我的世界

I personally think Harbin has very wonderful nightview and its nightview is at par with well known cities like Hong Kong or Shanghai.

While Shanghai or HK has very ultra modern nightview, I think Harbin's has more clasical flavor than those cities. Because Harbin was under Russian rule till 1940s or so, many of buildings from then still remained and with beautiful lightings, they look gorgeous. For a while, I thought that I was in Europe and not in China. Also in Harbin, it wasn't too hard to see group of Russians and Russian stores. 
When it's darker, things look way more gorgeous:

Pics from St. Sophia Cathedral

It used to be a Russian Orthodox Church but ever since Harbin became part of China, it's no longer a church. Currently, they use it as a museum.

However, the only complaint that I have is that.. They suddenly turned all the light off at once.. w/o giving us any short notices. 

The first place we went in Harbin after we arrived was ZhongYang Dajie (中央大街）
One of the unique thing about this street is that...
It is one of the few place in China where we can experience European culture. I would say it's like Chinese version of Quebec.

Before 1950s, when People's Republic of China was established, Harbin was under Russian rules. Thus it wasn't too hard to find European style buildings from early 20th century. Those buildings were well maintained.

It wasn't too hard to find Russian stores and Russians in this city.. Many Russians come to Harbin to shop/hang around because it's cheap compare to Russia.
USA Bucks...(USA 巴克酒吧）? Is it Fake version of Starbucks?

Note: in (Mandarin) Chinese, Starbucks is known as 星巴克咖啡


As name says (酒吧 instead of 咖啡）, it's a pub.. lol
They also sell coffee

We were looking for "real" Starbucks in Harbin but it was unsuccessful .. =.=;

A Russian restaurant in Harbin:
The entrance of this restaurant, this building was built in 1914.

Me and some of my friends went to Harbin, one of the largest city in the northeast china, for May 1st Labor Day holiday trip

Because we planned the trip at the last minute, we couldn't get the train ticket so the only choice we had was to take the bus to Harbin :(

Because it was overnight bus, surprisingly it was "bed bus" instead of coaches

Our "bed" bus to Harbin(哈尔滨，哈爾濱）

Inside of "sleeper (bed) bus".. Note there's only beds instead of seats
Thus we had to lie in the bed for whole journey and more surprisingly, inside of the bus was well maintained. The bus was cleaner than I thought and comfortness wasn't too bad... better than I thought

The bus was suppose to depart from Yanji at 7:30pm and arrive at Harbin in 4:30 am or so but it departed 1 1/2 hours later than scheduled time. :( Also bus arrived at Harbin 7:30 or so.. Thus including waiting times, the whole journey took merely 12 hours!!!!!

It was pretty unique experience :)

Even though Yanji is located at the northeastern part of China and very far from big cities like Beijing or Shanghai, it's not too hard to see non-Asian foreigners (e.g. Caucasians, Africans etc). There are number of non-Asian foreigners in Yanji doing English teachers at private institutions, middle/high schools, universities. There's another group of non-Asian foreigners in Yanji doing mission work. Also there are many # of Russians coming from Russia doing shopping etc.

With those foreigners and ppl from my work, we decided to eat DOG MEAT for dinner..yikes

Dog meat in Yanji is even more common than Korea... Plus it's MUCH CHEAPER than what u'll get in Korea too~ with 150RMB (about 20~25$CAD) u can feed 4 ppl .. while in Korea it's about 1-200 CAD for 4 ppl
Many ppl here LOVE eating dogs... no kidding.. even girls who looks like they'll never put a single peace of dog meat in their mouth.. they are craving for it -_- If I ask "let's go eat dogs!" they just say yes w/o any hesistations.. Thus eating dog in here is like eating beef/pork..

Recently, I've been eating dog for once a week in March I don't know why.. But this time was very memorable because I was not just eating with Koreans or Korean decent Chinese but it was with a white dude!!!

A white dude from the USA eating a dog? wow
I remember in 10 yrs ago when I first came to Canada, I don't know why but I talked about eating dogs with other ppl in the class, they looked at me as if I am from like 3rd world... But yeah... 10 yrs been passed and lots of things been changed..

How did he do in the restaurant? He loved it!

He told me that he's from small town in Michigan and grew up w/o eating a single plate of Asian food until he went to Korea for one semester as an exchange student. It was in Korea where he fell in love with (eating) dogs... no wonder he was loving it.. lol

Yup.. it was very interesting dinner and definitely it was very unique :)

I gotta eat (ahem.....) as much as possible in Yanji before I go back to Canada

FYI: Actually dog meat is veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery soft.. it's more softer than beef/porks/chickens.. when they kill it, they put dogs into like hot water and when it's dead, they beat it with a bat or something similar to make it very soft...

Recently, in TIbet as many ppl know is in a state of turmoil :(

Chinese gov't is reporting that there's only like few tens (10) been dead so far but according to foreign reports, few hundreds been dead ..

I wonder what will happen to the status of China being a host nation of this summer's olympic!

However, the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this incident through (foreign news) was.. "okay I won't be surprised to see Youtube being blocked in the China because those ppl will surely put clips from Tibet incident..."

Few months ago, Youtube was blocked in China b/c someone posted a clip from Tiananmen massacre

Wikipedia have been blocked in mainland China since I came b/c someone put some shit about China/Tibet in Wikipedia and I don't see Wiki being unblocked anytime soon :(

As I just checked in Youtube.. I am getting "Problem loading page" .. not too surprised
But this time, I think it's gonna be blocked for extended period of time :(

omg.. what am i gonna do w/o youtube?!

Wangfujing is one of the must visit area in Beijing.. as there are many stores, restaurants and many kinds of food to try

However, things that caught most of my attention are so called street foods
some of them can be delicious.. yet some can be very disturbing

I don't know that guy and also I didn't ask him to pose in front of the bingtanghuru.. I think he's the cashier

mmmm sweet corns~
fried chestnuts

I don't know its name but seemed nice

and the highlight of Wangfujing is:


scorpion/seahorse kebob

I know there are scorpion kebob.. but what the?! seahorse???
those seahorses are too cute to be eaten :( ewwww

I seen many foreign tourists are taking photo with those scorpion kebob, so I decided to give it a try


scorpions being closed up

and here it comes!
me eating a scorpion!!!!!

well it didn't taste that bad...
I thought I would throw up right after my first bite... but I ended up eating two scorpions.. couldn't finish all of them

now I can't say eating dog was the most disgusting food I ever tried
eating scorpion beats everything!!!!

I took a trip to Beijing during this weekend..
I thought 2 nights and 3 days would be enough since I will be taking a plane back to Yanji on Sunday night.. even though Beijing trip was good ,time wasn't enough to tour Beijing completely :(


I wasn't able to visit some of must-see places such as The Great Wall, Yi Hwa Yuan or inside of the Forbidden City :(

I will save them for end June/early July when I finish my term in Yanji and go to Beijing to take a plane to Seoul and then to Toronto :)

Initially, I wasn't thinking about staying in Beijing in end June/July when I go back to Toronto.. but since I missed out a lot in Beijing this weekend, I will definitely be in Beijing for few days before I go to Toronto to finish up my unfinished business in Beijing :)


The first thing that greeted me at the Beijing Airport when I disembarked from the plane was...

"Coffee Time!" (yay~)

When did Coffee Time started its expansion to China..?
Wait... was Coffee Time owned by Chinese?

Anyways.. seeing Coffee Time in Beijing was one of the most surprised store to see in Beijing.. lol


Doesn't the logo and its interior seems similar to the one in Toronto?

When I first saw this store... I was like... "wait? this can't be here?"

I wonder how much a cup of coffee cost there.. hopefully it's less than 10RMB
If a cup of coffee in Beiing Coffee Time costs similar to the Starbucks, then.. it would be sad :(

Inside of Beijing International Airport Terminal 1

the roof reminds me of UFO :p

Definitely the waiting area for Terminal 1 looked more like an airport than Terminal 2 domestic area, which looked no better than bus terminal :(

more pics from Beijing are coming up soon~

hmm

i know jaywalking is pretty common in canada but in (mainland) china, ppl do it w/o feeling any guilt about this

i even find myself doing a jaywalk w/o feeling bad about doing this lol

i found one interesting crosswalk in downtown yanji

ususally those crosswalks have crossing lights on both sides, but surprisingly this one doesn't have it.. wow

view of this crosswalk from the other side
they don't even have crossing light on the other side as well

this is pretty wide road.. 
in toronto, it's like Yonge Street or highway 7

i know (many) people in (mainland) china don't care about crossing lights and they cross it whenever they want but crossword like this..

this one doesn't seem right :(

please go through this crosswalk at your own risk

Yesterday, I went to a supermarket called "Kalma“to buy some stuff (it's like T&T or Galleria Supermaket in Toronto)
When I walked up to the second floor where they sell bunch of ramens,

天哪！（oh my god!)  I never knew this really exists!
The label says: 延边狗肉面 （traditional: 延邊狗肉面）
Yanbian is name of the district(?) where I am at (It's part of Jilin province)

Since this is Chinese product, it's VERY cheap compare to other Korean imported ramens..

It's just 1.2RMB ... For price of one Korean Ranem, I think it's possible to buy 4-5 of those.. lol What a price difference!

I bought 2 of them to try and I hadn't tried them yet :(
I will let you guys know whether I am alive after eating it

it's been a week since Chinese (Korean) new year

I hope you guys had a 春節快樂！
前天 我回延吉，但是， 四個月以後， 我回加拿大

I found some of 春节stuff pics in my hard disk that I want to share with:

This is from my Air China domestic flight from 北京（beijing) to 深圳（shenzhen) on the way to 香港

I took this flight day after solar calendar new year (which is January 2nd) and
they gave all of us on board some treats b/c of new year's day!


guess what's inside of the red pocket with the word 福

I was expecting some special souvenirs or money(lol)
but as you might notice, it was a kit kat chocolate bar haha

(Sorry for not taking a picture of chocolate bar inside of the pocket.. I ate them all before I realized that I should've took picture of it :( )

It wasn't fancy or expensive stuff but just a Kit Kat chocolate bar
but being covered with the red pocket,  this one feels much different
than ordinary Kit Kat chocolate bar lol

the thing that looks like a card in the middle..
I thought it was a free phone card or something like that .. but it was just a calendar for 2008

Even though those things are small but it was definitely a nice surprise.
Surely those things made my journey to HK made more memorable~