, 6) I had NO idea how to do the final squeeze and shape at the end, 7) no big huge ears allowed (though they come in handy for dipping later I tried to point out), and 8) dumpling must stand up when you set it down, even after watching Shi Fu, "The Master," next to me. It's a wonder the real Master, her mom, let me keep making little "ugly dimplings."

I point out, however, none of them opened up during boiling the next morning, not even mine. Still, as dumpling making is a microcosm of China: There is much to learn.

Now watch Shi Fu.

Harbin is Cold

The piano was functional. Electronic, but otherwise like a regular piano.

Did I mention that Harbin is really really cold? Tenth largest city, but probably the coldest. I just noticed today on the map that Harbin is actually north of Vladivostok, waaaay north. Wei's mom has us dressed up like the Michelin man, or Mĭ-cί-lίn (Mee-chee'-leen') as they say here, but we're still freezing. Actually I feel more like Ralphie's little brother in that movie "A Christmas Story," unable to move my arms and legs except in whole body rotational motions... At least the cold makes for some good ice sculptures. And any coffee tastes great, though it was pretty good regardless.

Cute little foam hearts in the capp. All the usual touches.

The Venus de Milo

Making Monsieur Rodin proud.

Forbidden City

No trip to Beijing, or China for that matter, would be complete without a visit to the Palace Museum, better know as the Forbidden City. So we headed over there on our first day in the city. Naturally the front gate is adorned with a huge picture of "The Beloved," which is replaced with a fresh copy every year. Inside the first gift shop, in the Gate of Supreme Harmony, they had many different likenesses of Mao at various points in his life that you could purchase. In there I couldn't help but notice that his mole had grown from his youth to old age. And the only reason I mention it is that this particular feature is only faintly portrayed in the visage above. You might say Beijing has gone every so slightly Hollywood.

Wei and I outside the gate.

A more full picture of the gate.

One pretty cool thing that we happened upon was the lowering of the flag. The honor guard marches out from pretty far within the Forbidden City, so we followed them with a bunch of other people, but we got to be right behind and next to them. They weren't always perfectly in step, but they did sing some good songs. Then we had to run out around them to be in Tienanmen Square when they came out and the flag was lowered and stuffed into the flag pole.

You can read more about the Forbidden City at this link http://www.beijingtrip.com/attractions/forbidden/ . I've attached a few pictures of our visit below.

I think this is the main throne. Couldn't get a good picture inside the dark hall.

I believe this picture is from the most important gate, or hall. It's importance can be gauged by the number of "beasts" riding the corners of the eves. There are twelve figures in this picture, but I think one of them is the driver.

That's one tough looking turtle.

And of course no important monument, or gate to a residence, or street corner for that matter, would be complete without heavy-duty looking guards. I think these guys are regular army, but in Beijing they mostly all wear the same green heavy over coats and big fuzzy hats this time of the year.

Internet Access Update

I should update my previous entry on internet access.  It's still definitely varied, mostly according to website, but also just according to simple access problems.  Beijing was, understandably, the best so far.  I could access almost all sites we were looking for like weather sites, my.yahoo.com, The New York Times (at least before the 19th), we could even get the All Things Considered web feed from NPR....except, oddly, the Wall Street Journal.  But now I can access that in Dalian.  But the radio feed can be spotty, perhaps just a bandwidth thing.

Time to get out of the hotel.  And it's a light dusting of snow outside so Wei's happy we'll be at an inside (and underground) shopping mall.