The Frigid North

On the 15th we took a train up to Changchun, the capital of Jiling province. It was a 6 hour train ride arriving late at night. The train was an express and very new. What this meant was that although it was clean, quiet and had comfortable seats, it was also far too hot and dry due to the air conditioning. Laura really suffered. She usually likes train travel but didn't like that journey at all. Her past experience was of older trains where there's a bit of a draft to circulate the air and you can open a window. Anyway we made it OK. Changchun's mainly an industrial town (they make cars there). As with anywhere it's the people that make the place and Laura's relations there, whom she had never met, were really welcoming and nice. The one place tourists might visit is the Imperial Palace occupied by Pu Yi when he was serving as the puppet of the Japanese. While it looks in some ways as grand as any stately mansion in Europe might, it's a far cry from the Forbidden City or other Imperial residences he would have had access to previously. Oh how the mighty are fallen. The commentary notices never let you forget that he was a Japanese puppet or that his administration were traitorous puppets too. All true of course but they lay it on a bit thick.

There's an adjoining museum to te experience of Japanese occupation of the North, including a train they dredged out of the river that was lost when the Japanese blew the bridge to set up the Manchurian Incident by framing the Chinese army and gaining a pretext to invade. I realised that I was in the area described in "The Girl Who Played Go", a novel that tells the parallel stories of a young Chinese woman and a Japanese army officer at the time of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the invasion of China. Interestingly, I was lent "Memoirs of a Geisha" to read on the plane too and it is set in Japan at the same time; nowhere near as good a book though - in fact I'm having to force myself to finish it.

From the Imperial Palace, the next day we went to a kind of recreation area that the locals use to go skiing, dog sled riding etc. I was tempted to have a ski but didn't. Given that I can't ski, all I would probably have done was curtail my trip with some kind of fracture so it was probably wise.

I inflicted more karaoke singing on Laura's unsuspecting relatives and that was it. The family had a big dinner at a restaurant to which I was invited so that was a great experience too.

On the 18th, we drove to Haerbin (Often spelt Harbin, but pronounced Ha-er-bin), reputed to be the coldest city in China and quite a long way north of North Korea. There's quite a big Korean (Chosun Nationality) minority in this region so lots of shops with signage in Korean script. The main thing about Haerbin thoug is its Russian influence. During the 19th Century, when the "Great Powers" were carving up China, Russia put a railway through to Dalian and Haerbin grew from being a small village into a busy city - a "Little Moscow" in fact. There's still a lot of Imperial Russian architecture there including an Orthodox Cathedral, St Sofia. They also have the Ice festival there at this time of year and there are Ice sculptures all over the place. There's also a Disney Ice festival with ice ships, castles etc all themed to the various Disney movies and characters.

I thought Changchun was cold (well it was actually) but Haerbin at night was the coldest I've ever experienced. If I went outside without something over my face, I'd start to feel pain around my cheekbones. Having said that though, it wasn't unbearable. There were locals however wandering around without a hat! And I did see one guy begging without a shirt on...

Seeing Changchun and Haerbin made me more sceptical than ever that the Chinese economy is really on the verge of taking over from the US; I just can't see that when you still have guys transporting stuff down the main road in a a hand cart or a mule cart. There's no doubt that the economy has boomed astronomically but it's very uneven and there are some areas lagging way behind. And I haven't vivsited any rural districts, where people have missed out entirely.

Another thing I have noticed is that for all the gains that the revolution definitely brought for women, young Chinese women seem frustratingly "girly" and subservient to their boyfriends. You'd think that with these young women often being more highly qualified than their boyfriends and with the number of young men outnumbering young women, that they'd be pushing for some real equality, but it seems to me they're trapped in a mix of traditional attitudes and an infatuation with the Western idea of "liberation" being the ability to buy fashion accessories. Althoug I've seen hints of this with my students in New Zealand, it seems more predominant than I had expected, and it's reflected in Chinese TV depictions of relationships too. Women act giggly, petulent and helpless without "their man". Maybe I was expecting too much but I thought that some vestige of revolutionary consciousness amongst Chinese mothers might have rubbed off on the new generation, but it appears not to be the case.

Anyway, I'm back in Beijing for a few days by myself - Laura's off to Xi'an for her Grandfather's birthday, and then I'm meeting her there around the 26th, depending on availability of train tickets. The train trip back from Changchun was better - two hour slower but overnight in a sleeping compartment, and the air-conditioning set cooler. The same price as the express but I'd take the slower option with a bunk any day.

Going up north in winter was an experience well worth doing. I've never experienced that sort of cold before - the snow wasn't really snow, it was small flakes of ice - and may never again.I never got a chance to use an internet cafe while I was in the North but in Beijing, it will be easier for me to do another uppate soon. I'm going to spend the day walking around the neighbourhood; it's an old part of Beijing that's been settled since at least Yuan Dynasty (Kublai Khan's) times.