Harbin - how cold can you go?

Well, it is time to finally get around to posting something again. This is from a couple months ago.

Being from Arizona, one could expect that I would not have a lot of experience with cold. One would be mostly right.

However, I do have some limited experience. Many people who are not from Arizona make the false assumption that the entire state is a hot desert. That is not true. About two-thirds of the state is mountainous, and some of that gets a fair amount of precipitation. Anyone who thinks Arizona can't get cold has never stopped for gas outside of Snowflake in January.

I have also lived in Utah. Northern Utah can get quite cold. I moved from Utah in the middle of the the winter of 1990-1991. The news story at the time was that it was the coldest Utah winter in a hundred years. My brother and I drove down to Arizona in my 1971 VW beetle. Every part of us were freezing except our ankles, which were being slowly roasted. If you have ever had personal experience with a Beetle's pathetic heater, you know exactly what I mean. I really did like that little car, but for the life of me I've never understood why those little crap baskets get so much adulation for their "clever design". "Different" is not necessarily a synonym for "smart". Sometimes car designers do things a certain way for an actual reason. Sometimes, it is just stupid. Powering the windshield washer fluid sprayer by means of your spare tire's air pressure is stupid. Directing the entire heater to blow through a small vent inches from your left ankle is stupid.

In any case, a few hours into the trip, my brother and I had to stop the car to adjust the load on the roof rack. That experience suggests a corollary to my statement about stopping for gas in Snowflake. If you can at all help it, never stop outside of Beaver in January to adjust a load on your roof rack.

Actually, there is one other reason that a person can get surprisingly cold in Arizona, and any of you who are actually from our fair state will totally understand how this works. The reason is this: because you are from Arizona, the land where the sun always shines, you have never bothered to buy a proper coat. Therefore, you are wholly unprepared when you actually need to venture into the true cold.

I was reminded of this about two years ago when we visited Emily in France. Standing in line under the Eiffel Tower in January, dressed in our totally inadequate coats, was just about the most uncomfortably cold I've ever been. And it was only around 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-6 Celsius).

That brings me to my current story. During the week after Christmas, we flew up for a quick visit to Harbin, China. Harbin is a major industrial center and transportation hub in northern China. It is directly north of Korea, and Northwest of Vladivostok, Russia. Because of its proximity to Russia, it has in some respects a distinctively European appearance. Not that we saw much of it, though, because we went for a very specific and limited purpose. Each winter, Harbin holds a huge Ice and Snow Festival of snow sculptures and life-sized ice buildings, lit from within by colored florescent tubes. It is amazing what can be accomplished by an army of workers getting paid no more than three dollars a day.

But for all the fame of the Ice and Snow Festival, there isn't a lot of other reasons to go to Harbin (the Russian Orthodox cathedral is said to be beautiful, but we didn't get the chance to see it). So we made the plan to go quickly, twenty-four hours in and out. The reason for that haste was the cold, and that is what I actually want to write about. There are more pictures on facebook if you are interested.

It was cold. 22 degrees below zero Fahrenheit cold. 30 degrees below zero Celsius cold. Cold like we've never before experienced cold.

We actually came quite well prepared. We bought and borrowed some true cold-weather gear. I do try to (slowly) learn from past experience. Perhaps most importantly, I contracted with a driver to take us around, so that we could get out of the cold whenever we wanted (and didn't have to try to find taxis in the cold and dark, and then try to get two taxis to find and drop all six of us off at the same place).

With all the preparations, it wasn't quite as bad as one would think. By which I mean that we didn't die. I really truly felt fully aware at all times that we were in cold that could literally kill you, and do it quickly.

With the exception of my feet, I was okay. Lee was quite miserable with her hands, but her hands are always cold. I swear that she has no circulation at all in them. The one time that I had my hand out of my glove messing with my camera for too long was a big mistake. I couldn't get it to warm up again for half an hour, at least, and the process was very painful. Lee's camera iced up, and at one point stuck to her cheek. My personal favorite was feeling my nose hairs crackle with ice if I breathed too deeply.

My final verdict? Well, the great ice buildings truly were spectacularly beautiful. I was very, very impressed. We all especially liked the enormous Great Wall of China ice slide. It was around two hundred meters long, it propelled you along at shocking speeds, only to shoot you into a snowbank in the dark. At that point, two Chinese workers would rush in to grab you under the arms, no doubt thinking that they were being helpful, but in reality making one flail in humiliation while you tried to stand up without being able to use your arms.

I would say that the Harbin Ice Festival is a once in a lifetime experience. I mean that it two different ways. First, because it was amazing. Second, because it was so cold that I never want to go back.


A long view, showing a variety of buildings. Many of the sculptures were copies of specific buildings, but I didn't recognize any of these.



Emma, on the steps of an icy facsimile of the Forbidden City.


The Colosseum. Not quite life-sized in this case, but still impressive.



Some visual aids for how cold it was. Note, in particular, the icicles on John's lashes. I'm not sure why we didn't end up with a picture of Emma like this. You might note that we had our special guest Ambra with us for this outing. I hope the look of shock on her face was just her mugging for the camera....


And finally, a shelf of Russian nesting dolls for sale in the Harbin airport. I was sorely tempted, but I was feeling really, really cheap at this point. Plus I didn't really like the selection.

Local Wanderings

Yes, yes. Not much posting lately. Here are some more photos from our Christmas break. These are just from outings and wanderings around Suzhou.

Ambra in China

Here's some photos of our first day out on the town with our visiting friend. Ambra is my former student from Phoenix. If you don't know Ambra, you wish you did. I could tell you great things about her all day long. Among other things, she was the moot court U.S. national champion (oral arguments before actual judges).

But I'm sticking to the basics here. Here we are out in downtown Suzhou.

Construction Scene

I haven't been posting again. Here is a quick entry of a common scene here in China. I can't remember whether or not this is one of my photos, or one I gathered from somewhere else (I've taken several much like this, in any case).

All that glitters is not caulk

As I have written before, entirely too much of my life in China revolves around trying to fix things. First of all, that already is my nature, as I am an obsessive fixer. Second of all, every thing in China needs to be fixed.

This is no country in which to be an obsessive handyman, as I have mentioned ten or twenty times before. Everywhere I turn, something needs done or done right. However, this new item takes the grand championship.

I was walking down a hallway a few days ago. There is a large floor crack that has been covered with a metal threshold. The piece was sticking up well off the floor, so I pulled it off and set it to the side so that no one would trip over it.

I expected that the piece would be held down with caulk. Everything in China is held together with caulk. The only problem is that no one knows how to apply it.

This reminds me that I have a long list of caulk-related photographs that I have intended to post. I will get back to them, even though this particular entry is going to supersede all of them. Other than its general and appropriate uses, I have seen caulk used to do the following: hold down floor tiles, hang pictures, fix pipes, plug wall holes, and on and on. It's as if caulk was the first home-improvement substance they ever learned about, and they think it fixes everything. Caulk is the duct tape of China, except that it is even less useful than duct tape, which is actually only really good for, I don't know, sealing ducts? I was already horrified by how many lame attempts at duct tape repairs I see in America. It is far worse with caulk in China. There are likely to be entire buildings here held up with caulk.

Actually, that last one is a little too close to the truth. I don't like thinking about the construction of Chinese buildings, as I just barely noted in my last post.

Back to the caulk. I see it everywhere, but rarely have I ever seen it applied well. Honestly, I think that half the problem is that the Chinese construction boom is so vast, that anyone who has any legitimate skills and experience already has a job somewhere. The repairs are all left to the unskilled.

Whatever. Back to my story. I pulled up this metal threshold, and then inspected. I'd like you to look closely at the photograph and see what they had used to hold it down. Don't read ahead until you have guessed.



That's right, boys and girls... it was held down with....

GLITTER GLUE! That sparkly decoration that has graced millions of grade school posters!

I really should make more jokes here, but I'm speechless.


I went down the same hallway only 1/2 hour later. I'll say this for Chinese workers, they are prompt. They were already sticking it back down. This time, they were using a hot-glue gun.

I suppose that is better than using duct tape, but maybe that's next.

Maybe we should live in a Yurt

I don't have any time these days. Here's a quick one, borrowing from the efforts of someone else. An apartment building fell over in Shanghai. Link here.

Pray for us that there is never an earthquake.

My New Favorite Book

Some months ago I found a book in the school library. The Longman's Visual Dictionary of Chinese is a treasure trove of laughs. I tried to find my own copy on the internet, but to know avail. So I have instead scanned a number of pages, and I will share them with you, dear reader, whenever I feel like it.

The pages cover almost an amazing range of topics. Some are absurdly specific. Most are useless. To say more would be to deprive you of the joy of discovery, so you will just have to wait until I make a new post. If, however, are visiting a Chinese machine shop anytime soon, and really need to know how to say "geared headstock" or "wheel flange" anytime soon, just let me know.

In the meantime, I will start with a page that teaches you necessary vocabulary that is much closer to home: underwear and baby clothes.




Now as you can see, there is a wide variety to choose from. All appear extremely uncomfortable. By the way, this book was published in Hong Kong in 1997, which was the year of the handover from Great Britain. I suspect that they just recycled pictures from some older book, however there are a few pages that almost appear to be calculated insults of the mainland Chinese as backwards and provincial. More on that later. The resolution on the page is good enough to see all the illustrations and text clearly if you click on the image. I will highlight just two.

This was my personal pick for "most uncomfortable looking underwear" (unless it is number 13). In fairness, I would hazard a guess that no one in China under the age of 75 is wearing anything remotely similar.




Now if the picture above looks like something Medieval, what you see below is actually still widespread in China. "Widespread", of course, is a very bad pun in this case, because that is exactly the pose in which you see a whole lot of Chinese toddlers, as their mothers hold them over gutters, tree wells, and sometimes the middle of the sidewalk. Sometimes the toddlers just decide to take care of business on their own schedule. A friend of ours got peed on by a little boy standing in a shopping cart next to her in line at a store.




Disposable diapers are for sale in the stores these days. They probably remain too expensive for most Chinese. If you want proof that bare baby butts are still a common sight in China, here is a photo for you. In case you are wondering, the front of those pants is just as wide open as is the back.



Occasionally, I feel guilty for taking surreptitious pictures of people, but they certainly don't have any compunction about doing it to us, so I guess it is all fair.

Finally, this one reminds me of another little saying we have around here: "China doesn't have a five-second rule".

Think about it.