Harbin

On Saturday I took a day trip to Harbin.  Jessie, who was my shopping guide last year, is my guide again.  We took the high speed train and got there in under an hour.  The weekend was unusually hot and humid -- mid-90s.  Harbin is farther north, near the Russian and N. Korean borders. In the late 19 and early 20 century it was a cosmopolitan, industrializing city with Russian and Japanese capital investments in the region, as well as Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.  Like other big cities in China there is a lot of new construction but there are random old buildings in European style scattered around, and the city has a charming feel. We visited St. Sofia, early 20-c Eastern Orthodox Church,  which now houses a photo museum of Harbin's history.  Then we went on a wild goose chase looking for the old Jewish synagogue;  followed many people's bad directions and ended up in the old Russian quarter at another Christian church, this one was actually functioning; there were three old Chinese ladies inside who tried to convert us.  We finally found the synagogue, which was built in the 1920s.  After the revolution it no longer was a house of worship.  A cab driver told us it was used by the police a a crime lab, and then was a restaurant.  In 2004 the government restored the building, and installed a museum on Jewish history in Harbin, curated by the local university's Jewish studies center.  There was a map showing origins of Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe and sure enough, Bialystok was one of the sending cities.

Later we went to a Russian restaurant, on Stalin Blvd across from the riverfront Stalin Park. (In Changchun, Stalin Blvd was renamed People's Blvd, renmin dajie.)  The food was pretty bad, i.e. "beet salad" was diced canned beets with canned peas and some diced potatoes. Only the stuffed cabbage saved it from being a total failure.  We met a group of Asian Americans, recent college grads who are teaching English in China.  They came over to our table because one of them went to Columbia and recognized me.  Then we talked to two guys at another table, one from Australia (Tasmania) and one from Canada, who work for the world's largest producer of potatoes cut up for french fries.  They are grown in Mongolia and their big client is KFC in China.  Jessie won't eat KFC because she said the chickens have an extra toe, on account of the growth hormones they are fed.

St. Sofia, Harbin history museum

Jewish synagogue, history museum