What a Day

Saturday.  I woke up at 8:45 to be told by my Chinese suitemate Bingnan (not roommate, Weiqiang, he had to meet with his professor) at 8:50, still lying in bed, that I was leaving at 9:00 to go to the Siberian Tiger Park.  It was the first that I'd heard of it, but that was fine, because, hey who doesn't love tigers.  And apparently you can buy whole chickens to feed directly to the tigers.  If you're willing to shell out the big bucks, then you can even get a whole cow.  Score.

However, we never got there.  After eating breakfast, we walked for about 45 minutes trying to find the right bus stop, which had been moved twice because of subway construction.  The bus would take us clear across the city to the North to the tiger park, all in about 30 minutes or so, according to Bingnan.  The bus was predictably ridiculously crowded because of the change in the route, but it wasn't too big a deal.  The sky was clear and the sun was no longer warm on my neck, but rather the heating coil for our 40-foot oven. 

And then the breeze coming through the windows of the moving bus came to a disconcerting halt.

I have never seen traffic so bad in my life.  On a Saturday at 10:30am no less.  For whatever reason, Harbin's city planners saw fit to only build one automobile bridge across the Songhua River that geographically bisects Harbin.  In a city of 10 million, with 4 million in the city center alone, that is not a good idea.  We were easily more than a 1.5 kilometers away from the bridge, and it was absolute gridlock.  Cars were actually not moving, and the fact that no driver in China really follows any other traffic law than "me first" did nothing to help matters.

We got off the bus, and after being rejected by two cab drivers who didn't want to take us across the river, we decided to head back towards campus and hit up a the provincial museum.  It was a typical Chinese museum, with potentially interesting material that just isn't displayed in an engaging way.  Or even a well-lit way in this case.  We spent most of our time in the natural history section, consisting almost exclusively of taxidermy, which left all but a few of the animals looking either awkward or scared.

After a brief lunch, we headed to Zhongyang Street, Harbin's old-school Russian street that is now a tourist trap of sorts to watch Transformers 2.  (More on the actual movie in another post.)  The movie theater had no air conditioning.  Poor decision, Chinese movie theater.  It was worse than the bus, because there was absolutely no wind, and the movie was about 2.5 hours long.  Not particularly enjoyable.  They also need to learn how to cue people to get into the theater.  They only let you in about 5 minutes before the movie starts, and there are no previews so there's quite a mob waiting to get in, and only one ticket-taker.  The movie was in Chinese though, if that counts anything towards the language pledge.

We then walked around a bit and saw the St. Sophia Cathedral again, which was beautiful, again.  We then walked to Stalin Park (yes, that Stalin), which runs along the Songhua River, to watch the sunset and people watch, which was actually quite nice.  There were also some old men writing wonderful calligraphy on the ground using water and sponge brushes, with complete concentration and indifferent to the world around them.  It was an inspiring sight.

Bingnan and the other two CET students wanted to go eat, so they left before the actual sunset, but Weiqiang and I walked further down the riverbank to a railroad bridge.  We walked halfway across and spent about an hour there talking and taking in the beautiful scenery.  It has got to be without a doubt the most beautiful spot in all of Harbin.  I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Weiqiang and I walked back after the sunset and took in the scenery.  There were the usual peddlers and endless streams of people that make many nice moments in China less enjoyable than they should be.  There were also random performances, including models advertising for wedding styling services, electric guitarist, a saxophone player and even a street organist (never heard of that before).  They were all pretty… meh.  But they inevitably will attract an enormous crowd of Chinese tourists, simply by their mere existence.  It was kind of a nice street, although there were just so many people, and all of the buildings have been refurbished in a sort of tactless way, which was pretty disappointing.

After a quick dinner at one of the only restaurants still open—on a Saturday night at 8:15... Weiqiang and I had to take a taxi back because the last bus ran at 7:30.  Talk about a city closing up early.  The taxi driver was absolutely insane.  He weaved, sped, ran lights, jerked in and out, whizzed by pedestrians, squeezed in between busses and curbs like I've never seen before.  And I've been in quite a few Chinese taxis.  This was the first time I was actually worried.  He also didn't have a working receipt machine and picked up another customer when we got in.  Very sketch, but no one was injured and we got home safely.

All in all, it was an ok day.  Kind of a "bad-China" day, some of which I haven't mentioned here, but that was made up for by the beauty of that sunset. 

Sometimes days like these make me realize how far China has yet to come still.  Not only economically, politically, or technologically, but also culturally and in terms of discernment. 

The contrast between the number of people on the railroad bridge (or at a place like the beautiful but barren Confucian Temple in Beijing, right next to the extremely popular Llama Temple) and the multitudes of people taking endless photos of a mediocre saxophone player on the balcony of a tackily restored version early 1900's building I feel is a great example.  Although Chinese are proud of their heritage, many Chinese are so caught up in the idea of what their development should be like and what they should value that they overlook what they already have of value and who they already are. 

Aspiration and discernment are two very different things.  It's sometimes a question of where or how far ahead you're looking.  If you're too caught up in the road that you think you would like to take that you can't see the one that you're actually on, or you can't see the fork in the road coming up.  Sometimes we need to step back and reevaluate ourselves to see how we should change, and sometimes we need to just be completely present in the moment and comfortable with ourselves.  The difficulty is knowing when and how, and how to bridge that gap.

Sorry guys, it seems I can't write short posts.  I'll try harder next time, I promise.