It's a bizarre -22°C outside and aptly timed to watch some Siberian tigers frolicking about in the midst of things, because why not?
The thing about Harbin is that it's a wonderland of sorts.
Here at this one of the month and for the continuing couple months this city will be celebrating something called snow and ice festival wherein Harbin will be converted into a wonderland of sorts.
Snow and ice sculptures dotted all over the city, even roundabouts and town placements decorated with twinkling ice, which gives it that iceberg quality of beauteous frost where you'd stand admiring the beauty of it while nursing some gangrene.
Yes it's cold, and yes it's all worth it for a couple days at least.
One shouldn't venture out and about without being clothed in multi layers of warmth and snow shoes, neither is it the kind of place where tourists need stays more than a couple days, but every day that one does live here is worth the icy breath.
A few minutes outside and your mundane plastic bottle is a solid rock of mineral ice cube, frost glimmering on eyebrows and eyelashes makes you wish for sunny beaches and volcanic eruptions, toes and fingers lose sensation and it's an odd mix of wonder and worry..though if one is toasted warm on the chests and clothed in one too many clothing then this numbness is only a symptom of extreme cold and nothing to worry about, and this really is the mad experience that beckons one to Harbin.
My second time here and it's lost none of the charm.
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