Friday, January 25, 2008

Those Wild Northerners

So we (Hillary and I) have been working for the past couple of days on this Harbin thing. We've been working on it so much, in fact, that I haven't actually done anything of note. Oh! Except I did have my first conversation with a Chinese person. It went (translated) a little something like this:

Me- "I want that. Five."

Chinese Person- "(something incomprehensible) Five?"

Me- "Correct. Five."

And I received five large dumplings on a plate. Success!

I also think I did well on my first test, but I was more excited about the dumpling ordering. Before the test, we played a game in class. I'm not sure I told you about the last game we played, but it involved saying numbers in sequence, and whoever screwed up got extra homework. Really. So after having played a few of Chinese classroom games, I've decided that a great game to invent and sell in the US would be something called "Terrible, Terrible Consequences." In it, you wouldn't receive anything good for doing well, but you would be punished with writing and memorization if you messed up. I think it would sell millions.

Anyway, back to the frozen wasteland that is Harbin. The more research I did, the more magical this place has become, and the more certain I am that, no matter what common sense is thrown at me, I will go there. I have five main reasons.

1. Harbin is basically a Russian town. It's only been Chinese since 1946. So it's sort of like visiting Russia.

2. The Harbin Ice Festival looks AWESOME.



It's a castle made of ice! How can we NOT go?

3. The Harbin Snow Festival also seems cool. There are snowmen. Enormous, enormous snowmen.

4. If I go to Harbin, I'm going to tell everyone I went to Siberia. It's not exactly Siberia, but it's close enough. If people doubt that I went to Siberia, I'll show them a picture of a frozen castle and say that's what the Siberian royalty live in.

5. While I was reading about Harbin, I came across an article that said "in the winter, you can access Sun Island by walking across the frozen river, or you can hire a go-cart to take you across." That's right. Go-cart.

We were originally going to try to get to Harbin by train, but when we ran the idea past Dr. Sun and Dr. Li, they gave us that "oh you silly Americans" look that you get used to if you travel in a foreign country. First, Dr. Li showed us this picture of people getting tickets at the Beijing train station around the time we would be trying to go...


We decided to fly instead.

Then Dr. Sun started telling us about the wild people up North. Here's the example he used (paraphrased):

"The people here... when you talk... when you have a fight, you talk. You talk for a while, and this is how we do things. The people in the North, they will say maybe two sentences and then they will punch each other."

We left the office undeterred, though with the new plan that if we meet an angry Northerner we will run before the second sentence.

3 comments:

Kay said...

You should get in a fight with an angry bearded northerner! And have someone film it! Mostly the part where you will be running away.

Alternatively, you could dress up like a Disney princess and take pictures in front of the Ice Castle (omigosh it looked so beautiful!) for me and Abigail.

I'll let you pick which one.

Abigail said...

JASMINE!!!!

Also, totally go to Harbin. It sounds pretty amazing.

Annie Maura said...

I think Harbin definitely counts as Siberia. That was totally a Russian izba in the foreground.

Congratulations. You can now ask for food.