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Christmas Getways

Harbin's genesis and early development stemmed from the Chinese government allowing Russia to extend the Trans-Siberian Railway into China early in the last century, thus creating the need for a terminus and a line extending west to Europe. Russian influence in the area of the new rail-head was reinforced in 1917 when, after Russia's October revolution, half a million White Russians migrated south to Harbin.

The Russian influence remains to this day, evidenced by Harbin's broad avenues edged with neo-classical mansions, parks, and monuments to pioneering heroic individuals. In winter, the Songhua River transforms into a public ice-skating rink and highway for sleighs. Harbin is so cold (often down to minus 30 degrees Celsius) that a park bordering the river also becomes partially covered with thick ice, creating a further winter playground on which local people and tourists ride in pony carts, play games and even indulge in ballroom dancing.

Most of Harbin's visitors come in winter, the lure being its world-famous annual Ice Lantern Festival as well as winter activities such as skiing, skating and shooting. The festival's centerpiece is arguably the world's most magnificent display of full-scale ice sculptures of buildings, animals, statues and other images fashioned by the best ice-carvers from all over China. All the carvings are vividly illuminated by rainbows of colored neon lights, providing an unforgettably spectacular display.

Intent on preserving the Russian aspects of Harbin, the local authorities recently renovated a city-center street which into its former glory. The Russian Orthodox Sofia Cathedral, topped by onion-shaped domes and originally built by Russian soldiers in 1903, is also being restored.

Many other churches were abandoned in the late 1930s, but some remaining former places of worship are being given a new lease of life as trading centers for Russians who commute to Harbin from Nakhodka. Their wares include leather goods, silver tea services, Red Army wrist-watches, fur pelts, and dried foodstuffs.

Harbin, officially described as "the first inland open port for foreign trade", daily sees its imports and exports transported in containers by freight trains to and from China's north-eastern port of Dalian.

Thriving Harbin, which hopes to bid for the 2012 Winter Olympics, has a fast-growing tourism industry. Many international hotels have been opened, including a Holiday Inn, New World and Gloria International. Tourism is at its height from December to February, mainly due to the Ice Lantern Festival. Visitors soon learn that robust Russian cuisine helps to stave off the cold, especially meat and potato dishes laced with garlic and often washed down with vodka!