Harbin
Harbin Children's Welfare Institution
#20 Ke Yan Street
Nangang District
Harbin, Heilongjiang, PRC CHINA
150086
Half the Sky Children's Center #38 opened in September, 2008
| Baby Sisters Infant Nurture Program | |
| Little Sisters Preschool Program | |
| Big Sisters Program | |
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Family Village #13 |
HARBIN
Dubbed the “Asian St. Petersburg” and “Ice City,” Harbin is as famous for its Russian architecture as it is for its frigid, winter weather when temperatures average minus16.8 degrees Celsius and plummet as low as minus 38.1 degrees Celsius.
Despite the cold, archaeological records show that prehistoric humans lived in the area around Harbin as long ago as 22,000 years ago. Later about a dozen aboriginal ethnic groups lived in the region then called Manchuria after one of those ethnic groups, the Manchu, who ruled China from 1644 until the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911.
The modern city of Harbin grew as a result of the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway by Russia as an extension of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Formerly a cluster of fishing villages, “Harbin” (a Manchu word for “a place for drying fishing nets”) evolved into the largest commercial center of northeastern Asia.
Today Harbin is the capital of China’s northernmost province, Heilongjiang (“Black Dragon River.”) The Amur (“Black Dragon”) River marks the border between Russia and Heilongjiang Province. Tourists visit Harbin to enjoy both Russian and Chinese culture and food and its renowned, annual winter festival when thousands of sculptures are carved out of ice and snow.
The most famous example of Byzantine architecture is St. Sophia Cathedral in the Daoli District on the banks of the Songhua River. The Cathedral is located on Zhongyang Dajie (Central Street), a charming, cobblestoned, tree-lined street where Harbiners and tourists alike enjoy strolls to the river on cool summer evenings. Construction of the green-domed cathedral, which has been rebuilt several times, began in 1907. Touted as the largest Eastern Orthodox church in Asia, the cathedral has been turned into the Harbin Museum of Architecture, which preserves the building and features many historical photos of Harbin’s most interesting architecture.
Also on Zhongyang Dajie is the more than 100-year-old Modern Hotel, which opened in 1907. It was owned by a member of Harbin’s once thriving community of Russian Jews and was built in ornate, Louis XIV style.
For traditional Chinese architecture, visit two temples in the Nangang District (also a good area to find vegetarian food).
The Ji Le (Temple of Bliss) Temple was established in 1921 by a famous disciple of the Tiantai Buddhist clan. You can see the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower when you enter the main gate. Every sunrise and sunset, the monks beat the drum and the bell of the two towers to signal morning and the afternoon worship. The temple complex consists of the Heavenly King’s Hall, the Grand Hall, the Three Bodhisattva Hall, and the Buddhist Book Storage Hall. The most imposing building is the Futu Pagoda, a 37m tall stone structure building engraved with Buddhist sculptures.
Wen Miao, the nearby Confucian temple is a 20 meter high wooden structure built in 1926, is the largest Confucian temple in northeastern China. Yellow tiles are used in the main buildings and the ornate roof featuring golden dragons reflects the imperial style of the Qing Dynasty.
Harbin’s Jin Shangjing History Museum is an award-winning museum, which focuses on the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234). The Jin was established by ancestors of the Manchus, who established the Qing Dynasty some 500 years later.
Food
Northeast (dongbei) Chinese food features lots of stewed dishes that include potatoes, Chinese cabbage (including suancai (pickled cabbage) in the winter, tofu, pork and hotpot. In China it is said that the best dumplings and noodles are made in the North. You can find a dozen varieties of dumplings in Harbin, including what some call the most authentic, made using quality flour and fresh cabbage and pork meat.
To navigate the restaurant scene in Harbin, you should know that red lanterns hanging outside signifies a Chinese restaurant and blue lanterns a Muslim (no pork) restaurant. And the greater the number of lanterns, the higher the standard of cooking and accordingly, the larger the size of your bill!
You can also find stroganoff and caviar in Harbin, but the most ubiquitous Russian-style food is a bread known as lie-ba in the local dialect (from the Russian word for bread, khleb). The weight of this round bread can be as much as 2.5 kilograms. The crust is crispy and the interior is soft.
Ranking with Lie Ba as a typical Harbin snack are hongchang, Harbin’s red sausage and air-dried sausage, which are more European in flavor than their Chinese counterparts.
Also don’t forget to sample local Harbin Beer, made by the oldest brewery in China, which was bought by Anheuser-Busch in 2004.
Winter Festival
The Harbin climate, that features bone-chilling winter winds from Siberia, is well suited for the North China tiger, the red-crowned crane, the lynx, and with careful preparation can be enjoyed by humans as well. Harbiners joke that people from warm climates look like overstuffed teddy bears when they visit. But the key, they say, to staying warm is wearing carefully chosen layers, good shoes for the snow, a hat, and a double layer of gloves, especially useful for taking photos. If visitors do make the mistake of taking off bulky gloves to take photos, they should avoid putting their hands on metal or, goes another local joke, they will be stuck until spring.
Once properly outfitted, visitors can enjoy the annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, which features thousands of ice sculptures throughout the city. The most spectacular ice sculptures are across on the north bank of the Songhuajiang at "Ice and Snow World,” a commercial theme park that operates every night. There are also enormous snow sculptures at Sun Island (a recreational area on the opposite side of the Songhua River from the city).
Sculptures ranges from a huge aircraft-carrier, life-size seven-storey pagodas a quarter size submarine, a five foot high Mickey Mouse or Mulan, a 200-foot long King Neptune surrounded by nymphs, crashing waves, and sea animals, to religious and humorous sculptures, including one of three men sitting on a row of toilets.
Winter activities during the festival include Alpine Skiing at the largest ski resort in China located in Yablui, a 2.5 hour train ride from Harbin, winter-swimming in the Songhua River, and an ice-lantern exhibition in Zhaolin Garden.
If you adopted a child who was in a Harbin Half the Sky program, we are happy to send you whatever progress reports and photographs we may have in our files, but only after you've brought your child home. Please download and fill out a progress report request form and follow the instructions for faxing or emailing to Half the Sky