January 2012 trip to Harbin

January 2012 trip to HarbinAfter Chinese New Year, it’s time for some new year’s resolutions. So after 6 months of slothful neglect of the Changchun blog, I’m getting back on the wagon. I think the problem is you see so much crazy stuff; it’s hard to know what to write about. The craziness begins to take on an air of normalcy. Strange, but true.


So we went to Harbin last week for a couple of days with 5 other families (1 French, 1 Bulgarian, and 3 German). 27 of us in all. The stouts wanted to go back to the tiger park to try our hand at feeding the tigers again, but the others were not up for it. So we went to the Snow Park and ice park like last year. It was a good time. Of course the naked ‘man challenge’ came out and the next thing you know my chest hair (all 3 of them) were so brittle they were falling off my chest. I also think the -30 weather added a few pounds to my frame.


Of course we ran into some other expats who went to the tiger park while we were at the ice park. They ordered the goat, (I was jealous) although they said they would not do it again. With the chicken, it flaps its wings and then it’s dead. With the goat, they actually have to push it out of its cage. Well the goat is self aware enough to know that bad things are about to happen outside of that cage. The expat family said it was horrible looking into the eyes of this poor goat that was kicking like mad trying to stay in the cage while the worker was trying to get him out. Finally the goat lost the battle and he became a front and rear ½ of a goat pretty quickly. They said they actually had nightmares after watching this. Maybe I’ll stick to chickens.


We only spent one night in the hotel, but I learned a new German tradition. The absache. (spelling?) The last drink of the night. When you’re done for the day and ready for bed, you get together for the absache. Of course at 11 pm in Harbin, there was no bar open so we had to improvise. It took awhile but we finally realized that the hotel rooms had a mini bar. Out came a few bottles of Heineken and the absache was on. Now I’m not sure if it counted, as the Germans were pretty adamant that Heineken is not real beer since it comes from the Netherlands, but they were willing to pretend for the sake of the group. The best part of the story was after 30 minutes of standing in the hallway finishing our absache; a Chinese woman came out of her room and told us to keep it down as she couldn’t sleep. I have to say it was the first time a Chinese person called me out for being rude. It was an interesting moment of having the shoe on the other foot.


The next day we decided to make a starbucks run before we headed back to Changchun (where the local coffee shop owner is good friends with the authorities and have prevented starbucks from coming to our hometown of 8 million people). It was quite a funny Changchun reunion. Several of the kids teachers were there and another group of expats. Altogether there were about 40-50 Chanchun folks packed into this starbucks. The Chinese customers also waited in line for the most part. 1 guy tried to cut to the front of the line in front of me and the waitress told him to go to the back of the line. (My jaw dropped on that one). He persisted until I elbowed him in the head. I wasn’t too proud of that move, but it was surprisingly effective. The shoe was back on the proper foot.