Winter Traffic

Curiously enough, China's Ice City is not so great at dealing with snow and ice. We recently had some heavy (for here) snowfall and it paralyzed the city for a couple of days. Buses driving busy routes that normally came every 5 or 10 minutes stopped running entirely, others came at much longer intervals than normal, taxis became impossible to find, and horrendous traffic jams made off-rush hour trips that usually took 15 or 20 minutes by bus take an hour or more. It's my second winter here and even though I left for work extra early each day I still barely made it on time, and once not at all! (Pictured above is the tail end of a traffic jam I got stuck in on a bus - it took nearly an hour to go a kilometer and a half. When we finally made it to a bus stop I walked the rest of my way.) So be warned, if you're going to be in Harbin in the winter, bring your winter gear and think about walking to wherever you're going if it's just snowed!