St. Sophia's Cathedral and another visit to the Ice Festival

The night before we went to the Siberian Tiger park Jade came into my room complaining of a fever. We don't have a thermometer with us but I could see she was feverish. I gave her some panadol and got her to strip off to her undies to try to cool down. It looks like she's got the same illness that Jarrah came down with last Friday in Beijing. By the morning she was fine. I decided to start both kids on the antibiotics we brought with us, not really knowing if they would do any good but figuring they wouldn't do any harm either.

Today both kids were tired and run-down so we decided to leave them in the hotel room playing DS and computer (I'll say again the laptop has been a godsend!) while Paul and I went out for a couple of hours to walk around Harbin. We left them with one of the Panda phones so they could contact us if needed. We haven't used the second Panda phone that much as mine has served as the main contact phone for friends and tour guides but the second one has come in handy the few times we have separated to do different things.

Paul and I walked about 7 or 8 blocks to see one of the sights of Harbin--the Russian styled church of St. Sophia. The cathedral no longer operates as a house of worship. Now it is an art gallery displaying photos of historic Harbin.

Outside the church of St. Sophia--that's me in the red jacket

Paul inside the church

The church is in dire need of restoration. Much of the interior paintwork and even the plasterwork is gone. Despite hearing about Harbin's Russian connections we haven't seen one Russian face since we've been here. Even the salespeople in the Russian giftshops (where I have been shopping for a Babushka doll) are all Chinese. Supposedly there are a few thousand Russians in Harbin who came here during the Russian revolution.

The kids called while we were out so we headed back to the hotel to check on them and rest up for a second visit to the Ice Festival.

By late afternoon Jade wasn't feverish and was sure she wanted to go to the ice festival so we grabbed a taxi and headed off for a few hours. We went to the ice chair skating first as she had wanted to do this again since the first time in Beijing. The chairs here were single ones and the ice was covered with snow and this made it hard going. In her weakened state Jade found she didn't have the energy to push the chair and gave up. The rest of us had a go as well but with the snow I also found it tough going. Jarrah and Paul also did the ice bikes while Jade and I watched. Then Jarrah and Paul went to the long ice slide where they had to queue to go down it. The minimum age for this was 14. Paul offered to take Jade with him but she and I went into the Nescafe hut for a hot chocolate instead. We had to wait about 20 minutes for the boys to come back. In that time we met up with an American couple who also had fled the cigarette smoke to the back of the hut. There are very very few foreigners in Harbin and most are in tour groups. The statistics for the ice festival are that 90% of the visitors are Chinese and 10% foreign. I think even the 10% mark is overrated.

I mainly wanted to revisit the ice festival to take more photos as my camera battery had given up the previous time. I later figured out that this was due to the cold rather than to me not charging it sufficiently. So this time I kept my camera inside my coat and only pulled it out to take a photo then quickly put it back inside my coat.

Unfortunately it soon became obvious that Jade's fever had returned and that she was very sick so after about 2 hours we left the ice festival, got in a gypsy cab with another group of people and returned to the hotel.

Here are more ice festival photos:

beautifully lit up 'trees'

This series of 3 photos gives an indication of the changing nature of the lights on some of the sculptures.