Welcome to the coldest place on Earth!

The Story of You, Part 2.

Jay K.


Ep.29 Welcome to the coldest place on Earth!


[Welcome!]

On the second day in Ha’erbin, we visited Ice Lantern Festival in the evening. ILF is the main tourist attraction of Ha’erbin today. There were marvelous ice castles and ice sculptures. They were so pretty! The whole city was built on ice! If you think about it, it is only possible because the temperature in Ha’erbin is always below “0 Celsius degrees” which means it is freezing. You can see many other beautiful ice sculptures all over the city.

The second day in Ha’erbin was unusually cold, although local people I asked said it wasn’t that cold. I don’t know how people can live there; I guess people can get used to anything. Tourists won’t come to this bitterly cold city if there is no ILF. ILF’s amazing ice city attracts people from all over the place.


[The main shopping street in Ha'erbin, "Zhongyang Dajie"]






[Ice piano! It's so pretty!]


Actually, ILF was more than ice sculptures and buildings. I didn’t know that ILF was organized by Disney. Yes, that Disney with Micky Mouse and other weird animals. There were ice slides, bumping cars and other fun stuff. I felt I was in an amusement park—a very cold amusement park. It was fun to see how very American culture, Disney, intruded into China. However, it wasn’t same. It had very different atmosphere from Disney in the States.

We wondered that ice city about 5 hours. It was really tiring. My camera couldn’t bear the ridiculously low temperature and almost got broken. If I took my gloves for a second, my hands just turned to red and purple. It was literally freezing that night. I was in the happiest, no, coldest place on Earth. However, it was really beautiful, worth visiting.





[Slide]









[The main castle]



[Crazy ice slide... I actually tried this!]









[Chinese clowns.. waiting and smoking]









[The giant Micky]









[Fireworks]







The next day, we visited the Church of St. Sophia. This gorgeous Orthodox Church was built by the Russians in 1907 and restored by the CCP. I saw many churches in the States, but it was very different churches I’ve seen. It was also fascinating to see how this church was standing in the middle of Chinese urban surroundings. The inside of the church was unfortunately a museum of the city of Ha’erbin. It displayed the B/W pictures of the city history, but it wasn’t interesting.

The Church was pretty so I visited it again that night. It was even more gorgeous at night, even colder. I enjoyed taking pictures of the church in the cold weather.



[The Church of St. Sophia]

[The Church at night]

It snowed in the morning. I think all cities are most beautiful in the morning. The city was white—snow white. It was so lovely! Living in California for the last four years, it had been a while since I walked on snow. It’s so fun to walk on snow, so soft and warm!

The city of Ha’erbin, in my memory looking back, is a very cold and icy city, but also a bitterly beautiful city. The city of ice sculptures and snow! The memory of four days and three nights in Ha’erbin will be frozen and left in my brain forever.

Ps. this episode is shorter than others in order to show more pictures to you guys.