We began the day at the Harbin Shangri-la hotel in downtown Harbin in the north east of China, north of North Korea and to the north west of Vladivostok, Russia. Our room was in the Horizon class, so we were able to experience use of the excellent Horizon Lounge, where we took breakfast this morning around 9am.
Horizon Lounge
Once suitably prepared, we checked out of our room and left our bags with concierge. On our way out of the hotel we stopped by the hotel’s signature ice bar and restaurant, attached to the rear of the building. It was actually quite large and contained an ice bar, four separate dining rooms and a large group dining area. The bar was even complete with a piano made out of ice!
Ice bar with ice piano
We hired a taxi to chauffeur us around two attractions in north Harbin at a rate of 70 RMB per hour. At 10:20am we departed the Shangri-la for the Harbin Tiger Wilderness Park across the Songhua river and not far from last nights’ adventures at the Harbin Ice and Snow World.
The park is very big and is home to over 800 pure tigers (Siberian or Manchurian), not to mention additional lions, white tigers, lionesses and panthers. So it is a really big place, and contains many open fields for the tigers to roam and run. There were a number of different “parks” where the tigers were enclosed, some were specifically for tiger breeding, for example.
Admission was reasonable, about 90 RMB ($15pp) per person and included a trip in a fortified us through the tiger park. We bundled ourselves into what could kindly be considered a minibus with armour and began our tour of the various areas. The entire trip took approximately 40 minutes and we saw quite a number of tigers.
The highlight would have to be the ‘feeding’ of the tigers; a special 4WD vehicle would speed into an enclosure/park beeping it’s horn attracting the attention of the tigers nearby. Once in position, the car door would open and the driver would release a duck (or something similar) into the wild. The assembled tigers would then charge to the game and make short work of it.
Tigers on the hunt
Although it sounds quite cruel and unusual, the prey did not suffer long at all. The tigers, quite practiced at their hunting, were apt predators. Well, except in on instance. On the second feed, the duck (or something similar) flew onto the roof of the car (instead of trying to get away). This seemed to puzzle the assembled tigers and instead of attacking the prey, they seemed to form some sort of cabinet or conclave.
A tiger convention? / Eventually a sucker..I mean.. volunteer came forward
My guess is that none of the tigers wanted to be the one to scare the prey off the top of the roof – because whichever tiger did so would almost certainly miss out on capturing the food. Eventually.. and I mean literally a good five minutes or so later.. one of the tigers must have volunteered, and the chase was on.
Once we had finished our tour of the park, we were let into a series of above ground corridors which were built on top of various caged areas and led to a platform above one of the main park areas.
Here we watched the feeding again, from a different vantage point. Although further away, it was possible to see the tigers working together – and against – each other in pursuit of their prey.
We continued around the enclosure and at one point we saw a tiger sleeping peacefully. We both leaned in towards the outer cage bars when all of a sudden a tiger pounced upon the bars from underneath the platform. You could call us officially scared! Eventually we found our way to the exit after seeing a collection of black panthers, lions, white tigers and little cubs.
Our next stop was the Sun Island Ice Sculpture park, which was a bit further south, opposite where the Ice and Snow World is located.
Sun Island is a year-round tourist attraction, located north of the Songhua River. In winter it is turned into a park full of massive ice carvings and landscapes as well as a few rides, such as a large slide. There are other things worth seeing such as a native bear park, although we restricted ourselves just to the ice carvings as we had a taxi on the clock.
Ice and Snow World by Day – Not as impressive as at night
After paying the admission cost, and depositing the plastic ticket into the turnstile approximately 5 meters from the ticket office, we entered the park. Initially you have to cross from the mainland to the island by way of a wide bridge. People were trying to entice the few tourists to pay for rides in enclosed vehicles, but we declined. Walking onwards, at the end of the bridge was our first carving -a very tall copy of the Mona Lisa.
Sun Island Entry / Sun Island Bridge
There would have been a small number (for China) of people walking about shooting photos, but generally a lot of workers were still working on many of the larger structures which I guess means it was still a little bit under construction. We decided to go straight ahead and found ourselves between two very long and tall sheets of carved ice leading to a roundabout on which was perched a permanent work of art.
Ice Mona
Rounding the roundabout, we noticed two coffee shops made entirely out of ice (hollowed out) which must be the world’s coldest coffee shop! We continued straight until we reached the logical end of the path, shooting pictures as we went. There wasn’t too much wind, so it was comparably tolerable to not wear gloves. At the T-intersection we turned left and headed down to where the path was blocked off, admiring the workers on the right still working on some two storey sculptures which were still in progress.
Large Landscape (with me for scale) / Work in progress
We doubled back and continued down to the riverside where we walked along to find the equivalent of the “adventure park”, though you had to pay to use the attractions. By this stage we’d sort of had our fill of sculptures, so we started to make a line back towards the main area, stopping for the occasional staged picture, such as reclining on huge hammocks or posing for photos on a large wooden (snow covered) bridge.
Cold Coffee Shop / Under Construction
The footing was quite slippery in places, and we lost traction more than a few times. We eventually returned to the main boulevard and made our way back to the bridge, and across to the waiting taxi.
He took us back across the river, back to the Shangri-la where we had left our two backpacks. He made 260 rmb (about $43 AUD) for three and a half hours of driving and waiting for us, so not too bad on our end. We might have been able to wrangle transportation more cheaply, but it would have been difficult.
Massive Ice Landscape
We ate a really great late lunch in the Shangri-la’s main dining room, which consisted of tangy shredded potato, eggplant and a local pork delicacy involving cabbage with rice and tea. The potato in particular was really memorable. Afterwards, with a good hour to kill before making our way to the airport, we circle the block around the hotel and walked along the riverside.
As the sun started to set, we took sunset photos of the river and managed to find a few more ice sculptures dotted around Youyi road before heading back to the hotel to collect our bags and find order a taxi. The rest of the day is rather uneventful until we boarded our flight. We met some fellow Aussies on the plane and had a good chat as we headed back to Beijing.
Ice Carving Near the hotel
When we arrived back in Capital Airport we bid adieu to our fellow countryman, who were also overnighting before heading out, and took what turned out to be a really bad taxi ride to our hotel in south Beijing, close to the southern airport (Nanyuan). If I decide to write about that incident, it’ll be in a separate post.
Tune in next for highlights from Xi’an!