Harbin Part II

Some post conference sightseeing snaps...

The museum and tomb of a regional emporor...
(my professor knows his Chinese history, unlike me)

The burial mound of the Jing dynasty emporor

Central Street - pedestrianised and cobbled

St. Sofia Church - now a mini museum of the photographic history of Harbin.

Harbin: Conference

A university funded trip to Harbin for the International Geotechnical Symposium, starting off with a dinner in the revolving restaurant of Dragon Tower.

Conference and more importantly: conference cakes...

Fancy dinner in the evening to follow the days fun-filled presentations which invloved the Japanese contingent going up on stage to sing a song in Japanese, which was then followed by being forced onto stage by my very enthusiastic professor insisting (on account that he did pay for our registration fee) that Aziz and I sing songs from our respective countries in some lame attempt to entertain the conference attendees (some primative form of torture I believe).

University canteen food


Getting on and off the boat for the conference organised boat trip to SunIsland Park was rather precarious. At least the ducks had some thing amusing to watch...

Despite the river being rather murky and full of river traffic, it didnt stop a mass of people from swimming in it, infact there were crowds of people (mainly men in speedos) lining the banks ready for a dip in the river. There was even one guy in a little yellow pedalo happily paddling away while being buffeted by the wake of the huge boats zipping past.

Sunsetting over the river as we at our dinner...

Harbin Part I

View from my bedroom, sorry... 'suite' on the 29th floor...

SunIsland - where the Ice Festival usually takes place every winter

Despite it being the middle of summer (and it being damned hot) they do have a Ice Sculpture museum; a big freezer room where they have ice sculptures all year round: costs 80yuan to get in and 15yuan to rent the compulsary legwarmers, shoes and jackets that you need to not freeze once inside.

We also went to 'Polar World' which was, as I usually find aquariums and zoos, depressing. Animals in tiny confines being stared at by humans through panes of glass. On the otherhand much further north of the city there is a tiger reserve where you can drive through their cages and take photos of of tigers and ligers (lion-tiger hybrid). Every so often you would see a splattering of chicken feathers where a tasty chicken had been had.

Miaow?

Best of all, after the little bus excursion, they dropped you off on a caged pedestrian walkway where the majority of visitors took too banging on the cage and shouting at the (disinterested) tigers trying to get an interesting response. On the walkway there was an enterprising lady selling live chickens and bits of raw beef. The first of which could be thrown over the fence to feed the tigers, the second could be dangled on the end of some provided string presumably to do a bit of 'tigering'. I personally think 50yuan is a good price for a whole live chicken, but would be more tempted to take it home as a pet than watch it become a snack on moving legs...

For some added cuteness there were fluffy baby tigers to have photos taken with.

Geotechnical Visit to China [Day 1]

Having been lucky enough to join the JGS team on their collaborative trip to China I had the privilege of being taken to some sites which had been heavily damaged by the earthquake. As the mini bus headed out of Chengdu [成都]and got steadily closer to the fault which ruptured on the 12th of May, the damage to buildings got more and more severe, and the sight of rows upon row of blue tents could be seen at shorter intervals.

A view from the road of some lovely earthquake damage...

The following photos are of a huge landslide which instantaneously buried 60 people (as we were told by our guides).

(left)looking at the Toe of the slide and (right) up to the source of the slide (from the halfway point)

Looking down to the toe of the slide from the halfway point.

Some of the rocks were absolutely massive, the largest I saw was around 5m by 3m by 2m...which suggests an awesome amount of energy. The debris that we stood on was a good 10m in thickness at the very least.

The roads we travelled on were still quite make-shift in places, where only a narrow path had been cleared through slide debris, so that the van travelled with loose rock on one side and a shear drop on the other and was only wide enough for one car. Thus the horn was used alot, to warn other motorists of our impending presence.

The following photos are of a collapsed concrete bridge, we were also able to see some evidence of a surface fault rupture on one of the abutments.

update...

I know I haven't written for a while but I just got back from China last night, and am in the midst of writing up about the trip; annotated photos and all. I have to say I am very impressed with the response of both the Chinese people and the Chinese Government to the situation. I also have to say, I saw nearly as many People's Liberation Army tents as emergency shelter tents for the thousands of displaced people. I am also quite glad that the university insured me for my trip as we ended up going places where I'm sure no one would let you any where near if it were a site in the UK.

more soon...