Northeast. 东北：哈尔滨，牡丹江，延边，长白山

After an exhausting 4 day trip in the Northeast. I'm finally resting in a "Bathing Recreation Centre" in Beijing. Where possible I take lodging in this type of place in lieu of hotels. If you've been to one, the reason why is a no-brainer -- they're only getting more and more luxurious, and more competitive. The cost is only fraction of a 3-star hotel room. I'll make a list of ones I've been to in time to come.

Well, after my stint herding 1000 sheep, I took a train to Harbin to meet up with Uncle Yeung (that would be Rosanne's dad), who was on holiday. We, regrettably, bought a 4 day package to the following places. I say regrettably because we could have easily done this one our own, more economically, and in better style.

牡丹江 (Mu Dan Jiang), where I was somewhat ill, and missed out on 2 alledgedly unexciting sights : 底下森林 Underground forest -- basically a forest in a volcanic opening, and, 镜泊湖 Jing Po Lake -- an better than ordinary lake. The food was no good and lodging was crappy -- unclean, hot water and flushing problems.

延边，延吉 (Yan Ji, Bordering North Korea). For me this was very interesting. Yan Ji was the most unique city in my China experience. Han Chinese are definitely outnumbered by the Korean Ethnic Group. All signs are bilingual (Chinese/Korean). Yan Ji is one of the wealthiest places in the Northeast. People here go abroad (S.Korea as a primary destination) to work and like spend the money back home. The CCP subsidizes Korean Ethnics with housing (free house in some cases) so as to appease this people. I had some famous local dog meat and cold noodles. People here are very nice.

长白山 (Chang Bai Mountain). 长白山天池 (Chanbai Shan Volvanic Lake) is the main attraction. Our tour made us spend 80rmb each to ride a Chevy Blazer-like car up to the peak where one can view the volcanic lake. Well, it was cold and windy like hell up there and after 15 minutes of freezing my ass off, I managed to catch a 5 second glimpse of this amazingly beautiful lake. Still, the view was blurred by clouds. Here's picture I stole from the Net. To Koreans (or at least to the many that visit), Chang Bai Shan beholds the origins of their people and is a sacred mountain. The Volcanic Opening would be the most sacred site. I heard that many Koreans cried tears of regret and disappointment when they were unable to see the lake due to heavy clouds (which is common). This is a sharp contrast to the many Chinese visitors who condemn the weather as well as their tour guide for taking them a long way to see some clouds. It is true that Changbaishan is but one of many marvels in China's landscape, perhaps too many to the extend that many Han Chinese don't treasure them. The locals Han in the tourism industry pollute, cheat, evade tax, etc, to cut costs and create more private wealth. For example, my package purposely didn't include some necessary tickets (the 80RMB 4-wheel ride up to the peak for one), and asked us to for more cash to purchase these tickets. In the end, they collected all the tickets (which were also receipts) for tax deduction purposes. They also bought us foam-box lunches (which were no good) to eat in the dusty parking lot at the foot of the mountain, which ended up as the dumping ground.

These sites are a few hundred kilometres apart from each other, but connected by winding and bumpy roads, or slow trains. Thus we spent majority of the time suffering in long train/bus rides, cajoling cheap bus drivers to turn on the A/C once in a while.

People in the Northeast have a very strong sense of brotherhood. This is a deep rooted local tradition that's well known to all Chinese. Businesses, however, are less sophistated than the South; corruption and business malpractices are common. Even in my short 4-day trip, this was apparent in many ways...

It's summer peak season and train tickets are hard to come by -- very hard. This made my impromptu travelling less easy. I decided to cut the chase and fly back to modern civilization. The short 1.5 hr flight from Yan Ji to Beijing costed 1130 RMB!!! -- and this was a midnight flight ...

Think I'll head back to HK in a few more days, and start again when travel discounts kick in, and trains are not so crazily packed. Also I should gain back the lost weight in 3 months of almost non-stop travelling...