I really dislike long vacations! Seriously, I would much rather be in the classroom with my students than to have to spend more than two months (since the last week of December, continuing into at least the first week of March) trying to find things to occupy my time.
I had to go to Hong Kong to deal with some visa issues; so, I went for the Western New Year's Eve (December 31st) in order to see the fireworks in Victoria Harbor. NOTE TO SELF: next time, remember that you have to get down to the harbor no later than the afternoon of New Year's Eve if you want to have a decent place from which to see the fireworks. Hong Kong on New Year's Eve is insanely crowded! Okay, so, with that out of the way, I'm all nice and legal once again here in China.
But I needed to find things to do during the rest of my way-too-long vacation. A few years ago, I saw an advertisement on what is now CGTN (China Global Television Network) for a place on China's northern border with Russia, a place called Manzhouli. I thought to myself that this is someplace I might like to see someday. Now that I live in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province, I thought that, well, maybe this was a good time to go to Manzhouli.
Actually, I was toying with the idea of a few different travel destinations. Besides Manzhouli, I was thinking about some other parts of Inner Mongolia - Hohhot (the capital of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region), Batou, Ordos, or Ulanhot. I was also thinking about maybe seeing some other parts of Heilongjiang Province, particularly Mohe, the northernmost city in China. After checking out train schedules, various costs, and available things to do, I decided on Manzhouli.
There aren't many trains going from Harbin to Manzhouli; so, I chose one that would get me into Manzhouli the next morning, but not so early that I might not be able to find staff awake at the hotel. It's a bit over a 12-hour train ride and I was able to spend most of that time sleeping. I arrived in Manzhouli around 9:30 in the morning and took a taxi from the train station to the hotel.
Once I got settled in my hotel room, I went out to explore my immediate surroundings. That's when I discovered not one but two walking streets (one of which was on Tripadvisor's things to do list). Walking streets in China are great places for shopping and are often popular with the locals. With further exploring came surprise discoveries, like six floors of shops (okay, the top floor was a food court of sorts and the basement was a supermarket) arranged in a way that reminded me of a building I saw when I lived in Astana, Kazakhstan - row upon row of glass-enclosed shops. You could find lots of things there - coats, hats and gloves, women's wear, men's wear, children's wear, shoes and boots, beauty products, housewares...
Besides the shops in that building, the rest of the walking street had individual shops selling various products - mostly Russian products like in many of the shops on Zhongyang Jie (Central Street) here in Harbin.
Manzhouli is a border town - and I do mean town. By Chinese standards, Manzhouli is quite small, having only around 300,000 people. By contrast, Harbin is a small city (by Chinese standards) of around 5 million people. In fact, Manzhouli is small enough to where one could see beyond it in some places to barren hills of steppe grasses. Manzhouli is important because it was the first train stop in what was then Manchuria (when traveling from Russia) and soon became a trading center. Today, trains carry products back and forth between China and Eastern Europe (via Russia) through Manzhouli, which is China's busiest land port.
The border entry point is listed as numbers two, eleven, and twelve on Tripadvisor's list of things to do in Manzhouli. If you're a foreigner, you will not be allowed to cross. In fact, there's a line on the pavement that you have to stay behind and the border guard made it quite clear that I was not to go past that line. There's also a locomotive square (number thirteen on Tripadvisor's list of things to do) nearby, which is a testament to the importance of trains in the town's history.
As I was out exploring one day, I found quite by accident number four on Tripadvisor's list of things to do: Beihu Park. It was a nice place for a stroll and has a lake in the middle of it. The lake, of course, is frozen over this time of year and people were walking on the ice.
As Manzhouli is in Inner Mongolia, I decided that I really wanted to try Mongolian food. Tripadvisor listed two restaurants with Mongolian cuisine, only one of which was open this time of year (the other was closed for Spring Festival). I initially went to the one listed as number three on Tripadvisor's list of restaurants (the first two on the list were for Russian and Eastern European cuisine), but that's the one that was closed for Spring Festival. However, very close by was another restaurant that was serving (though I didn't realize it at the time I chose to eat there) Mongolian cuisine. The food was pretty good. The following day, though, I decided to go to the other Mongolian restaurant, which was number four on Tripadvisor's list.
Jinjiaohan Mongolian Customs is a really nice place to experience Mongolian cuisine. You generally need reservations, but since I went at lunch time and there was essentially no one there, I was seated and served. This restaurant is definitely not for the solo diner. First, you are taken to a room (one of several) with a round table that seats maybe six or eight people. From the menu, you order the food items you want, but the food portions are clearly meant to be shared among a group. The important thing is that I got to experience real Mongolian cuisine. (Sorry, but O'Brien's Chinese Mongolian Barbecue on El Cajon Boulevard in San Diego, California, which I went to back in the 1980s when I lived in San Diego, doesn't count as real Mongolian cuisine.)
I consider myself an urban explorer. So, naturally, I like to just go out and explore (on foot, of course). I discovered that Manzhouli has an ice and snow festival this time of year. It isn't much of one (compared to the one we have in Harbin, one of the world's largest), but a festival nonetheless. There's a university in Manzhouli, a Wanda plaza (Wanda is a huge shopping mall chain in China), and you just never know what you're going to find when you go exploring.
Manzhouli is a nice little place to visit. Some of the sites aren't open this time of year, but they will be open in April and will likely remain open until around October. If you're a white guy like me, expect shop keepers on the walking streets and some of the underground shopping venues to try talking to you in Russian. I appreciate the effort, but I don't speak Russian (my Russian is limited to being able to read some of the Russian alphabet and decipher some of the words). So, if you happen to be planning a trip to China, put Manzhouli on your itinerary.
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