Untold Story: 154 days in China #18

Studying while enjoying chilling autumn, freezing winter

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Finally, it’s time to share about HARBIN!! Yeah!

We went to Harbin with our school as a winter vacation at the end of semester. We went there on mid-Jan (15-21 January 2014).

** January 15^th, 2014 **

We took a Z15 train (I think it was a soft sleeper carriage with two levels of bed, cmiimw). So there were four beds on my carriage.

It departed at 9pm and arrived at Harbin at 7am the next day.

** January 16^th, 2014 **

We arrived at Harbin on 16 January, and went to have our breakfast at KFC lol. Then continued our journey to Yichun by bus and took around four hours journey.

This was the portrait when we had our breakfast at KFC (I wore double winter coats as some said Harbin is extremely cold so I was afraid, and it turned out I looked so terrible HAHA, pardon my sleepy pale face).

Yichun is located in the northeast part of Heilongjiang province, while Harbin is the capital and largest city which is located in southern of Heilongjiang province.

After the four hours journey, we finally arrived at Yichun and got lunch first.

This is the view from the hotel we stayed. Thick snow was everywhere. And yes, this is my first time experiencing snow!

As for the first day, there were not too much activities and places to visit. It was only a formal opening ceremony of our winter vacation and ended with releasing sky lantern which is known as Kongming lantern.

Kongming lantern is made of wire or bamboo bottom frame, the above and then stick to the paper, the end of small top, to avoid hot air loss. The middle of the basement placed a simple oil paper, lit after the hot air inside the cold air than the outside, so it will rise slowly.

I forgot what I wrote on the lantern or maybe I didn’t write anything LOL.

Pardon for the poor image which I took at that time. It was extremely freezing cold and I hardly took off my glove as the cold weather would haunt your finger hahaha.

In such a freezing cold weather, it could drain our battery really fast. So make sure to bring more batteries haha..

These images were taken with my phone camera.

Even my hair and eyelashes were frozen, so you can imagine how cold it was!

Done with my first day at Yichun.

** January 17^th, 2014 **

Second day at Yichun, we went to Tangwanghe District. So, we spent our second day for exploring this district.

First activity was Dragon Boat Race and continued with Tug of War.

Unfortunately I didn’t take any picture at all for documentation. Maybe I was just too excited to cheer up my team hahaha. You can directly google it to find out what Dragon Boat Race is hehehe.

It’s a special and interesting Dragon Boat Race on the ice. So they were provided with an ice stick to row instead of paddle.

Finished with the competition, we went for lunch to fuel up our tummy and then continued to the tourist attraction in there, Tangwanghe Stone Forest Scenic Area.

There was white thick snow all over.

At that time when we climbed the stairs, it was snowing, but only a little bit snowing. Actually I really wish I could see the heavy snowfall, but the light snowfall is satisfying enough, at least I’ve seen it LOL.