Day 24 : January 27 Crouching Tiger or Let Them Eat Chickens!

     As much as we all felt like we could sleep forever, we decided to get up at 8 so we could use our free breakfast coupons. When you think breakfast buffet, there are a lot of things that come to mind, none of which were on this table. They had some flavorless gritty soups, fried onions, fried rice, and a lot of other sketchy looking things I was not bold enough to try that early in the morning. They didn’t even have any drinks so we ended up buying some at the convenience store upstairs after basically eating onions and rice for breakfast. 

St. Sophia's Church

    After some much needed teeth brushing, we headed out for our first adventure of the day to find the St. Sophia’s church. After some aimless wandering we asked a few people where to go and somehow found our way without even getting lost! It was really cool to see the Russian architecture of the church and we all decided that the whole trip we actually felt more like we were in Russia than China. For only 10 yuan, we could go inside and it turned out to be a museum. It was really pretty inside, although a little dilapidated, but well worth the money to see it and the history behind its construction.

     Jess and I decided to lean up against this stage and put our bags down for a little break when we realized some people awkwardly trying to catch us in their pictures. Eventually they just walked up and asked to take one with us, which was my first time since I’ve been here! The girls were really nice but we didn’t realize what we were getting ourselves into. Within the next 10 minutes we had probably taken our picture with 20 different people and it had escalated to the point where there was a line and people were just handing us their children for pictures. We realized that these were all tourists who were probably from Northern China in very rural areas and have never really seen white people before, which is why they found us so intriguing. I must say it was a huge confidence boost to hear 20 people call you piaoliang, which means pretty in Chinese. 

Some of our many new friends from the church!

     When we finally found a break in the commotion we dipped out and decided to head to the next thing on our agenda, which was the Siberian Tiger Park. It took us quite a while to find a cab but we eventually flagged one down who was really nice and funny. John wore his tiger shirt as a joke to take a picture with a tiger in his tiger shirt, but it actually turned out to be key in us getting there. We just pointed to his shirt and the driver knew where we wanted to go. He affirmed this by growling and then we were sure we were headed in the right direction.

     On the way he actually pulled over to get gas, which turned out to be quite a site. He whipped the cab in front of a 5 car line and just backed into a spot in front of the pump and proceeded to point at the driver he cut off and say “fuck youuu!” We all just lost it and started dying in laughter. He spoke no English and just pulled that out like it was nothing; he was instantly our favorite cab driver of the weekend. After not too long, we made it to the Siberian Tiger Park and he told us he would wait for us and started a timer. We assumed we were about to get ripped off so we told him to leave, which turned out to be a mistake. Apparently it’s near impossible to get a cab back, but that was a problem to deal with later. 

     We walked up to the ticket counter and saw all of these different prices. We eventually figured out that we were looking at the prices to feed the tigers different animals ranging from live chickens and pheasants to goats and cows. We got tickets for the bus for 45 yuan and then Bryan and John each bought chickens for 60. We then waited for a bus to arrive and when it did made sure to grab seats with a good view. We proceeded to drive through a ton of gates and then all of the sudden there were Siberian tigers all around the bus! They were so close we couldn’t believe it. They then took us to this feeding area where a guy in a truck threw out the live chickens and we watched the tigers just absolutely devour them. They must get fed a lot because after killing the chicken, one of the tigers just dropped it and walked away. In addition to the chickens, we also got to see a few tigers eating a goat from the group before. After that we just continued to drive around and see different kind of tigers and they would stop and let some get really close to the bus so we got some amazing pictures.

     After a while they just drop you off at this fenced walkway that is raised above the tigers and let you walk around. This was probably the coolest part because you could just get so close to the tigers. There would just be groups of them sleeping on each other to stay warm and you could just walk right up and look. We were kind of following one of them and when we made eye contact it actually jumped up on the fence and scared the life out of us as it hung there for a few seconds before letting go. We also got to see a few tigers get in little fights and paw, growl, and tackle one another. It was pretty crazy to see this all up close.  

     After a necessary tiger picture with John’s shirt on, we ventured over to the area with different breeds. My favorite was definitely the white tiger cub but the tiger and snow leopard were really cool too. After we saw all that there was to see, we decided to go inside and warm up before tackling the challenge of finding a cab home. After a quick break, we headed over to where we got dropped off. We ran into a couple who spoke English and they said that they had their cab wait for them and it could be pretty hard to find one. But just then, an empty cab pulled up (probably some other idiots’ who told their cab to leave like we did), and we got right in. 

John in his tiger shirt with the tigers

   
      We had him take us to this dumpling restaurant we had read about and we got there without a problem. Ordering at the restaurant was a whole other issue though. No one spoke any English; they just had this giant menu of different kinds of dumplings without any pictures. They eventually brought out a few pictures and we just ended up saying rho jaozi, which means pork dumplings, and got a few plates brought out. After we picked the one we liked better, we each got our own plates and ended up being stuffed full of delicious food. After we managed to pay, we stopped by a bakery across the street to grab some snacks for the plane. This place was packed but was well worth the hassle for the delicious pastry and hot cocoa. 

     We then thought about walking around and exploring some shops but decided we didn’t want to cut it too close on catching our flight and were concerned about rush hour traffic. We decided to just go grab a cab, but that was much more of an ordeal than we were expecting. I kid you not, it took us over 45 minutes to get a cab. We still don’t know what the deal was, but at least 10 empty cabs drove by us and would not stop or would just shoo us away. We don’t want to think it was because we were foreigners, but we would watch the same cab who passed us pick up other Chinese people just a few feet down the road. We don’t know if it was just that we looked like a hassle since we all had book bags of luggage and obviously didn’t speak Chinese or if they figured we wanted to go to the airport which was too far away, but it was the first time I have really been frustrated since I have been in China. It was seriously unbelievable and we just had no idea what we were doing wrong. Tensions were high as we were all nervous to miss our flight when we finally found a cab that would take us. It took some acting skills and a “point book” that has pictures of things you can point to, but we eventually got the driver to realize we wanted to go to the airport and then we were good to go. He got us there really quickly and we were there with plenty of time until our flight.

     Once we got all checked in, we all had to go change out of our ridiculous amount of layers so we wouldn’t be hot on the plane. We once again had to take a shuttle to the plane, which was pretty brutal when I had taken off all of my layers except jeans, a short sleeve t-shirt, and a coat. On the shuttle ride I made a comment about how I was about to “blow up” our class facebook page when we got back and Jess pointed out that it was probably not the best idea to use slang like that in an airport where no one speaks our language. With a quick glance to make sure I wasn’t getting any scary looks, I decided I was in the clear. They then let people off the bus 5 at a time so no one had to wait outside too long and soon enough we were all settled on the plane. We had some good bonding time and even managed to get some Chinese studying in. 

Before we knew it, we were doing stretches again which meant we were back at the Shanghai airport. The last true test was if we could get a cab from the airport home, which we were pretty nervous about considering the airport was all shut down, once again very shocking for such a huge international airport. Luckily there was a line to wait for cabs and we got to the front in about 15 minutes. It was amazing to be able to keep our hands out of our jackets for more then 5 seconds without them going numb. Once we finally made it back to the hotel, we officially deemed the trip a success and decided that if we could survive in Harbin on a last minute trip, we could survive anywhere in China. We told a few people about the trip and then all crawled into bed in dread of class in the morning.