Harbin: First Impressions

After spending about a week in Harbin, the icebox of China, I feel ready to give some first impressions of the place.  I haven't fallen in love with the city yet, with its ice-encrusted sidewalks and short daylight hours.  To be fair, it's been an unusual week on the campus of the university where I'm staying, the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), as almost all of the students are gone on break, returned home to celebrate the Lunar New Year with their families.  The dusty, empty campus pathways combined with the almost constant ruckus of new years fireworks going off in other parts of the city has made for a pretty strange atmosphere.

I'm sure that campus will spring to life once the students arrive, and I am especially excited to meet the American CET program students for whom I will serve as RA in the coming months... they arrive next week. 

The city livens up considerably once off-campus and the more tourist-oriented areas in downtown are especially buzzing with activity.  People walk along the cobbles of the pedestrian-only Zhongyang Street dressed in parkas and Russian style fur hats, shopping and taking note of the early 20th century buildings.

These buildings were all built after 1898, when construction of a new railroad put Harbin on the Trans-Siberian Railway.  In the early 20th century, people from Russia, Japan, Poland, Ukraine and other countries started moving to and investing in the city.  The buildings that used to house the banks, restaurants, mansions, schools, churches, synagogues and mosques remain in downtown Harbin today, but most of them are now devoted to selling kitsch mementos and food to tourists, profiting off of the heavy foot traffic. 

I was a little surprised by the fact that commercial interests had taken such a firm grip on the area... in a neighborhood of such historical value, shouldn't there be an interest in turning some of these buildings into museums?  Or, at least, shouldn't it feel a little less like a huge shopping district?  I was also surprised by the lack of information available on the various buildings of this district of Harbin.  Each prominent building had a plaque, explaining in one or two sentences in Chinese and error-filled English the most important facts of its history-- what the building's function had been, when it was built-- but with otherwise no information. I suppose it's likely I could have found some kind of pamphlet in a tourism office.

I came across what had once been a Jewish secondary school built by Harbin's considerable Jewish Community in 1918.  Interestingly, it now functions as a middle school for Harbin's Korean residents, as well as a Steinway store selling pianos. 

I also stumbled upon a mosque in the area, built in 1906 and renovated at various points.  It now looks rather run-down, and isn't open to visitors.

I also visited the Saint Sophia Cathedral, probably Harbin's most famous tourist site.  The church was built in 1907, and somehow managed to survive destruction during the Cultural Revolution.  It was completely surrounded by high-rise buildings and factories during much of the Communist period, making it invisible to casual passersby.  In the 90s the government decided it was a piece of significant cultural heritage and tore down the surrounding buildings.  Now the church is a museum detailing the early history of Harbin.

 

Other old churches in Harbin continue to be used for worship.  The St Alekseyev Church, built in the 1930s, is used by some of Harbin's Catholics today.

Most recently I've had time to check out the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival.  I didn't know what to expect, and didn't want to get my hopes up (how cool could a bunch of ice and snow sculptures really be?), but the festival turned out to be quite a feat of imagination and scale.  It takes place on an island in Harbin's Songhua river.  When I first arrived, the sun was hanging low in the sky, about to set over the completely frozen-over river, and the golden hour light gave the icy buildings and sculptures an eerie, otherworldly beauty.

Once the sun went down colored lights inside and around the buildings were turned on, giving the place a different kind of atmosphere... in some ways I almost preferred the white-blue simplicity of the ice in the daylight, but the lights were fun too I suppose.

Thanks for reading!