Hello everybody and welcome to this week's edition of the newsletter! :D

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Available on Libsyn, Spotify, Apple, and YouTube!

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Back in Beijing and enjoying the relatively warmer winter temperatures.

A week in Harbin gave us a lot to work with for the channel! Not only that, since YouTube has extended its Shorts length, we tried out a few videos that hit the new length of around three minutes.

As a result, this week’s newsletter (and accompanying podcast) will be about the trip to Harbin so that those who’ve never been and may be thinking of coming to China, can learn a little bit about what goes on there and if it’s even worth going. (Spoiler: Yes, it is.)

With that, let’s look at this week’s videos:

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This week's videos:

1. SHORT: At Chaoyang Railway Station in Beijing
2. SHORT: On the Beijing Subway Line 10
3. SHORT (3 min): Walking around Harbin
4. SHORT (3 min): At the Harbin Ice & Snow World
5. SHORT (3 min): At St. Sofia in Harbin, China
6. SHORT: Good Morning from Harbin!
7. SHORT (3 min): At the Harbin International Snow Carving Exhibit
8. SHORT: How much Chinese do you need to know to travel in China?

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The first two videos published in the week were about taking the train and subway in Beijing. Beijing has several train stations - Beijing Station, Beijing West, Beijing North, and now, Chaoyang… and one other not as major station up in Changping - so, if you’re ever in the city, be sure to confirm which station you need to go to.

Knowing which station to go to isn’t too difficult as certain stations are dedicated to certain types of trains, be them overnight trains, old high speed trains, and newer high trains.

Beijing West and Chaoyang are primarily high speed train stations (高铁 / 复兴). These are the trains that zip along 300+ kms/hr across the nation. Beijing West serves much of the Western and Southern part of the country, while Chaoyang serves the Northeast.

Beijing Station is where the vast majority of sleeper trains (or slow trains) arrive, particularly those that are long distance, eg, from the south of China or even the famous Trans-Siberian Railway train from Moscow.

Beijing North would have sleeper trains from around the country and some high speed trains, too, and seems to have been built primarily to deal with the overflow from the original Beijing Station.

That being said, all train stations would have some sort of high speed train capability, though there is a difference between the D, K and G trains. 

D and K trains are technically “high speed”, but were high speed ten to fifteen years ago.

G trains are the ones that zip along at 330 km/hr or so.

The newer 复兴 (fu xing) trains are the ones that go even faster, but are usually reserved for shorter distances, ie Beijing to Tianjin or Shanghai.

The one video we posted this week about riding the Beijing subway was in response to one viewer’s desire to know what it is like to take the subway in the city. Line 10 is a common line to take, especially if going to the airport or one of the train stations. It circles the whole city so you can’t really go wrong taking it.

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The next series of videos we posted throughout the week dealt with being in Harbin.

I’ve been to Harbin a few times before, both for work and for play. The first time I went to Harbom was for the Snow and Ice Festival ten years ago during my first winter holiday break while teaching at a university. It was also the first trip that I experienced a Chinese winter in that I got off the train at Shenyang, felt the cold, walked around to get some extra clothes then got back on the train to go to Dalian. Eventually I’d end up in Harbin and still want warmer clothing.

So, what’s this Snow and Ice Festival and is it worth it?

First, the name of the festival or exhibit or fair is 哈尔滨国际冰雪节, but that name refers to both the snow sculpture competition AND the time of year that the festival takes place in the city. The snow sculptures are in a different venue (and different ticket price) from the 哈尔滨冰雪大世界, which is the place where all of the ice sculptures are lit up with lights at night.

These two big theme parks are in addition to the original location of the snow and ice display that took place at Zhaolin Park in central Harbin back in the 1980s, but the city seems to have held an annual winter festival even before that.

Tickets for the ice sculptures were about 360 RMB, while tickets for the snow sculptures were about 190. Entrance to Zhaolin Park is free.

In addition to the two large theme parks, there is also a smaller festival of sorts that takes place on the SongHua River, but I’m not sure if it costs money to enter or just to participate in the rides, etc. that are featured in that area.

Moreover, there is also the Polar Exhibit hosted in a dedicated aquarium dedicated to polar animals, namely whales, polar bears, and penguins. This ticket costs 190 RMB but, in my honest opinion, seemed to be more about spectacle than about education or learning about the animals and their habitats. The word “circus performance” comes to mind with its Russian dancers, loud music, boisterous announcer, and prize giveaways. The animals played a minor role in each performance. 

However, in the other theme parks, cold, snow and ice were the order du jour.

First, the Ice and Snow Festival consisted of a park’s worth of large sculptures that depicted famous buildings and monuments from around Asia. Why Asia? Because this year Harbin is also set to host the 9th Annual Asian Winter Games so they decided to pool together and mark the occasion.

These sculptures included Temple of Heaven from Beijing, the Singapore Merlion, the Schwe Dagon Pagoda in Myanmar, in addition to others further afield such as Qatar’s football stadium.

The park also hosted a massive ice slide and a ferris wheel, both of which required registration (only 1200 permitted per hour) but we were unsuccessful in getting tickets. (Actually, I was able to secure a reservation but the girlfriend and her family weren’t able to, so I decided against going. Besides, I wanted to see the sculptures rather than wait in line.)

The snow sculptures in the other park were just as huge, if not bigger. The snow sculpture exhibit prides itself not just on the “small” cubes of carved snow, but of football stadium-sized carvings that take a while to walk across.

So, overall, we spent our time and money to view a bunch of snow balls and ice cubes carved into a bunch of different shapes and stacked on top of each other.

Was it worth it?

YES! 

The Harbin Snow and Ice Festival isn’t just talked about in China, it’s reached epic international proportions too and draws visitors from around the world. And these days, visitors from outside the country can attain a short term visa so they can hop from Beijing to Harbin pretty easily and take it all in.

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Our final short this week was answering a question that I get asked from time to time: How much Chinese do you need to know in order to TRAVEL through the country?

The answer is: not much, but it helps.

If you stick to the big cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, possibly Shenzhen, then you won’t have too much of a problem navigating without knowing Chinese.

However, if you want to go to other places such as Harbin, Tianjin, Xi’an, Chengdu, these might require a bit more Chinese to navigate on the streets IF you don’t have a map in your language on your phone (and internet service).

To be sure, many if not all of the airports and train stations in China are written both in Chinese and English.

The basic Chinese I tell people in the video includes “这个多少钱？” (zhège duōshǎo qián?) Which means “How much is this?”

This, of course, is an addendum to the regular polite expressions such as 你好，谢谢，and 再见. I’ll let you look those up.

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Quite the series of videos posted this week so we’ll leave it there!

We’re heading into the Spring Festival season here in China so you might think we’re taking some time off. Well, after being to Canada and to Harbin, I think I’ve had enough “time off” so to speak, but my video editor will be taking her break… which means you get to see my editing style! :D

Comments? Questions? Concerns? Suggestions? Get in touch! We'd love to hear from you! You can email us here or follow us on YouTube and post a comment, we'll get back to you!

Thanks for reading and let us know if there's anything we can help you with!

-Steve

YOUTUBE