Harbin Metro: Opening of Line 3

The Harbin Metro's Line 3 is finally open!

...but as of now only two of the stations are open.

Line 3 will eventually make a ring around central Harbin, but for now the only stations open are at its southern crossover with Line 1, the Harbin West Railway Station, and one station in between the two.

While it'll be of limited usefulness for now, Line 3 certainly is all shiny and pretty! Here's to hoping more of its stations open soon!

Zhaolin Park Ice Festival 2017

The south entrance to Zhaolin Park this winter. Every year the Park features incredible ice sculptures as part of the Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival. The entrance fee is ¥150 (about US$22) and well worth it!

The inner gate at the south entrance to the Zhaolin Park Ice Festival.

Looking back towards the inner gate. This year the walkway featured plaques with the history of Harbin's Ice and Snow Festival.

The skill and diversity of the ice sculptures featured at Zhaolin is just incredible!

There were two or three ice sculptures featuring dolphins, but this was my favorite...

Dancers - simple, yet elegant.

I believe this depicts a character from Chinese opera.

An ice sculpture of a Kazakh eagle hunter!

Some of the sculptures were simple, others (like the one pictured above) were quite complex.

There were some ice sculptures depicting cartoon characters, but I definitely wasn't expecting to see something from Alien!

Seriously so much gorgeousness!

One of the smaller entryways to the park. A lot of the more monumental ice structures at Zhaolin Park were beautiful homages to classical Chinese architecture, something sadly not seen in most Chinese cities today...

Chinese New Year 2017

Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快樂! I hope this Year of the Cock brings you prosperity and happiness! This is my first Chinese New Year actually spent in the PRC as I usually use all the time off work to travel, and I must say the fireworks going off all over everywhere were pretty impressive! I was just at the point where I didn't think any more loud noises could make me jump when fireworks started exploding right outside my window, and I'll tell you what, they made me jump! More than a little crazy, but also very cool...

What was less cool was how our air - which amazingly had been in the 60s and 70s by the Chinese scale all day - in the space of a few hours got to this. The fireworks were incredible and I was touched by the love behind all the joss paper-burning that happened last night, but I can't help wondering if only having a couple of big city-organized fireworks shows and limiting the joss paper inferno to temples or a handful of locations citywide might not be healthier (not to mention safer!).

The Simpsons in Harbin

I just never know what I'm going to run into here! On Sunday it was The Simpsons apparel store at Zhongyang Avenue's Euro Plaza mall!

The Funny Papers

My apartment complex put some jokes on the elevator doors in my building! If even just half of these were followed - honestly, if just the no smoking sign were followed! - it'd make such a difference!

2017: Year of the Coughing Chicken

I was able to get away from the PRC around Christmastime and Harbin welcomed me back with some gorgeously blue, clear (for here) skies...and then settled back into this. The air pollution seems to hovering in the upper 100s and low 200s, with a few days up near 500 on the Chinese scale. This will be my first Chinese New Year in China, and I'm told the pollution will only get thicker as we get closer to the holiday thanks to all the joss paper-burning and fireworks that happen around the holiday...