Old Railway Bridge

I've been passing this lovely old bridge near the top of Zhongyang Avenue for years now, and I had no idea that it was a pedestrian walkway and not a working railway bridge!

I visited the bridge on a holiday, so it was a little crowded. (This photo doesn't do that statement justice, there were sections that were quite packed.)

A train crossing the Songhua on the new railway bridge.

The lovely little park along the old train tracks on the other side of the bridge. It felt fairly new, especially in the stretches with gaping holes waiting for trees to go in!

A look up the river with its melting ice floes and hazy Songbei shoreline. (As the region melts in the springtime we start getting dust storms sweeping in from further west.)

A look at Stalin Park and downtown Harbin from the bridge.

Riverfront in the Spring

Some of the lovely trees in Stalin Park! (I still have no idea how its kept that name all these years given who it was named for and the rocky relationship his country had with China for many years before the former's collapse.)

The four people in the center of this photo had my friends and I in stitches! The two young men (seated) were taking turns taking pictures of each other posing by Songhua when the older couple paused to take pictures of one another in the same spot, interrupting the ongoing 'photoshoot' in the process! It was too funny, especially given how selfie and photo-obsessed so many people are here...

Stalin Park Sea Man

More Harbin awesomeness! (This from the south half of Stalin Park.) There are so many random monuments and sculptures here! 

Spring in Stalin Park

A view of Gonglu Bridge from the south end of Harbin's riverfront Stalin Park. In theory it was spring here when this was taken, but it's still chilly enough that the trees didn't have buds yet a couple of weeks ago. (It's the end of April now and it's still nowhere near as green as I'd expected it would be.)

A view of another area of Stalin Park (around the Flood Control Monument) more recently, with the trees finally coming back to life!

Stalin Park

Stalin Park was laid out in 1953 along the Songhua River, just west of Holy Annunciation Church (now the New Gloria Garden Plaza Hotel), to commemorate the friendship of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. That friendship turned out to be fairly short-lived, yet somehow the park's name survived the break in relations. Today the Park is a refreshing break from the concrete jungle of Harbin, with broad tree-lined walkways (pictured here) and lovely views of the Songhua and Sun Island.

Flood Control Monument

The Flood Control Monument at the center of Stalin Park and the head of Zhongyang Dajie, Harbin's pedestrian street. Stalin Park was laid out in 1953 to commemorate the friendship of the Soviet Union and China, whilst the Flood Control Monument commemorates the successful control of a massive flood in 1957 and the victims of another flood in 1998.